Week 3 critical discussion

See Chapter 7 in Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice for corresponding teaching materials.

SECTION 3

CLASSISM

Introduction

Maurianne Adams, Larissa E. Hopkins, and Davey Shlasko

INTRODUCTION: ECONOMIC INEQUALITY IN THE AFTERMATH OF RECENT RECESSION

Before the great recession that started in December 2007, many people felt uncomfortable talking about classism and uncertain about their specific class locations. But now, since the uneven eco- nomic recovery benefitted some while leaving others far behind (Fry & Taylor, 2013; Kochhar, 2012; Tatum, 2017), attention to class inequality is out in the open. Town meetings, rallies, and debates during the 2016 national election focused upon the glaring inequities of wealth and income that the recession and its aftermath exacerbated and highlighted. One major candidate on the left, along with his supporters, openly identified with socialism and argued for greater economic equality, raising topics that had been taboo for a generation; the successful candidate on the right made populist appeals to working people who had been left behind by the economy and felt ignored and forgotten by the major political parties.

Unfortunately, public discussion of economic inequality conducted by sound bites in the heat of electioneering is not as nuanced or accurate as one might hope. Much of the political rhetoric evokes ill-defined, one-dimensional class categories - "working class " or "middle class" - without examining what those categories actually mean. Another strain of political rhetoric paints sharp distinctions between the wealthiest 1 % and everyone else, as in the Occupy Wall Street slogan "We are the 99%" (selection 40), which glosses over significant differences within the 99% major- ity. Within the US, the understanding of class categories has been conflated with race, national origins, dialect or accent, immigrant status, generational expectations, and occupation, such that economic status is not a stand-alone class marker (Pew, 2015). This complexity stands in contrast to the simplifications of political rhetoric, and demonstrates that only an intersectional analysis can make sense of our inherited class identities and positions.

For example, the downturn of 2008 had disproportionately negative and long-term conse- quences for families of color. After decades of being denied mortgages for home investments, they

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were targeted for high interest subprime home mortgages, so that the bursting of the subprime financial bubble had disastrous consequences for them especially. Latino families lost $75-98 billion in home-value wealth and black families $71-92 billion, the "greatest loss of wealth for people of color in modern U.S. history" according to United for a Fair Economy (Tatum, 2017, pp. 12-13). As for the recovery, the white unemployment rate fell to 4.4% by 2016 while black unemployment remained stuck at 8.5% (Tatum, 2017, p. 13) . The disproportionate loss of home equity among families of color cost their college-age children the ability to absorb college costs - thus shifting the subprime mortgage debt to student debt, another financial bonanza and one that could well be the next banking bubble to burst.

The impact and aftermath of the recession in which roughly 8.7 million jobs were lost between February 2008 and February 2010 led to profound changes for many Americans in both eco- nomic status and expectations for the future. Even during the "recovery" period of 2009-2014, the proportion of US people living in poverty continued to increase, hovering between 14% and 16% until 2015. Of those almost 20 million, 6.1 % of the population, were living in "deep poverty," defined as having incomes of less than half of the (already very low) federal poverty limit (which was $11 ,770 for a single person and $24,250 for a family of four, in 2015). In 2015, roughly a fifth of all Americans and over 40% of American children received some kind of means-tested govern- ment aid (such as Medicaid, SNAP/food stamps, or TANF/welfare), marking a slight increase since the end of the recession ("2015 Poverty Guidelines, " 2015 ; Bishaw, 2013 ; De Navas-Walt & Proctor, 2015; Proctor, Semega, & Kollar, 2016; "What is deep poverty?" 2016).

The "recovery" was different for the top 1 % of earners, whose income rose 27% while that of the remaining 99% grew only 4% (Saez, 2016). US economic mobility had become restricted, so that 62% of Americans born into families with income in the top fifth stayed in the top two-fifths, while 65% raised in the bottom fifth stayed in the bottom two-fifths (De Parle, 2012) . These disparities in wealth and income were accelerated by the recession and its recovery, but the public began to see that they were the consequences of long-term economic patterns. There were many factors in this pattern: job loss and wage decline resulting from increasing automation, outsourcing for cheaper labor overseas, and the declining power of organized labor. Meanwhile, the wealthiest benefitted when corporations moved offshore and international financial mergers reduced US tax obligations, further widening the wealth gap. These ongoing trends assured huge corporate prof- its, largely through the manipulation of global financial markets. They remain reason for concern .

