Vivyan Adair, The Elihu Root Peace Fund Associate Professor of Women's Studies and director of the ACCESS Project at Hamilton, began the discussion by outlining some of the major questions surrounding the series' theme of "Class in Context." Calling class "an understudied phenomenon," she said that "class is among the most misunderstood and misrepresented topics - when represented at all - in the academy." It is also misunderstood in American society, she said, where most people believe themselves to be middle class while statistics clearly show that this is not true. In fact, while most Americans believe that class differences are decreasing, the gap between the rich and poor is growing. Americans also embrace the idea that their society is one of equality in opportunity and upward mobility, when research has shown that the class you are born into is the largest determinant of the class you will remain in. Adair also said that while we usually think of class as purely economic, it also functions in social, physical and psychological ways, as well as having implications for race, gender, and sexuality.
Joycelyn Moody, associate professor of English at Saint Louis University and editor of African American Review spoke next about the psychological difficulties of passing as middle class. She related the story of her recent move to St. Louis and her new job, and her personal struggles relating to race, class and sexuality. Moody spoke about riding across St. Louis on a city bus ridden entirely by black people, and the race and class dynamics she observed there. She described feeling conspicuous and uncomfortable later riding the bus with a white colleague and being clearly middle class among the lower class black passengers. She also discussed the environment at her new university, a mainly white Jesuit school in the middle of a black urban neighborhood, and the concepts of race and class held by her students and colleagues.
Katherine O'Donnell, professor of sociology at Hartwick College, spoke about her research with both upstate NY dairy workers and poor women in Chiapas Mexico and how it has led her to revelations about the intersections of class and gender. She also discussed class as a global phenomenon. O'Donnell said that the World Bank and other international financial institutions, which she called "global pimps," cannot deny that their policies have contributed to a rise in poverty throughout the world. This is particularly in the global south, she said, and has resulted in what she called "global apartheid." In America, she said, recent economic developments have resulted in downward pressure on all wages and a squeeze on the middle class. She also touched on the difference between urban and rural poverty, saying that the American denial of white poverty in rural areas allows us to blame people of color for poverty and escape more in-depth analysis of class.
Hamilton Professor of Anthropology Bonnie Urciuoli spoke about her research project studying how students of color experienced identity construction when coming to college, and the relationship between class and identity in higher education. In her conversations with students of color, she found that their experience of "whiteness" before they came to college was very different than their idea of "whiteness" at college, and this difference was usually related to class. She also said that students of color felt a need to define themselves much more in relation to race labels like "diversity" or "multiculturalism" once they came to college. In fact, she found that a key role of multicultural organizations on campus was to help students jointly define themselves to the community. Urciuoli also said that students of color also felt that others had class marked perceptions about them, particularly relating to their performance in class and whether or not they deserved to be there. The class dimension of race judgements, she said, is often played out in terms of issues of self control and skills. Urciuoli also touched on the idea of class transformation through higher education, and how students of color hope to gain the skills needed to navigate the white professional world once out of college.
The panel discussion outlined some of the topics and questions that will be addressed during this year's Kirkland Project series. The next event in the series is a lecture by Dalton Conley titled "The Pecking Order: Is The Family Home A Level Playing Field?" on Sept. 9 at 7:30 p.m. in the Fillius Events Barn.
-- by Caroline R. O'Shea '07
