Tired of Playing Monopoly?

To those of you (if any) not in the class, "Tired of Playing Monopoly?" is an article by Donna Langston which can be found in its entirety here: http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2002/2002-December/028202.html

I'd love to continue discussion on this article. If you hadn't guessed by the choice of topic, this is Devin by the way.

I'd like to say first off that I don't deny classist oppression and prejudice in the United States. I think there are a lot of things we need to do as a society in providing more opportunities, basic human rights (aka UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE!!!!!), and fair wages to working class peoples. I don't agree with the current state of exploitation of "unskilled" labor. I don't think its right.

That being said...

I also have some serious problems with this article. Mainly, though, with the author. First of all, I'd like to make it abundantly clear, although I know some of you dismiss this, I think there is such a thing as personal responsibility. If you're addicted to drugs its usually your own fault, not society's. Yes there are some extreme cases - if you were given drugs as a child, if you became addicted in the womb, etc. Usually though, its the person's own fault that they are addicted to drugs. Even if the majority of your peers and community are on drugs, even if the only people you know with money and nice stuff are drug dealers, even if the majority of images of people of your race that you see on TV are doing drugs or in prison, you still made a choice. A very influenced and, given your situation, understandable choice; but a choice non the less.
Now, how does this relate to the article? To continue my drug analogy, the fact that someone else is less influenced by their surrounding and culture to take drugs than you are does not mean that you have to take drugs. Langston says that "America is, after all, the supposed land of equal opportunity where, if you just work hard enough, you can get ahead, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. What the old bootstraps theory overlooks is that some were born with silver shoe horns." This is what I've been trying to get at. To use the metaphor, the fact that some people were born with silver shoe horns does not negate anyone else's ability to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, sans silver shoe horns.

Being on this side of this argument is weird for me. Usually I am trying to convince people who deny classist oppression of the existence of it. I am not trying to negate any of the calls for social change that she makes. I am not saying that she is entirely wrong. I just feel like the article has an air of ingratitude and entitlement that I resent. She claims that "the rags-to-riches myth is perpetuated by creating enough visible tokens so that oppressed persons believe they, too, can get ahead" and that the myth of meritocracy "perpetuates false hope among the working class and poor that they can have different opportunites in life." I don't know about anyone else, but if I was born into a working class family and worked my ass off to get a higher education and high-paying job I would be pretty pissed to have all of my work and accomplishments dismissed as tokenism. Less than a page after denying the possibility of upward class mobility she admits to being "awarded a scholarship to attend any college, private or public, in the state of California." That must be another one of the middle class's insidious tricks to give working class people false hope. How devilish of us. The article does not even mention affirmative action and dismisses public education as a classist system. Education, I'll admit, is pretty f-ed up but at least we offer some form of it to all citizens. Not every country can say that.

Throughout the article the United States middle class standard is used as a foil to show how crappy working class people have it. Well guess what, the United States middle class live like royalty compared to most of the world! My life looks pretty crappy compared to a Suadi Arabian prince. Donna Langston has nothing to complain about compared to someone in rural Southeast Asia, at least if Donna does not like something about the system in which she lives she can vote for people to represent her in the policy-making bodies of her government. Perhaps she feels like she has not been given enough in this life. This leads to one of my biggest questions regarding the article - what exactly is she suggesting? One of the first things that came to mind is socialism. Well, if welfare, medicare/medicaid, and social security are not enough for you then you should really consider moving to France, Sweden, Norway or one of the other more socialized European states (plus Canada). Good luck getting citizenship, especially if you're poor; and you wanna talk about class mobility! At least the US will let you in the door to show you what you're missing. Maybe she is suggesting communism. If that's the case, well good luck. We all know how that played out but maybe the ol' US of A could actually pull it off right. I'm always down to try something new. Or maybe she is proposing an actual meritocracy. Then, all of the people with below average intelligence will be unable to afford basic health care. Now that is true justice.

One last point I'd like to make. I found the quote "Class even determines when we marry and become mothers" to be a completely ridiculous statement. Working class women obviously have very different lived experiences than middle class women and its pretty easy to see how these differing experiences could lead to statistical differences in the average age of marriage or motherhood between the two classes. I have not, however, ever heard of a 16 year old virgin girl experiencing immaculate conception because she is working class. I have never heard of a 17 year old girl going to bed and then waking up to find a ring on her finger and a husband next to her because she was the working class age to be married. This goes back to my original point about personal choices and if you feel like your husband or children are burdens of your economic circumstance then you should not have them. Saying that they are a product of your class is dehumanizing to both wife and husband, mother and child.

In conclusion, America is certainly not a land of equality; but I reject the notion that it is not at least a land of opportunity. Race, class, sex, gender, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, ability, age and many more categories can all act as barriers to someone's success. A lot of people have it easier than other people, but America is one of the few countries in the world where all (ALL) of these barriers can be overcome. There is a right wing conservative slogan that says America - Love it or Leave it. Its a really stupid slogan that goes against every principle this country was founded upon. I like to say America - Love it or Change it - because you can do that here. You won't be shot and thrown in a mass grave. My vote is as good as Donna Langston's is as good as Donald Trump's and that is what makes America so awesome.

fin
-Devin