I am one of those Brown students who receive financial aid to cover the majority of their tuition. My parents are well educated by the standards of their home countries — El Salvador and the United States — though not particularly wealthy. As a young adult, my mom fled to the United States during the Salvadoran Civil War, speaking no English. She earned a master’s degree in clinical social work from Howard University. My dad finished high school in a single-parent household. He was admitted to Yale and became a journalist and historian. I should not feel the need to give so much background to write this column, but unfortunately I know some Brown students discount the opinions of certain demographics on the topic of class simply based on their family circumstances — as if we have a choice to whom we are born.
The radical way to talk about class is to admit that money has no relationship to an ultimately meaningful life. A large — or perhaps vocal — portion of Brown students raise the issue of class with fruitless and disproportionate cynicism. In a Herald opinions column last month, Cara Dorris ’14 argues that students who dedicate their time to nonprofits and the arts are secretly the face of new class privilege. Great! We should embrace the fact that some of the brightest children of moderately to ultra-wealthy Americans and international residents have decided to dedicate their lives to something other than simply making more money. This is praiseworthy, because I don’t think money has much bearing on the ultimate happiness of a human life.
The fruits of affluence at Brown — designer clothes, cars and drugs — have little to do with a deeply satisfying life. I pity those whose lives revolve around this glitz, and not family, friends, curiosity, arts or community engagement. Money can and often does contribute to these more meaningful parts of life. I know for many Brown students interested in high-paying careers, money also serves as a barometer of hard work, not as the ultimate end. Wall Street internships are, after all, the highest-paying and among the most grueling.
Dorris cites the resentment lower-class students feel toward others they perceive as wealthy, and the covering-up act that many affluent students have to perform in response to avoid resentment from their future friends. I am confused that Dorris and others do not strike a more sympathetic tone in regard to this covering-up act — rooted in guilt — given Dorris’ disdainful depictions of affluence. We should not bash affluence, and yet mock the guilt of those that grew up in affluence. Our class dialogue reinforces a message that being less well-off is more ethical than being rich, because being rich directly or indirectly causes others’ lack of affluence. This logic is circular and fails to identify an ultimate goal. We end up embracing what we wanted to fight in the first place: suboptimal economic conditions. The logic succeeds, however, in grouping and stereotyping people into two powerfully symbolic groups — the haves and the have-nots — wiping away all our individual nuance.
A similar version of this circular political logic manifested itself during the Ray Kelly controversy that has been discussed ad nauseam. The protest sought to end the victimization caused by stop-and-frisk policies championed by Kelly. Yet Taubman Center Director Marion Orr’s apology “to my black students and Latino brothers and sisters” reasserts the weakness of these demographics and their victimhood, hence the apology.
I am biracial, but I grew up in an ethnically diverse urban neighborhood, speaking Spanish my entire life with my Latino family and traveling extensively to visit family in El Salvador and Nicaragua. I do not need an apology for inviting a man to speak at an event I did not have to attend. I am pained that friends back home faced jail time because of our broken criminal justice system, but I do not want an apology. I want to spend my time phone-banking to end our empirically unsuccessful War on Drugs that allows for stop-and-frisk policies to thrive so perniciously.
I was fortunate enough to attend one of the most elite prep schools in the United States, Sidwell Friends School. The difference between the bus ride home and the Range Rover carpool to soccer practice was hard to make sense of and seemed wrong. It is wrong. But class is not the enemy. Money is, materialism is — the way that material pursuits addict us to no end. I attribute resentment of the wealthy to over-politicization: the tendency to personify enemies, which necessarily induces a hardening of the heart.
What I hear deep down at Brown, because I recognized it in my own attitude, is contempt stemming from an ambivalence about wanting the perks of affluence. Oscar Wilde’s preface to “The Picture of Dorian Gray” hits the nail on the head: “The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.” What I dislike in another probably tells me more about myself, my insecurities and my vices than I would like to admit.
Alternatively, we could ascribe money to an ultimately meaningful human life — healthful food, health care, education and so on — and we should, but not to the detriment of our social union itself. That is to confuse the means for the ends. Remember that most Brown families are a member of the global 1 percent. An individual annual income of $34,000 signifies entrance to the global 1 percent club, and certainly the 1 percent of human history. Who am I to judge?
I am not saying there are no practical enemies to social progress. I am just asking that we love them and acknowledge their individual dignity. The number of people living in extreme poverty in the United States doubled from 1996 to 2011. Honestly, befriending others regardless of their economic background won’t improve extreme poverty on its own. Living by this kind of social ideal must always be our starting point, however, never just our end. Historically, Marxism, Maoism, neo-conservatism and every other ideology that demands an ultimate “you are with us or against us” attitude have never reached their projected rosy conclusions. Similarly, any highly polarized political attitude on either side of the aisle will surely fail in Congress, and ultimately fail us all.
Do I wish that some of my peers understood the pains, and joys, of working a minimum-wage job in high school to help pay for college? Yes, but this is a call to friendship as all our differences are. People transcend their shortcomings when they feel accepted and loved, not when they resent or feel resented. My most memorable accomplishment at Brown has been becoming close friends with people who grew up in completely different ways than I did. That’s why we should talk about class at Brown, because ultimately it doesn’t matter.
Diego Arene-Morley ’16 is concentrating in public policy and American institutions and can be reached at diego_arene-morley@brown.edu.
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