The downward mobility experienced by many Americans who had thought of themselves as "middle class" contradicted prevalent US assumptions about shared prosperity and upward mobility. Many people whose families had experienced relative prosperity in the post-World War II industrial boom were now struggling to understand their loss of jobs, homes, social status, and self-respect in light of their belief that their hard work would bring financial success. In the search for explanations of their deteriorating economic status, they found scapegoats such as affirmative action programs, social safety net spending, and the immigrant workforce.

In the 2016 election cycle, both major parties capitalized on the growing awareness of and discontent with economic inequality. Populist rhetoric promised greater opportunity for "regular folks " and a return to better times, although with very different strategies for getting there. Stark ideological differences about the role of government in meeting basic human needs such as healthcare, food , and a living wage were juxtaposed with broadly shared suspicion of international economic entanglements and treaties that favor corporate profits at the expense of American workers . Nativist, racist , and sexist sentiments echoed those heard in previous economic crises of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, when immigrants, people of color and women workers were blamed for economic hardships impacting all but the wealthiest white men. At the start of a new administration , whose presidential campaign was based on populist rhetoric, we are given a cabinet consisting of billionaires whose wealth comes from the privatization of public resources and the elimination of social services, consumer protections, banking and finance regulations , environmental protections, and economic safety nets (Lipton & Eder, 2017).

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We note similar trends globally, as populism combined with nationalism gains traction in Europe, South America, and elsewhere. Immigrants are unfairly scapegoated tor economic inse- curity, while global finance is met with justified suspicion, but in simplistic ways that fail to analyze the root of the problem. Hardship brought on by volatile financial markets leads to economic and political upheavals, which in turn create local and regional instability, reversing earlier steps toward equality and renewing the marginalization of women, children, elders, people with disabilities, and other vulnerable populations. Outcries against corruption and money in politics are growing, but with little tangible improvement in accountability of governmental and economic elites.

SOCIAL JUSTICE APPROACH TO CLASSISM

This section takes a social justice approach , as do the other sections in this volume. To get the most out of the reading selections in this section , readers need to understand the Social Justice approach presented in Section 1. The Section 1 readings explain the role of identity and socialization in maintaining inequalities (Tatum , selection 1; Kirk & Okazawa-Rey, selection 2); the socialization process by which the social construction of classism plays out (Johnson , selection 3; Harro, selection 5; Sue, selection 4) ; the levels at which advantage and disadvantage take place in social systems (Bell, Adams , & Zuniga, selection 6); the manifestations of oppression represented by the "five faces of oppression " (Young , selection 7); and the intersections between classism and other forms of social oppression (selection 8). These concepts are foundational to the approach taken by the Introduction and Reading Selections throughout this section on Classism.

MERITOCRACY, DEMOCRACY, AND CAPITALISM

The broadening public conversation about economic inequality has begun to deflate persistent class myths that had made it difficult to discuss classism. For example, the myth of meritocracy, which is the belief that hard work and talent are inevitably rewarded by economic success and upward social mobility (McNamee & Miller, 2004), leads to the assumption that those living in poverty have not worked hard enough or are unintelligent, in effect blaming the victims of what is increasingly referred to (not inaccurately) as a "rigged " economic system . Being left out of the post-recession recovery led many formerly middle-class people to question whether our economic system is indeed meritocratic (Alvarado, 2010 ; McNamee & Miller, 2004). At the same time, chronically low-income communities have long understood, with or without a recession, that economic opportunities follow self-perpetuating cycles of race- and class-based advantage and disadvantage and that the myth of meritocracy rarely applies to them .

A second myth that inhibits discussions of class and classism is the conflation of democracy (political equality) with capitalism (equality of economic opportunity) . The democratic myth that anyone can grow up to be president has been conflated with the capitalist, meritocratic myth that anyone can become rich through hard work and talent. Democracy has characterized the US from its constitutional beginnings, although limited at first to the white, male, land-owning colonial elite. Democracy is a political system characterized by basic freedoms and a representa- tive (although not an egalitarian) system of governance. Capitalism , on the other hand, is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production (agriculture, industry and technology) in which owners' profits derive from the labor of people who receive fixed wages rather than a share of profits . The ownership elites control access to capital (loans, investments) , to resources {land , materials) and to labor (through their control of wages) . Economic growth ,

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benefiting mainly owners, is in theory driven by a marketplace in which fair competition plays out to everyone's advantage in the absence of regulation (by government or by the organizing efforts of labor unions) (Adams, Hopkins, & Shlasko, 2016). This, too , is a myth.

