WHY CLASS MATTERS in ORGANIZING for RACIAL JUSTICE
Class is something white people in our movements rarely talk about. Yet is essential that we talk about and normalize it if we're going to build a successful anti-racist movement.
How does class impact our organizing? What do middle-class and owning class folks have to learn from working-class leaders? How has the left historically ignored class and what's the impact on our movement? How can I begin a discussion about class in my chapter?
As we look at class, we want to look at it fully. This means looking at class identity, which is knowing what class we are part of (or if we don't know, thinking about why we don't know and what would help us to know). This means looking at class consciousness, which is understanding who is with us and who we are with related to class background and culture. This means bringing a class analysis, which means understanding how oppression is maintained and how we might dismantle it. Too often conversations about class, like conversations about race, get stuck in focusing on identity only or consciousness only or analysis only, and all these pieces matter and are necessary.
Click here to read the SURJ Leadership Team's "Poor and Working-Class Commitment"
Click here to check out SURJ's Cross-Class Capacity Tool, developed as an act of love by the SURJ Poor and Working-Class Caucus.
Class is something white people in our movements rarely talk about. Yet is essential that we talk about and normalize it if we're going to build a successful anti-racist movement.
How does class impact our organizing? What do middle-class and owning class folks have to learn from working-class leaders? How has the left historically ignored class and what's the impact on our movement? How can I begin a discussion about class in my chapter?
As we look at class, we want to look at it fully. This means looking at class identity, which is knowing what class we are part of (or if we don't know, thinking about why we don't know and what would help us to know). This means looking at class consciousness, which is understanding who is with us and who we are with related to class background and culture. This means bringing a class analysis, which means understanding how oppression is maintained and how we might dismantle it. Too often conversations about class, like conversations about race, get stuck in focusing on identity only or consciousness only or analysis only, and all these pieces matter and are necessary.
Click here to read the SURJ Leadership Team's "Poor and Working-Class Commitment"
Click here to check out SURJ's Cross-Class Capacity Tool, developed as an act of love by the SURJ Poor and Working-Class Caucus.
Definitions & Markers of Class
(adapted From Class Action)
Class is a social system that divides people based on jobs, wealth, resources, education, influence, and power.
Poor/Welfare Class people often experience the following:
- Housing instability, homelessness, substandard housing
- Require (and do not always receive) public assistance
- Basic needs are unmet
- Exploitation, underpaid/unpaid labor, high risk employment
Working Class people often experience the following:
- Often wage laborers
- Little or no access to formal education beyond high school (though student loans are shifting this dynamic so that more working class people are accessing higher education, often with great risk and sacrifice)
- Debt
- Rental housing or limited access to ownership
- Few options with regard to field of employment (typically service, manual, caretaking)
Middle Class people often experience the following:
- 4 year college degree or more
- Securely housed in owned home(s), ability to upgrade housing, renters by choice and not necessity
- Able to control work, select job fields
- Economically secure, but must remain employed
Owning Class people often experience the following:
- Can expect large inheritance
- Access to education as desired, including private or elite schools
- Working is optional
- Able to access luxuries
Class is a very complicated matter, and class groups are not clearly divided. Class is a culture. Also, due to the successes of working class organizing, some class markers such as access to education or housing have shifted.
Also, class isn’t just about how much money you make.
Some of these markers may be different if you live in a rural community as opposed to an urban community.
Depending on what class you grew up in or live in currently, you are taught different norms and behavior patterns, or class cultures. Class cultures are part of what reinforces class divides.
People with class privilege are often raised in a culture that prioritizes competition, status, and personal gains. Value is placed on things that are formal or professional. Even though folks have access to a lot of resources, they often come from a mindset that there isn't enough.
Meanwhile, people trying to survive in a system that is harming them often function in ways that are more Collective, and build together.
Folks class can shift over time, but the culture that we are born into can, and usually does, stick with us and continue to have powerful influence over us throughout our lives, regardless of how much income we earn.
Class is a very complicated matter, and class groups are not clearly divided. For example, some people are born into one class and then change their class status due to (in)access to healthcare, education, employment, cross-class family relationships, and other challenges and opportunities. Also, due to the successes of poor working class organizing on issues like living wages, housing access, and education, some class markers have and will continue to shift.
Class is not just the amount of money someone has in their pocket or the resources they can access. It is a culture. The spaces that we grow, learn, play, work, and struggle in teach us norms, or how to do things on a daily basis. These norms include things like language, how to build relationships, and who has power or influence.
It is important to note that the spectrum of poor and working class identity is very broad, and that often as people have more secure working class employment, they are pushed to resemble the middle class more and more due to the shame working class people are made to feel. When we talk about class culture, we are talking about general things that are often seen in communities. These are not absolutes.
The social construct of race in the United States was created and enforced by Owning Class people in the 1600s to prevent poor white European people from joining African and Native American people in revolts. Since then, economics have played a long and painful history in the ways that racism has been enforced against People of Color, and how poor and working class white people have been scapegoated for racism.
When many people think of what racism and white supremacy in the United States looks like, they fall back on negative stereotypes of poor and working class white people.
