Word: classing
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...President Barack H. Obama—most lean left. Diverse backgrounds do not necessarily mean diverse perspectives. Unfortunately, the readings the FDO has assigned—specifically those by Beverly Tatum, president of Spelman College, Frank Wu, a professor at Howard University, and Felice Yeskel, co-founder of Class Action—reinforce this misconception. The authors offer different experiences but identical conclusions: Groups define individuals...
...Tatum, for instance, praises a white man for recognizing the “inescapability of his privilege” over blacks. When her son asks her how they—middle-class African-Americans—are underprivileged compared to working-class whites, she tells him, “‘as a young black male, you are underrepresented, and that is a different kind of disadvantage.’” Her assumption that blacks’ representation must match their percentage of the population strips individuals of the ability to make their own choices...
...Culture also may be more important than class. In her essay, Yeskel warns, “Economic class is much less fluid than most people think.” She notes, “The richest one percent of the population now have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.” But she assumes that people stay in these statistical groupings for life. In fact, individuals move. A study by the University of Michigan found that only five percent of families in the bottom quintile in 1975 were still there...
...Discrimination is tough to overcome and poverty is hard to escape, but race and class are not the determinants of individual well being the authors portray them to be. Freshmen should not presume that because their peers look different, they think differently too. Diversity—the intellectual kind—is a rarity. And students should strive for it tomorrow by questioning the authors’ assumptions. Otherwise, the only thing they will situate themselves in is intellectual complacency...
...During my weeklong stay in Lahore, I was repeatedly alarmed by upper-class Pakistanis’ nonchalance and misplacement of priorities. Throughout my stay, I attended one opulent wedding (but heard about many more), replete with lavish decorations and a bejeweled bride. Such grandeur has increasingly become the norm; anything less is looked down upon. People seem to be spending millions on weddings—not out of joy, but out of a desire to one-up the last celebration they have attended...