Reflections on Class

A few years ago, I had an embarrassing realization: I was uncomfortable with class differences. I was living on my own in Bangladesh, and I had hired someone, Nazma, to clean my apartment a couple of times a week. Nazma came highly recommended by my colleagues, and I was not disappointed. I quickly saw how hard she worked and how thoughtful she was, always doing little things to make the apartment nicer or more functional. She had an exuberant personality, always laughing, always positive. I quickly became attached to her.

At the same time, I started to notice the invisible barriers between us. For instance, I saw my White colleagues greet Nazma with a hug while Nazma and I greeted each other with a smile, a couple of feet of space between us. After she finished her work, Nazma would have long conversations with my colleagues, easily building friendships, but I found myself tongue-tied, unable to carry on a lengthy conversation. To me, the formality with which we spoke to each other felt clunky, our friendship stunted by our inability to move from the formal apni to the more familiar tumi.

All of this bothered me: why was I unable to connect in (what I considered to be) more meaningful ways? What was stopping me? The answers that I found were plenty.

Growing up in rural Bangladesh, I got to see class play out in stark ways: the women who cleaned our home and helped out in the kitchen always sat on the floor, never on the beds or the chairs, even when they engaged in conversation with my aunts. This rule applied to children, too. A few of the maids brought their children to work with them, and they too sat on the floor while we, the children, were made to sit on the bed. When we had guests over, the maids remained invisible, working in the kitchen. Everyone maintained a language barrier: the women who worked for us always referred to my family using the formal apni while all the adults around me used the highly informal tui form to convey hierarchy and power differences.

Later, as a teenager, I became aware of the stigmas of being too close to those who worked for you. My boro mami*, for example, had a young girl who lived with her and helped her with all of the housework. This young woman was also boro mami’s closest friend, as boro mami was not close to the other family members and boro mama lived abroad. The rest of the family would often whisper about how boro mami treated the help as a friend, even allowing the young girl to sleep in her bed instead of on the floor. They would snicker and bond over their mutual distaste.

Thinking about these experiences, I realized exactly how I had been scripted, why my friendship with Nazma wasn’t blooming into all the things it could be. I had been taught at a very young age of what was “appropriate” when interacting with someone who worked in your home.

Last week, I shared this experience with my students as we discussed issues of classism. They had read June Jordan’s “Report from the Bahamas” (1985) and Felice Yeskel’s “Opening Pandora’s Box” (2007), and in class, they had completed a worksheet in small groups discussing the various examples of classism they had found in the reading. I had also asked them to find examples from their lived experiences. Many things came up: some students talked about going on trips abroad where they only stayed in resorts for fear of what lay just beyond (as they were told by the hotel staff that it would be dangerous for a white American to go off into the areas just outside of the resort). Another student talked about crossing the street when she sees a group of homeless people because some homeless people have attacked members of her family. Yet another student talked about the frustration of living on the border of Detroit and Dearborn and not being able to get food delivered to the Detroit side if the restaurants were on the Dearborn side, as the restaurant owners feared Detroit and simply refused to cross the border. In response to this example, another student quickly defended the choice of the restaurant owners, citing numerous news reports of delivery cars being robbed while out making a delivery in Detroit.

With each example, the tension in the class increased. Some students who are more well-versed in issues of classism found these statements to be problematic; the ones giving the examples started to behave as though their experiences of race and class were further proof of the stereotypes they carried with them. At this point, I began to ask some questions:

• How did your impressions come to be? What made you believe that certain places or certain groups of people were dangerous? (The news. Media portrayals (“How are homeless people portrayed in TV and movies?”). Resort staff. My family.)

• How reliable are these sources? Can they be challenged? Are these sources adequately describing all points of view, the overall landscape?

• How can you find out more information?

As they answered some of these questions, the tension in the class faded. The students started to see the process of awareness, education, empathy, and perhaps, coalition-building. We talked about observing our own “gut” reactions, those taken-for-granted feelings that we rely on to guide us every day and questioning those that seem to be the strongest, as I did by noticing my reaction to Nazma. Then, we need to question these “instincts,” and determine where they came from. I reassured them that this does not mean they have to change; they may examine these instincts and decide that they are perfectly good instincts to have. A lot of times, though, they may discover that there is room for challenging the scripts they carry. At this point, they may seek to learn more about the issue at hand. We talked about how we live in a resource-full time, that they could start learning with something as simple as a Google search. They could read blogs, explore Tumblr, watch documentaries or films, read books. As they explore and learn more, they may find that they are more empathetic to the other side. They may find their “instincts” changing. They may even feel passionate enough about an issue to form or join a coalition, move towards making progress happen.

As we generated these ideas and moved through the process, the feeling in the room noticeably changed. We had all allowed ourselves to be vulnerable; one student had even cried. But we all seemed to agree that we were in a better place for it. I learned, too. I learned to be comfortable in sharing something I had struggled with, something that I still confront on occasion. I was also reminded of just how important this work is: I believe that as an instructor, my responsibility is to meet students where they are and help them move forward in some way. I believe this to be true for all of my relationships, actually. Those I choose to be a part of deserve this much from me.

*Definitions:
- boro mami – maternal (and oldest) aunt-in-law
- boro mama – maternal (oldest) uncle