The political processes within a democracy often lead to regulatory laws and policies enacted to protect workers, provide safety, maintain fair labor and banking practices, and fund social safety net programs - as they did in the Progressive Era and in the New Deal. Protective regula- tions that emerge out of democratic political processes are often described by economic elites as unfair restrictions on the capitalist marketplace. There is a chronic political tension between the beneficiaries of a capitalist system and those harmed by it, who use the democratic political process to seek regulation . But the recent acceleration of money in politics , facilitated by the Supreme Court decision Citizens United, has enabled powerful financial and corporate interests to roll back these regulations and safety nets; cut welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid ; and roll back environmental protections for clean air and water. The role of money in politics undermines democratic efforts to balance the excesses of capitalism with the people 's health and well-be ing . Even when laws protect individual rights, a capitalist economic system by its very nature creates and reproduces class inequality because of the different ways in which owners and workers can and cannot accumulate wealth .

US HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The history of the US has been one of political and economic struggle. We celebrate the political struggles that expanded voting rights to create a representative democracy, but remain relatively silent about economic struggles in which tenant farmers and manual and industrial workers resisted economic exploitation. This history of economic exploitation and resistance has been well documented but is not generally well known (Loewen , 1995; Nicholson, 2004; Steinberg, 1989; Zinn, 1995).

The wealth of colonial landowners was built by the labor of unpaid slaves in both the North and South, in a legal system that prevented black slaves and white indentured servants from forming an alliance. Although poor Whites often lived in deprived conditions similar to those of skilled slaves and free Blacks, poor Whites were hired before free Blacks and earned more per hour for the same jobs . This race-based two-tiered labor system became the basis for racialized labor union movements which in turn helped to create a white middle class in the mid-20th century.

US economic growth depended upon the export of cotton grown on slave plantations and on white settler agriculture on fertile lands made available by the forced resettlements of Native peoples. Economic racism continued as immigrants of color (including Sikhs, Chinese, and then Japanese) and Mexicans were shunted into menial labor, the men on farms , factories, mines, and railroads, and the women in farming and domestic labor. The legacy of this racialized and gendered class system appears today in the racially tiered workforce wherein peoples of color are still relegated to low-paid labor in service roles and agriculture, marginalized into criminalized work in the sex trade and drug trade, and literally locked into prison labor jobs that pay pennies an hour (selections 33 and 37). Meanwhile, the wealthy elite from colonial times onward profited from a system of economic and political advantages that maintained their wealth and power through their primary control of and benefit from land speculation , mining, trade, and financial markets (Steinberg, 1989; Takaki , 1993; Zinn, 1995).

Immigrants arrived to a country where a racialized class system already prevailed, starting with colonial landowners and political elites who legalized slavery, eradicated Native communities, and enforced white indentured servitude. Kidnapped Africans were in effect an involuntary immigrant population - millions bought in the transatlantic slave trade and sold throughout the Americas for

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use as a racially marked workforce in the labor-intensive export crops of sugar and cotton . Later immigrants from Europe, Asia, Arabia, and the Americas arrived and took their places within an already racially tiered workforce to build the infrastructure and provide the domestic labor that allowed the US to expand westward and the owning class to make immense fortunes, while the workers and their children largely remained poor. By 1920, 36 million Americans, more than a third of the population , were immigrant families, the majority from Southern and Eastern Europe with smaller numbers from China, Japan, India, and elsewhere (Daniels, 2002).

Although white European immigrants constituted an exploited, ethnically marked working class whose poverty and desperation left them vulnerable to wage exploitation, their "white- ness" strengthened the "upper" tier of the working class (Roediger, 1991). Irish women displaced black domestic laborers , and worked alongside Italian and Jewish women in textile mills and sweatshops that didn 't hire Blacks. A successful but racist labor union movement in the early 20th century provided generational upward mobility for Irish, Italians, Jews, and other white eth- nic workers, but not Blacks, Latino/as, or other workers of color who were excluded from most unions. The process by which white ethnics moved from the upper tier of the working class into a "middle class " of "skilled " laborers and small business owners, while most Blacks, Latino/as, and Chinese remained in the lower tier, is part of today's complex racial and economic legacy (Foner, 1998; Roediger, 1991 ; Steinberg, 1989; Zinn, 1995).

