I grew up poor. I also grew up privileged, depending on how you look at it. I had a very poor teenage mother, and my sister and I spent a great deal of time being raised by our grandparents, who were once very poor as well—like, orphans-abandoned-by-their-families poor—but had come into some money with hard work and a decades-long investment in what became our family bar. When I was with my mother, we had potato chips for dinner. When I was with my grandparents, we had potato chips and prime rib, only we still had to eat them on the floor. To this day, none of us knows what money is for different reasons. But now that I am coming to understand, it’s important to ask: Does it seem strange when I say I’m poor, yet eating tofu? Or when I self-reflexively use the phrase “dive bar”? Was my MFA degree the poor life decision that led me to this desperate state, or was it my family history?It also brings in the context of the American Dream. For example:
While I’ve technically surpassed my parents in terms of education and advantage, I am still dependent on a restaurant job, and my peers are now considered the first generation of youths to do worse than their parents. Suddenly, we’re all on a level playing field shaking cocktails side-by-side, and my own burdens of privilege-jealousy have come to a dizzying halt, because even the middle class, of whom I had been previously so resentful, are my coworkers and low-income housing neighbors. At this point, I wish I had never attempted to transcend my class with education; it would make life that much neater. For those of us who have taken the leap to maintain or jump our classes—the interns, graduate students, and college-bound—and who’ve come out disappointed, we’re not alone. The permanent poor are right there with us, and this is a good thing.For me, this article teased at the question that I posted on the blog last week about the American Dream and its staying power since the economic collapse of 2008. At a time when the people of our generation can no longer stroll out of college and into a high-paying job just on the basis of a Bachelor's (or even Master's!) degree, I think the myth of the American Dream has faded a little bit.
However, I also think that the national response to the Occupy Wall Street protests reflects just how ingrained in our national identity the American Dream actually is. How many times did you hear someone implore the protesters to "just go get a job"?
While I think the movement itself is/was problematic in areas (lack of organization/clear cause/recognition of who's "occupying" what), I also think the response it triggered illustrates a "1%" that was, as Miller and McNamee put it, trying to ensure the normalization of a status quo and an ideology that is anything but equitable.
