Bardiac with two very thought provoking posts on class and the limits of our experience. Much better, we think, than the Charles Murray dreck that inspired them. (No, we still have not forgiven him for The Bell Curve. When our students stop quoting it, then perhaps we will forgive him.)
Speaking of racists with poor comprehension skills, jezebel has an interesting article on people’s immediate racist reactions on not realizing that the characters in a book they loved were *gasp* black until watching them on the big screen. Totally stolen from quesera.
Wandering Scientist goes into more detail about the comment we griped about in a recent RBOC. One note: we have a deliberately controversial post coming up in April on the need to have a clean house. (NOT on whether or not a clean house makes you happy, specifically whether having a messy house makes you unhappy.) Also, #1 hates goat cheese with a passion and does not mind if you feel sorry for her about that, but at least she doesn’t have to deal with goat cheese every day!
A simple little post answering the work more/spend less conundrum from fabulously broke in the city.
We were in this week’s carnival of personal finance.
March 31, 2012 at 11:23 am
I scored in the single digits on the “class-, culture-, and education-privileged white-ass motherf*cker” quiz. Which does not surprise me at all, since I have never had any illusions about being a class-, culture-, and education-privileged white-ass motherf*cker.
March 31, 2012 at 11:27 am
The not-privileged thing? It kind of sucks. Much better to be on the other side.
Last time I ate at IHOP I got sick after.
BTW, the whole quiz is only about white-asses. All the lower SES choices were rural Southern things. Nascar? Fishing? Living in a tiny town? These are not things the majority of poor folks in the US do (given that the majority of poor people are urban, not rural, IIRC), just the ones with the culture and access.
March 31, 2012 at 4:09 pm
I’m not so sure about the white-asses thing. I got a ton of points because of Carebear (who was raised in a pretty standard lower-middle class military black family). Including the fishing (and he’d prefer a tiny town over the city any day). A lot of black families are simply rural-Southerners who have gotten the heck outta there.
I naively tried to look at whether the majority of poor people are urban or rural- that kind of stuff makes me glad I’m not a sociologist! (there are far too many people wanting to count counties with the highest poverty rates- which are overwhelmingly rural. It’s just that that can’t overcome the overwhelming population densities of the cities. Though I suppose there are good arguments for looking at both *number* of poor people and *percentage of people in poverty* to get a handle on it).
I have seen some damage done by equating poverty with black people in cities (specifically, in some of the discussions about food stamps). I think it’s worthwhile to try to have many images leap to mind when you hear “poverty”. Minority kids in big cities living with just their Mom, sure. But also Native Americans on tribal lands, migrant workers across the nation, seniors who have just tiny SS incomes, rural folks in the Mississippi delta region, and yes, whites in tiny towns in Appalachia.
Also- Branson, MO gets you points, but family vacations to Dollywood don’t? That’s as silly as Mary Kay not counting.
March 31, 2012 at 4:33 pm
The survey was created by a racist jerk, so it isn’t surprising that it is white-centric. He’s not talking about minority kids in big cities or Native Americans on tribal lands or migrant workers– if he were I’d have an even higher score. They’re not important to him (although he did go to great length to “prove” they are inferior to him). He’s neither talking about rural blacks nor urban poor of any race. Even if rural folks of both races like to go fishing. (Urban folks don’t have that opportunity as easily.)
Economists don’t tend to study the rural poor because there are fewer of them. On average, blacks tend to be more urban (which isn’t to say there are more blacks than whites in urban areas– there aren’t. When I said there are more urban poor than rural poor, I did not say there were more poor blacks than poor whites. There aren’t.). NASCAR in particular is known for being racially segregated, as much as golf.
On average, blacks tend to be housing segregated so they tend to live nearer neighbors of different socioeconomic statuses than whites do. (Personally I think this has a lot to do with racial steering by real estate professionals and had been wanting to do a study on the impact of the internet on housing segregation, but someone beat me to it. It reduces segregation somewhat, but landlords still discriminate.) Black middle class are more likely to be living near black lower SES compared to white middle class who tend to only live in clusters of white middle class. (And patterns of black housing segregation tend to be different in the South than the North… more checkerboard less wagon wheel.)
The survey doesn’t address any of these real (but on average) differences. It, by itself, is living in a bubble, one that I can best describe as a single continuum that goes from Southern Rural low SES White (who lives close enough to a big town and makes enough to be able to go to middle class restaurants) on one end to your stereotypical urban/suburban arugula eating white liberal NPR listener who cares about social justice but doesn’t get out much on the other. There’s a whole world in 2 and even 3 dimensions that the survey doesn’t cover.
