"I had been pushed up to a different class of society, one I had been mistreated by for most of my adult life." I often lament not writing enough in this space since the pandemic began. It is a combination of fatigue and competing interests, but last week this quote hit me in a deep place and made me want to share some writing. The quote is from an article in Time magazine that my friend and hero Sara Goldrick-Rab shared. You can find it here Stephanie Land article. I should know who Stephanie Land is, but I didn't. What I did know is as I read her short article, I had a visceral reaction and a deep connection to what she was saying. She seemed to be describing a feeling I had experienced most of my life. As someone who grew up relatively poor (others had it much harder) and transitioned in and out of that reality a few different times, I have never felt like I completely fit in anywhere. Perhaps my personal experience is more universal than I thought. Stephanie's quote above took me back to being 14 and a paper I wrote in freshman health class.
My freshman health class was taught by our football coach and his big assignment was a "self-analysis." Apparently 14-year-olds were supposed to do some introspection and understand who we were. In hindsight, the assignment feels voyeuristic and gross, but I took it very seriously freshman year. In fact, I always took my grades seriously for reasons I'll explain in a bit. But first I want to tell you about a short part of the paper where we were supposed to describe our relationships with our parents (like I said, voyeuristic). My mother had remarried just a couple years prior, and it had improved our financial situation. In addition, my stepfather was related to some of the more well-off families in town, so things felt different. What I wrote in the paper was this "I get frustrated with my mom because she acts different since we moved up the totally insignificant Cashton social ladder..." Maybe 14-year-olds are insightful. Things were better for us, financially at least, but it felt gross. I was exactly who I had always been, but somehow, we were now more acceptable. It created this dichotomy of being grateful for my new connections and friends and being resentful of them at the exact same time. You see, I remembered how they looked at us when we moved to town, and my mom was single and younger than she should be. I remembered the school superintendent telling my mother which children she should avoid me becoming friends with, and she let me anyway. And now were part of the right crowd and all that history was to be forgotten.
Much of my own learning around how poverty reaches into lives has been refined by endless conversation with my former colleague and friend Mandy. That's a picture of us keeping that conversation going a few years ago. She grew up as solidly middle class as I did lower class, and we have worked hard to try to understand how this difference has impacted us through our lives. I would let her speak for herself on her struggles, but one of the things she always says about me is I have a chip on my shoulder others can't really see or understand. Stephanie Land's article helped me understand it better. It is the contrast of wanting desperately to fit in, and then being resentful when "they" allow you in. Stephanie wrote about being the kind of poverty story people are comfortable with. Like her, I am white, and I used my aptitude for school and the gift of being articulate to earn approval from middle class gatekeepers. The notion of being a "good one" and watching others in my circumstance being relegated to the discard pile made me angry and defensive. I am defensive for me a little, but a lot for people like me in general. It was not lost on me my vocabulary and reading ability kept those in power from writing me off even though I was from the wrong kind of family and didn't have what other kids had. It made me intensely competitive in ways people couldn't see, but I never forgot. I would strive to excel in whatever I did, music, theater, forensics to defy my perception of their expectations. And this would gain me acceptance and I would hate them for accepting me. I would hate what felt like the falseness of the reasons I was able to move ahead while others could not. There was always an unspoken feeling of "oh, now I'm good enough huh..." And that is as close as I can come to explaining to Mandy or anyone else what my "chip" is. It is a generalized sense of just how unfair it all is, and I have written before about how it makes my reactions seem odd to others sometimes. I used to believe it was just me, but years of training others plus reading Stephanie Land's article makes me believe it may be more universal than I knew.
So, what does this look like over two decades past any real financial struggle? Well, it manifests in some of the ways Ms. Land described. She said she is more likely to hang out with caterers than with publishers at cocktail parties, and I so get that. As my own career has advanced, I've learned to play the part, but the feeling of never fitting in is always there. I too, would just as soon talk to the staff as I would to presidents or CEO's. In fact, it feels fair to me. Other ways my own personal chip shows up is I can be kind of crude, or let my humor be a couple degrees bluer than you would expect from someone in my role, especially once we know each other a little. It seems silly as I type it, but it feels like loyalty to people like me who get left behind because they don't get the chance to play gatekeeper games. It is an on-going game of earning trust and then defying expectations. It feels like opening the door just a crack, and maybe creating an opening for someone who may be more talented than me, but who hasn't learned to play the game, or isn't willing to. Truly, I admire the courage of those people, and get upset with myself for not being them sometimes. There are a million other ways this chip on my shoulder from years ago shows up but let me share one more. I often feel as if I'm representing others, even though no one else seems to see it that way. I applied for a college presidency this spring (spoiler alert, I didn't get it and they hired someone great), and during the whole process I kept thinking I would prove something by getting it, something that was bigger than me. I would prove people like me belong in those places. Now, no one else sees this, they just see a veteran leader pursuing a new opportunity, but I am sharing because it is real for me, and I suspect of others like me. I often say people bring their entire selves to our colleges, and I share my own experience to show the complexity all of us have inside.
As poverty-informed practitioners, it is hard to know what to do with this. But if after more than 20 years, someone like me still feels like a misfit, imagine what the person crossing your threshold must feel. Trust me, the people you serve who have been in the crisis of poverty already are questioning whether they belong in your spaces. It is now your job to show them they belong. And what I ask of you is this, welcome them in exactly as they are. Find value in who they are right now and not in who they will be when they learn to act like you. You want them to know they are welcome, but more importantly, they need to know they are wanted. People in the crisis of poverty need to know your school or business is for people just like them. You aren't going to "fix" them, you are going to value them and lean into their strengths and gifts. You aren't going to shake your head when they say things they "shouldn't", you are just going to radically accept them and embrace their glorious humanity. Would you be surprised if they might be carrying a chip of their own? Let's see what we can do to not let it derail their dreams
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