In reality, it is Middle Class (to some extent) and Owning Class people that make significant profits from white supremacy
This isn’t to say that poor and working class white people don’t have a stake in ending white supremacy, because they absolutely do. The folks who have the most to gain from change (and for whom the system is most broken for) are the most likely to fight the hardest in movement work, put their bodies on the line, and take risk. Our movements need to see poor and working class people as gifts and assets, not targets and burdens.
Working class values make all of our organizing stronger because:
- There is a value on relationships, and how to stay in them even through disagreement.
- Elders and children are valued for multigenerational perspectives.
- Emphasis on follow through and staying in for the long haul.
- Working class people share community, workplaces, families, and neighborhoods with folks of color for generations--call these the original accountability relationships.
- There is not a focus on individual perfection, because life is complicated, especially if you are struggling.
- Less expectation for immediate results and more value for "small wins" that lead up to end goals.
why does class matter in racial justice work?
The people who "show up" are usually the people who are asked, feel welcome, and can. Check the class environment of the spaces you are in by considering:
Locations and Settings of Events
Representation
Culture
Language
SURJ often speaks about reaching people “in motion” and people who are “movable.” Sometimes these words are used to mean people with formal education, resources, academic analysis, belonging to a certain subculture, and the ability to attend meetings; and that limits our focus to Middle and Owning class people.
Meanwhile, stereotypes and prejudices place blame and shame on working class and poor white people. Many leftist, progressive, and radical groups describe these communities as the owners and perpetrators of white supremacy, completely ignoring the fact that poor and working class white people have long worked in solidarity with communities of color to fight racism and classism.
Locations and Settings of Events
- Are they near public transit?
- What is the space used for other than meetings?
- Time of day
- Childcare
- Food
- Cost to attend
Representation
- Who is in leadership?
- Where are poor and working class people?
- When using images or cultural references, are they cross class relevant?
Culture
- What is considered rude/polite?
- How is conflict handled?
- How are people greeted?
- What happens if people are late?
- What are expectations and norms around food?
Language
- Are words and terms explained in a way that spreads understanding?
- Is communication direct or indirect?
- What language norms are assumed?
- Is written information offered in a different way?
SURJ often speaks about reaching people “in motion” and people who are “movable.” Sometimes these words are used to mean people with formal education, resources, academic analysis, belonging to a certain subculture, and the ability to attend meetings; and that limits our focus to Middle and Owning class people.
Meanwhile, stereotypes and prejudices place blame and shame on working class and poor white people. Many leftist, progressive, and radical groups describe these communities as the owners and perpetrators of white supremacy, completely ignoring the fact that poor and working class white people have long worked in solidarity with communities of color to fight racism and classism.
resources
This Class Action web page describes and defines classism.
A piece by Chris Crass making the case for a working class orientation at the heart of white anti-racist organizing.
Carla Wallace offers an opinion piece on "no part of meanness."
From the Guardian - Dangerous idiots: how to liberal media elite failed working-class Americans.
Dorothy Allison's powerful essay: A Question of Class.
Read about the Birmingham District Coal Strike of 1908, a story of Black and white workers joining together for mutual interest.
An interview with the Rural Organizing Project about anti-racist organizing in white working class rural communities. Interview by Chris Crass.
Dorian Warren talks about middle class organizers in working class communities. Offered by Class Matters.
Class Matters list of books about class.
Read Linda Stout's thoughts about Invisible Walls: What Keeps Working Class People Out of Coalitions.
Class Matters interviews Linda Stout about reaching across the walls.
Class Matters offers Tips from Working Class Activists.
An article by Robert Reich on Who Lost the White Working Class?
Listen to this NPR interview with Alfred Lubrano, author of the new book Limbo: Blue Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams. Lubrano writes from first hand experience about the white-collar children of blue-collar parents; he calls them "straddlers," people who follow what can sometimes be a very difficult path away from the family and into an unfamiliar and often uncomfortable world.
A piece by Chris Crass making the case for a working class orientation at the heart of white anti-racist organizing.
Carla Wallace offers an opinion piece on "no part of meanness."
From the Guardian - Dangerous idiots: how to liberal media elite failed working-class Americans.
Dorothy Allison's powerful essay: A Question of Class.
Read about the Birmingham District Coal Strike of 1908, a story of Black and white workers joining together for mutual interest.
An interview with the Rural Organizing Project about anti-racist organizing in white working class rural communities. Interview by Chris Crass.
Dorian Warren talks about middle class organizers in working class communities. Offered by Class Matters.
Class Matters list of books about class.
Read Linda Stout's thoughts about Invisible Walls: What Keeps Working Class People Out of Coalitions.
Class Matters interviews Linda Stout about reaching across the walls.
Class Matters offers Tips from Working Class Activists.
An article by Robert Reich on Who Lost the White Working Class?
Listen to this NPR interview with Alfred Lubrano, author of the new book Limbo: Blue Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams. Lubrano writes from first hand experience about the white-collar children of blue-collar parents; he calls them "straddlers," people who follow what can sometimes be a very difficult path away from the family and into an unfamiliar and often uncomfortable world.