The story of class opportunity still taught in K-12 schools largely ignores the stories of working- class organizing , from the revolts of indentured servants and tenant farmers in the early colonies, to labor organizing by mainly immigrants who improved wages and working conditions across whole industries (Loewen , 1995; Takaki , 1993; Zinn, 1995) . Most students know little about the achievements of the labor union movement which include the 40-hour work week and two- day weekend, the right to meal breaks, and protection from wage theft. Nor are they likely to learn about the important exceptions : most labor protections still do not apply to farm workers, domestic workers, incarcerated workers and people who do criminalized work such as in the sex industry (selections 33, 35, and 37) .

ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL DIMENSIONS OF CLASS: WEALTH AND INCOME, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CAPITAL

To provide consistency and clarity in discussing the various dimensions of class and classism, we propose Leondar-Wright and Yeskel 's (2007) definition of class as "a relative social ranking based on income, wealth, education , status, and power" and their definition of classism as "the institutional , cultural, and individual set of practices and beliefs that assign differential value to people according to their socioeconomic class," in a system characterized by economic inequality (Leondar-Wright & Yeske! , 2007, p. 314; see also Fiske & Markus, 2012; Lareau & Conley, 2008).

Class as "a relative social ranking" has a variety of indicators, some material and others relational. Individuals internalize stereotypes about different class positions, often based on misinformation, and these misunderstandings define their relationships to others within a class hierarchy. Thus, c/assism implicates all participants in a social system in which the class catego- ries are nuanced and opaque, and in which relative advantage and disadvantage are reproduced through the interaction of social, institutional, cultural, and interpersonal relationships. In addition to examining a variety of class indicators, we consider the cultures and identities that form around shared class location .

The material , quantifiable indicators of class are economic capital - wealth and income. Wealth consists of what one owns (investments, homes , land or businesses) minus what one owes (credit card or school debt, home mortgages) , while income refers to the periodic inflow of

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resources from wages, investments, government benefits, or other sources . Non-material indica- tors of class include class culture , cultural capital, social capital, as well as political power (Fiske & Markus, 2012).

Class culture describes the norms , values, and ways of life shared by people with a similar class position , as intersecting also with ethnic culture . Class cultures develop in response to economic realities as well as other dimensions of experience, and can be thought of as those aspects of culture that help people to survive and/or thrive in, and make sense of their roles in, the economic system (Shlasko & Kramer, 2011; Williams , 2012). One 's class culture is not shaped only by one's membership in a general class category, but also by a more specific location defined by context and by other social identities (Matos, 2011 ; Yasso, 1996). The normalization of dominant class cultures and the devaluation of others is an aspect of classism .

Cultural capital refers to sets of culturally specific knowledge , skills, language, and self- presentation that act as markers of class, and that can allow someone to successfully navigate social institutions such as education , courts, politics, and healthcare. People often use cultural capital to refer specifically to facility with the cultural markers of the more privileged classes, but in our view, all class cultures have their own forms of cultural capital , though these are valued and ranked differently by the broader society. For example, familiarity and comfort with the norms of interaction in a working-class community may help a person to navigate that social environ- ment successfully and lead to work opportunities, access to aid from the community, and so on. However, different groups' cultural capital are neither interchangeable nor equivalent in terms of the potential economic benefits they provide.

Whereas cultural capital refers to "what one knows about," social capital refers to "who one knows " - that is, the social networks one is part of and to which one has ready access. As with cultural capital, social capital is sometimes used in ways specific to privileged class groups , to describe connections to elite social networks that provide access to private schooling , profes- sional advancement, political power, and other forms of class advantage {Allan , Ozga, & Smith , 2009 ; Mohr & DiMaggio, 1995). Social capital also refers to family and neighborhood networks that poor and working-class people rely on for resources like ch ild care, job leads, hand-me- downs, rides , and housing .

As we consider how these multi-faceted class indicators interact, it becomes clear that the category of "class " is multidimensional: a person may have advantages linked to one indica- tor and disadvantages resulting from another. For example, a woman with greater income than another (because she's a professional athlete or has just won the lottery) may have lower status in terms of her cultural capital {because she is less educated or has less "sophisticated " man- ners) . This nuanced view of class also allows us to examine the mechanisms of class privilege, meaning advantages and resources accorded to some groups of people and not others (often at the expense of others) based on relative class ranking .

