Thanks for stopping by and for your comments. We clearly have different perspectives on this issue, but working through some of those might make for some good conversation and/or at least some interesting reading for others.

1. My (White) child attended a public, urban (predominantly African American) elementary school in East Harlem last year where I found that the typical child was smart, engaging, articulate, and incredibly skillful at conflict resolution. Perhaps instead of talking about individual children’s behaviors we should be looking carefully at the school contexts that produce different kinds of behaviors. I would be very concerned about the structures of a school and the pedagogy within classrooms if the typical child was undisciplined, violent, and seemingly inarticulate. Believe it or not, classroom structures and pedagogical practices can create ways for children to seem “articulate” or otherwise.

2. Your comment about “appallingly negligent parenting” would lead me to ask, “Have you been in their homes? Have you spent time with their families?” And if the answer is no, I would recommend that you not speak (or make judgment) about what happens inside their homes. This is a stereotypical assumption about poor and working-class families in our society that I would suggest everyone reconsider. Get to really know parents. Get to really know families. Then ask yourself about mainstream “standards” set for being an ideal parent in the United States and the resources (economic, social, political, cultural) necessary to engage in such parenting. Without going into it here, I would also argue that there is certainly “appallingly negligent” parenting going on in middle-class, upper middle-class, and affluent homes where childcare is done by working-class and poor women who know the children in a family better than the parents. Surely these working-class and poor women are assumed to have valuable “parenting” skills, or why would so many people be hiring them to raise their children?

3. I would suggest that “acting white” does not get to the issue here because social class is not being considered. Perhaps if you had written “acting white and middle-class” I would agree that doing so might allow some children and/or adults to gain access to school practices or entry-level jobs that may (or may not) lead somewhere productive. However, are there really living-wage jobs available for the 36+ million people living in poverty today in the US and the millions more who earn incomes just above the federal poverty level but still do not have the economic stability to provide food, shelter, clothing, and a consistent, predictable daily life for their families? When you are born on “the very bottom ranks of society” it takes far more than “acting white” to experience any upward mobility at all. And the structures of our market-driven capitalistic society where profit margins and enormous executive bonuses are most important ensure that this is the case. They certainly are poor for a reason, but blaming individuals who are living and working in a broader system of economics and class discrimination could not possibly be productive.

4. Let’ s not pretend that drug and alcohol addiction do not impact all social classes. Working-class and poor people however, unlike their more affluent counterparts, may find themselves without insurance for counseling and rehabilitation, or without an economic safety net provided by family or friends to keep them financially afloat or help with finding a new job while they are battling addiction.

The tricky part about “class” in America is that we have been taught from a very early age, through various ideological tools, that individuals who work hard enough will prosper in this country. Frankly, this kind of slogan works against group solidarity and for control over the masses by a powerful minority. Therefore, we have been raised to not think about “classes” of people at all but about individual people who seem to magically succeed and/or tragically fail – always attributing such outcomes to the intrinsic value of the person herself. Doesn’t that idea seem fundamentally flawed, not to mention immoral? We have a long way to go before individuals in our country begin thinking about and acting in the best interests of the enormous groups of people prevented from acquiring economic stability – something that would ultimately be in the best interest of us all.

The issue of whether this country treats its impoverished in an equitable way (and I believe we do not) is separate and distinct issue from who ends up at the bottom of the pyramid and why. Hard work, discipline, sobriety, and frankly “acting white” will lift just about anyone out of the very bottom ranks of society. We need to treat our poor fairly (by programs of full employment and living wages) but pretending that there are many poor who are poor for a reason (e.g. drunkenness, drug use, shiftlessness, general un-employablity) is not going to improve any ones lot.