“It’s an extra little mental effort you have to expend as you navigate social encounters, trying to imagine whether something as small as honestly answering a simple question like what was your favorite food when you were a kid might open you up to ridicule. It’s not really the laughing itself, which is often good-natured and comes from people who do honestly like you, that’s so bothersome; it’s the realization that you still don’t know the cultural rules, and thus can’t necessarily protect yourself from being laughed at even if you wanted to — or in my mom’s case, that you don’t know what it is you’re doing that makes you a redneck in other people’s eyes.”
There are definitely times when I feel weird/embarrassed to say things like: I live in the hood (Jamaica, Queens baby), or my father didn’t go to college, or I wasn’t allowed to shave my legs until I was 14 (I shaved them anyway), et cetera. But then I tell myself: why the fuck should I be ashamed of being from a working class family, even if it was at the cost of having arroz con huevo frito (omg so good) over brie and crackers? If anything, it forces me to be humble about my accomplishments. 4/5 times, the people who laugh at your being a “redneck” are probably thinking, “damn that person must be really smart to be here.” The other 1/5, they’re probably thinking and incorrectly defining “affirmative action.” Fuck the insensitive haters!
im not ashamed of my humble background whatsoever. people can judge all they want. pretty sure im fuckin awesome anyway so lol
I identify with this. I’m from a really small rural town in Texas. When I first went off to college, I was made fun of so much for my accent by classmates and even had a professor mock me when I spoke out in a class. It was so alienating coming from the background I came from, and then landing in a college where most of the other students were upper middle class suburbanites. It took me a couple of years to adjust and make friends.
I don’t know. I’m just honest with people about my background now. If people want to make fun of it, that’s their business. Lord knows, I’ve done my fair share of internal snickering and scoffing at upper middle class people for their own more ridiculous elements. Like the author of this piece, I’ve gained sufficient cultural capital that I know how to exist in both worlds…but I guess I’ve never really tried very hard to fit in with or please the people who were born into it. I see it as a major bonus that I know what it’s like living in two completely different, though co-existing, cultures, and I’ve often thought that those upper class people who make fun of people they view as less than themselves are often far more ignorant and naive about how the world works than those they make fun of.
That being said, I recognize my privilege as a person who’s gained that sort of cultural capital that makes it possible for me to ignore the laughter and judgment of those people. I can ignore it, because I now have a neutral accent and a couple of college degrees and live in a coastal city and make plenty of money. I think the jokes and the judgment from the upper class is what makes it so easy to dehumanize those they view as beneath them. That’s what makes it so easy for them to say things like, “If you cut off their food stamps, they’ll be fine!”
Anyhow…