Visible class indicators intersect with other visible identities. For example, men often appear more prosperous and successful than women , whereas people of color are often assumed to be poor, as are people with noticeable disabilities. Norms of "professionalism " are one mechanism by which intersectional class inequalities are reproduced, because they are culturally specific in terms of class culture as well as ethnic and linguistic cultures, and are gendered , so that anyone who is not both gender-conforming and at home in the dominant white, middle-class culture may be seen as unpro- fessional and lose status as a result. The interconnections of economic, social , and cultural forms of capital are important for an analysis of class and classism.

An especially problematic class indicator, not always visible relative to class status, is the bal- looning student debt, which cuts across the class spectrum , impacting almost everyone who goes to college except for the few whose families have the income or wealth to cover all college costs. The role of loan companies and banks mirrors their role during the mortgage debt crisis that led to the recession of 2008. The costs of higher education have soared , partly due to reductions in state support to public universities at the same time that federally funded loans and grants to students

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have been cut drastically. The result has been the accumulation of more than $1.4 trillion in stu- dent debt in 2017, with 70% of all students in debt, and debt totals averaging $37,172 per student with some students owing more than $100,000 (Student Loan Hero, 2017). This debt represents a crisis for the current generation of college graduates and indebted dropouts, a burden as they enter the job market and start families that affects the kinds of jobs they need to find, their ability to afford housing, and their choices about when to have children. The challenges many people face in repaying student debt have led to aggressive pursuit by student-loan debt collectors (selection 31; Cowley & Silver-Greenberg , 2017). Student debt undermines the belief that higher education leads to upward mobility (NCES, 2016) and complicates current and future class status for recent graduates as well as those who attend some college but do not finish a degree.

READING SELECTIONS IN THIS SECTION

The first nine selections in this section present Contexts for understanding the role of social institutions in maintaining and reproducing class-based inequality. In selection 26, "Class in America," Mantsios punctures the myth of classlessness with portraits that juxtapose upper- and middle-class opportunities with working-poor constraints . Mantios's thumbnail sketches of class difference dramatize the advantages and disadvantages described throughout these selections.

Smith and Redington (selection 27) describe how long-standing systematic classist bias gives rise to persistent and harmful classist microaggressions. These microaggressions include name-calling and labeling (lazy, dumb, irresponsible, promiscuous, welfare queen) that stereo- type poor and working-class people in a manner simultaneously classist and ableist (and often racist and sexist), as being prone to cognitive deficits, educational failure, criminal behavior, and dysfunctional relationships . The authors show how seemingly minor insults, in the context of structural inequality, have a cumulative, damaging impact.

Oliver and Shapiro (selection 28) explain the intergenerational transmission of racialized wealth inequality. The authors describe historical moments in which federal policies intentionally established the structural basis for white opportunity on one hand , and for perpetuating black poverty on the other - for example, the availability of the 1950s GI Bill education grants and Fair Housing Administration loans for Whites only. While the emphasis in this selection is on the role of specific laws and policies in shaping white/black disparities in wealth , this kind of exploration offers a template for identifying obstacles that restrict the economic and social mobility of other US communities of color as well.

Selection 44 consists of several charts that visualize various quantifiable manifestations of economic inequality. Some of the charts show how the distribution of income and wealth has shifted over time in the US while others focus on income inequality across race and gender.

"What's Debt Got to Do with It? " and "Is the Near-Trillion-Dollar Student Loan Bubble About to Pop?" (selections 29 and 31) are vivid portraits of the consequences of debt overload on indi- viduals and families . "What's Debt Got to Do with It?" looks at the $5 billion-a-year poverty debt market, in which international chains of financial services profit through the deceptive practices of pawnshops, rent-to-own stores, and high-interest loans. These poverty-exploiting storefronts advertise "easy" financial services that seem like good deals, but charge exorbitant fees and interest rates that leave customers deeper in debt. "Is the Near-Trillion-Dollar Student Loan Bubble About to Pop?" provides insight into the college student debt burden , a "bubble" ready to burst with dangers to society comparable to the mortgage bubble that precipitated the 2008 recession.

The ease of access for well-to-do "legacy" applicants (selection 30) and the debt burden on economically strapped disadvantaged students (selection 31) dramatizes ways in which access to higher education has become "classed ." As costs skyrocket, federal Pell grants are cut, and funding for higher education becomes predominantly loan based , college graduates are left with

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huge debts and few job opportunities lucrative enough to pay them off. The financial struggles experienced by college students from middle- and low-income families are compounded for students with disabilities (selection 32) . Further, many students with disabilities struggle with costs for needed healthcare services and assistive devices, the lack of which negatively affects academic achievement and workforce success.

