WisCon Day 1: Friday

[bcholmes]

I really only caught one panel on Friday:

"I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and all I got was this chip on my shoulder": Uplift, Downsizing, and Other Changes of Class
In the US, everyone is expected to want to move up in class—but if we do, we are likely to find that we can't leave our former experiences behind and we might not want to. Similarly, many formerly well-off people have slipped down the class ladder in the economic downturn, but may not realize the kinds of privilege they maintain or the kinds of survival knowledge they lack. In this panel, we'll talk about the challenges we've experienced in changing class in any direction, and work to build narratives that fit our lives better than the standard ones.

M: Alexis Lothien Lothian, Julie Hayes, Kiini Salaam, Fred Schepartz, Vanessa Vega

Earlier in the day, I'd had lunch with Alexis and Jess and Chris, and we talked about our own class panel the next night. So my mind was full of thinky thoughts about class. This panel ended up being more of a "telling our stories" panel than a structural analysis panel. At some level I was disappointed in that, but Alexis quite rightly tsk-tsked me, reminding me that the panel description clearly situated it in people's experience.

Nonetheless, there were some interesting ideas that came out of the panel: I think it was Julie who raised the idea of three types of capital:

1. People/Social capital -- who you know, informal support networks, etc.
2. Cultural capital -- specific knowledge or skills that can assist you: anything from reading to knowing which side of the plate the fork goes on
3. Economic capital -- moolah.

Julie also raised comments about hipster classism, talking about colleagues who'd say things like "My brother is in jail -- oh, of course I meant Yale." Julie commented that these people would act like it was obviously a bit of a joke, but she knew people who had relatives in jail, and it didn't seem funny to her.

Kiini also raised a number of good comments, remarking that class is, in many cases a weapon (in the sense of "which drugs do people go to jail for", etc). Toward the end of the panel, she also talked about the Freedom Riders, and phenomenon of people coming from the north to help register voters of colour in the south. Her comment was about how people would take these actions to help the people who were "down" but not really work to stop the "down-ness". (I liked this comment because it reminded me of that Dom Hélder Câmara quotation I'm fond of: "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.")

Fred, sadly, tended to drift off-topic a bit, or would raise certain comments that didn't seem, to me, to be grounded in lived experience. Alexis was good at reining him in, though.

I also enjoyed Alexis' comments about the cluelessness of white Marxists in the academy, and how she tends to avoid having certain types of class discussions with them. It was kinda clear to me that she didn't say that every person who is white and Marxist is clueless, but I'm not sure that that was clear to everyone in the audience :-)

This was the first panel of the weekend where the quotation came up that "America's new favourite pasttime is judging." There was also an audience comment in which one woman mentioned how some of her class history stays with her -- that, for example, although she started out poor, and did manage to make her way into middle class, she's still incapable of throwing away leftovers. Julie made a similar comment about being obsessive about having a fully stocked pantry (the_siobhan has made similar statements in the past, relating it to her time as a street kid).

There was also talk about different attitudes about social safety nets in different states. Julie talked about how, if she lost her job in Massachusetts, there were better support systems than if she lost her job in Wisconsin. orangemike commented, wistfully, that Wisconsin used to have those, but that Republicans were systemically disassembling them. And this brought us around to the crucial (and yet, unsurprising) point that this stuff isn't an accident. That social safety nets, and the public education system, and all these other things are under attack because rich people have no interest in more equitable wealth distribution.

Other comments: Diantha mentioned, from the audience, that you have to have boots to pull yourself up. Alexis also talked about the changing meaning of her accent when she moved from Scotland to the States. In the U.S., her accent marks her with "white privilege plus," giving her special cool points, whereas in Scotland... kinda not.

A good panel; I probably undervalued it at the time, but re-reading my notes, I think a lot of interesting stuff came out of it.

Comments

[futuransky]

It's LothiAn, did I already say that in another comment? I'm not too worried about that, anyway.

Glad you enjoyed the panel and found it better in hindsight! Thanks for writing up. I do think it was good to spend some time with the personal, though I would have liked things to open out to the structural in more ways than they did. "Not an accident" means a lot of different things, and I think that sticking too closely to the electoral-politics end of things can be a bit of a red herring.

[bcholmes]

It's LothiAn, did I already say that in another comment? I'm not too worried about that, anyway.

Oh dear. That's totally embarrassing. My apologies.

[futuransky]

Don't worry about it, really!

[bcholmes]

"Not an accident" means a lot of different things, and I think that sticking too closely to the electoral-politics end of things can be a bit of a red herring.

Also: could you elaborate on this comment?

[the_axel]

Alexis also talked about the changing meaning of her accent when she moved from Scotland to the States. In the U.S., her accent marks her with "white privilege plus," giving her special cool points, whereas in Scotland... kinda not.

I just want to add a "me too" to that statement<sub>[1]

[1] Replacing "England" with "Scotland" and "Canada" with "US".</sub>

[spiderplanet]

I came here from jiawen's journal and I enjoyed reading your report. I've also added you. Please feel free to let me know if you are uncomfortable with people you don't know reading and following what you write.

I also enjoyed Alexis' comments about the cluelessness of white Marxists in the academy, and how she tends to avoid having certain types of class discussions with them.

I think it is a horrific discredit to Marxism that it's become primarily an academic brain teaser in the U.S., and almost entirely disassociated with the working class. It's entertaining philosophical dialectics pursued by people who can afford college, and who can also afford to take risks on less vocational degrees.

Something as important as the distribution of wealth and other resources isn't a puzzler in The New Yorker, and it's a bit stomach churning to see it treated that way.

Anyway, it sounds like a fun panel. Thanks for the write-up.

[firecat]

Thanks for the writeup, I really wanted to go to that panel.