Ehrenreich Gives Tolles Lecture

Author and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich gave the Winton Tolles Lecture to a filled Chapel made up of both Hamilton and area-community members. Ehrenreich is the author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (Metropolitan Books, 2001) which is an assigned reading in more than eight Hamilton classes this semester.

In introducing Ehrenreich, Maurice Isserman, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of History, took the opportunity to give some background on poverty in America. He discussed the issues put forth in Michael Harrington's 1962 book The Other America, which was credited with launching the "war on poverty."

"Whether the condition of the "other America" is worse, better, or the same now as it was before the publication of Harrington's book is a topic I will leave to Barbara to discuss," said Isserman. "But Barbara is certainly a writer in the Harrington tradition, someone who uses her vision in a dual sense to help us see through 'the wall of affluence' and to summon us to a new sense of purpose and aspiration, to do something about the continuing inequalities of condition and opportunity that mar our society."

Maurice Isserman introduces social critic Barbara Ehrenreich

Ehrenreich will never again use the word "unskilled" to describe a job after spending time in various low paying jobs trying desperately to make ends meet. She did not do it because she had to. Although it was a magazine writing assignment, she did it because she was passionate about the practical problems faced by those impacted by "welfare reform."  Take the example of the Bush administration initiative to encourage women to get married. Theoretically, marrying would help a woman get out of poverty. Ehrenreich said, "The basic problem is that women tend to marry in the same socio-economic class." After doing the math, she asked ironically, "How many men does a woman have to marry to make it?"

So, in 1998, she left home and lived in three different cities, had five different jobs and learned first-hand what it was like to be one of the working poor. Ehrenreich learned that her Ph.D. in biology did little to prepare her for computerized ordering as a waitress. She discovered she could keep up with younger house cleaners because she hadn't been doing it very long so was uninjured and that, after learning the location of thousands of items at Walmart, the merchandise would be rotated, "to convince me I had Alzheimer's."  Every job she undertook required skill.

Looking back on her experience, Ehrenreich said, "I'm proud I survived. I never got fired and I was moderately successful as a worker." But she could not make ends meet. She admits she even had some advantages. She didn't have children with her and she noted, sadly, that "being white seemed to be helpful."   She outlined some survival strategies employed by the friends and co-workers she met: move in together to share rent and getting second and third jobs.

She ended her talk with a call for action.  Ehrenreich said, "There is so much I take for granted ... that's only there because of someone else's underpaid and exhausting work."  Campuses are not made up just of faculty and administrators. She urged the students to "reject the idea that classrooms will be cleaned and food served in the cafeteria by someone making minimum wage."

Ehrenreich is the author of Blood Rites; The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed (a New York Times bestseller); Fear of Falling:The Inner Life of the Middle Class, which was nominated for National Book Critics Circle Award; and eight other books. A frequent contributor to Time, Harper's Magazine, The New Republic, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine, she lives near Key West, Florida.