In "'Free' Labor: Past and Present Forms of Prison Labor" (selection 33) Whitney Benns explains the variety of contemporary prison labor practices in the US. Benns draws connections between incarcerated labor in the Reconstruction era South and today's prison labor system, both of which reproduce the structures of slavery while driving down wages for non-incarcerated workers. This selection highlights an important intersection of racism , classism, and ableism , since people with intellectual, psychological, and physical disabilities are disproportionately incarcerated (Dolan & Carr, 2015).

The Pew report on wealth inequality (selection 34) highlights the racial wealth gaps that have increased since the 2008 recession. It illustrates the explanation of historically constructed wealth inequality (Oliver & Shapiro, selection 28) and enhances the portraits of advantage and disad- vantage (Mantsios, selection 26). Other recent Pew studies show the loss of homeownership for Blacks and for young adults, despite a recovering economy (Fry & Brown, 2016), a disproportion- ate impact noted by Tatum (2017) as explained above.

Five selections in Voices speak from contexts of privileged as well as disadvantaged class positions . African American and immigrant women of color in domestic service describe their experiences of exploitation and powerlessness (selection 35), including isolation and race- and class-based insults as part of the reality of their devalued , gendered household labor. In selection 36, bell hooks explores the nuanced intersection of race and class through memories of her rural Southern small town childhood. She recounts how class position sometimes complicated the expected differences between Blacks and Whites, so that poor Whites clung to their racial advantage even while wealthier Whites and Blacks scorned the white poor.

Collins writes as a 1 %er (see selection 38) whose experience living among the 99% exposed him to a radically new perspective on his inherited wealth and motivated him to take action . His decision to give away his financial cushion brought him into an experience of community and solidarity that he would never have known if he had not chosen to prioritize a life lived in cross- class coalitions and in solidarity with poor communities working toward social change.

There are clear implications throughout this section for positive social change. Different forms of class exploitation require remedies at different levels - legal , institutional, cultural, and inter- personal. Rounding out the Voices section, and also applicable to Next Steps, Juno Mac explores the spectrum of legal approaches to a particularly stigmatized labor force - sex workers . As a sex worker activist, Mac outlines the pros and cons of four different approaches. She draws parallels and comparisons across industries, always returning to the question of how each approach impacts the workers themselves.

The Next Steps selections in this chapter focus on political , community, and classroom efforts to correct class injustice and create greater class equity. The first selection , "How Occupy Wall Street Changes Everything" (selection 40) lives up to its title. The Occupy Wall Street movement started in 2011 and largely disappeared from the mainstream news cycle by 2013. But many of the activist projects initiated during Occupy continue, and its powerful messaging , such as the slogan "We are the 99%, " transformed the way people in the US talk about class and economic inequality. Collins in selection 38 tellingly identifies himself as a member of the 1 %, and we hear Occupy's echoes in messaging from the 2016 election season and beyond. The key issues that Occupy raised, such as risky manipulation of financial markets that benefit few at the expense of many, continue to threaten the economic and social stability of society as a whole.

This section's emphasis on cross-class coalition building points to the importance of class awareness, especially among middle and owning class people who have not thought about their everyday class assumptions, in order to coordinate efforts with less privileged organizing

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partners. Selection 41 quotes personal examples of the everyday, unintentional classism that often interferes with effective cross-class organizing. Selection 42, "Deep Thoughts About Class Privilege," written by Resource Generation, an organization of young people with wealth who are dedicated to acting ethically from their position of privilege, challenges readers to explore their own examples of internalized class privilege. Readers interested in delving further into their own experiences of class privilege should go to the resources at Resource Generation's website.

The excerpts from Home Economics (43) detail the plight of domestic workers, also reflected in the narratives in selection 35. At the intersection of gender, race, immigration , and class differences, those who work in others' homes providing childcare, cleaning, home healthcare, and other ser- vices have been mostly invisible in US labor politics. This selection presents recommendations for creating safe and healthy workplace norms for domestic workers, together with broader changes in how domestic work and all low-wage work must be understood in order to meet the needs presented by shifting demographics and economies.

Further Next Steps relevant to classism are found in other sections of this book and can be located by reviewing "Classism" in the Table of Intersections. All selections in this and other sections raise questions , challenges, and possibilities for change that go well beyond the limits of class and classism alone. We encourage all readers to turn to the website for questions they might ask themselves and each other based on these readings , as well as related discussion questions, and links to relevant videos and classroom activities.

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