And that’s not me griping about my score– the score described me perfectly. But I’m white and my experiences are almost entirely upon that line, as are DH’s (DH’s perhaps even more so, despite his much higher score, as his early years did not include anyone of a different race or ethnicity). But I know enough about the world outside of my life (both from talking to people who are obviously not described by that survey and from *real* statistics) to know that my line of personal experience is not the whole world.
March 31, 2012 at 12:01 pm
But, but, I recognize both Bransons!
March 31, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Ha, yes. Who could forget the way he threw water into Mr. Colbert’s stunned face, who then responded in kind?
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/251789/december-18-2009/in–60-seconds—the-branson-feud
Also, from what I understand, in Soviet Russia, Branson, MO visits you.
March 31, 2012 at 1:25 pm
Me, too, but I went with the one that popped into my head first, which is the town, not the person. I’ve never been there, though. However, my husband (who is not an American, so the quiz makes no sense for him) recently learned of the existence of Branson, MO, and I rather suspect that I will be dragged there at some point because he is fascinated by the idea.
I scored as exactly what I am- a first generation upper middle class person who doesn’t watch any TV or go to the movies.
March 31, 2012 at 4:40 pm
(Urban folks don’t have that opportunity as easily.)
In Manhattan, there is *f*cketonnes* of fishing, within walking distance of pretty much anywhere. And STRIPERS!!!!!!!!!
March 31, 2012 at 4:50 pm
Right, because Manhattan is TOTALLY typical of all cities. Not say, the MOST EXPENSIVE CITY in the US.
You can fish (somewhat easily) if you live in a subset of the expensive coastal parts of Chicago too. But not if you live in say, MOST of Chicago. And I’m pretty sure the last time I went there were signs saying not to eat any fish you caught.
Where I currently work, there’s a fishing pond right outside my window.
April 1, 2012 at 10:32 am
The people who fish off the shores of Manhattan are almost all poor or working class. You do know that–while it does contain some of the richest neighborhoods on the planet–Manhattan has tons of poor and working class people living there, too, right?
April 1, 2012 at 10:49 am
Going fishing in *most* cities is a full day production (yes, my partner fishes, and yes, we have lived in many cities and towns). Going fishing in most small towns is 15 min to get there, max. Places with lots of rich people living have a lot more amenities and a lot better transportation than places that don’t. Even if the rich people mostly have better things to do than fish. Places with high incomes and high taxes provide more public goods (under a Tiebout sorting model), and if poor people aren’t zoned out, then they also get to partake in those amenities. Small towns, on the other hand, just tend to have small ponds and rivers close by because without the river the small town wouldn’t exist.
Income distribution in Manhattan: http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Manhattan-New-York.html .
April 1, 2012 at 11:29 am
I don’t understand why my remarks that there is tons of fishing in Manhattan and that it is mostly poor or working class people doing the fishing here have turned into some kind of complicated sociological argument.
April 1, 2012 at 12:22 pm
Manhattan is one city. It isn’t all cities. The statement that it is easier to go fishing in a rural area rather than a city still holds. Even if you can fish in Manhattan. Manhattan has a lot of amenities that other cities do not have.
If you live on South Side Chicago, going fishing is going to be a PITA.
Additionally, even if most of the people fishing in Manhattan are poor/working class, that doesn’t mean that most people in NYC have easy access to fishing.
April 1, 2012 at 12:44 pm
Oh, I get it now. You thought I was mentioning the fishing situation in Manhattan as a refutation of your general assertion.
April 1, 2012 at 12:54 pm
That’s what it sounded like!
April 1, 2012 at 1:25 pm
No. I was just mentioning how great the f*cken fishing is off Manhattan. STRIPERS!!!
April 1, 2012 at 10:33 pm
The far South Side of Chicago actually has several little ponds/lakelets (and Lake Calumet, the only lake within Chicago city limits). The real trouble is the rivers are about as polluted as it gets. Though apparently that doesn’t stop some folks (google “calumet bass fishing”, though to their credit they appear to throw them back).
Also, apparently the CPD stocks several park lagoons and you can fish the south branch of the Chicago river (http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/facilities/fishing-areas/). Who knew?
April 2, 2012 at 5:34 am
There’s a difference between existence and access.
Cities are big, public transportation is uneven. If you live in one of the fancier areas in Chicago it is fairly easy to get to one of these places, if you don’t, it is an all-day affair.
(When one says “SouthSide” one is referring to the low SES part of “SouthSide” but “SouthSide” also technically includes some posh neighborhoods where UChicago professors live, and other gentrified neighborhoods that result every time they try to “reurbanize” Southside. These neighbhorhoods are not easy access to the whole.)
April 2, 2012 at 5:41 am
Additionally, there’s a literature in sociology about why (on average) urban blacks don’t know how to swim. It’s about lack of access.