Synthesis Memo 2

EDUC 5150
While the first half of our reading this quarter helped deepen my understanding and

added complexity and nuance to how I see oppression operating in terms of race and gender, the

second half of readings, dealing with class, served to more simply open my eyes to how this

form of oppression works. With class, I am much more complicit in unconsciously perpetuating

those cycles of oppression through assumptions and stereotypes that I was unaware of, and it was

interesting and humbling to see the work that needs to be done to dismantle these systems when I

am just at the beginning of breaking out of the cycle of socialization as described by Harro

(2008).

With regards to class, I was raised with upper middle class values and bought in whole-

heartedly to the myth of meritocracy. I was uncritical of capitalism as being able to provide equal

economic opportunity, and I carried with me the idea of Gans’ “undeserving poor,” as described

in Gorski’s article about the “culture of poverty” where wealth was a reward for hard work and

intelligence and poverty the penalty for laziness (2008). Once I got to college, however, I was

more able to see my true class status, and how my buy-in, my adoption of capitalist values, did

not actually place me into the same privileged group as that of the wealthy elite. There, I met for

the first time people who came from “old money,” and instantly felt insecure about my class

because I had so internalized the idea that monetary wealth was equivalent to personal worth or

value, and that a long history of wealth equaled an innate superiority. Moreover, I came to

realize that while my family had all the exterior trappings of an upper middle class background,

clothes, home décor, car, etc., we were in fact not homeowners (my family would lose their

house during the housing crisis) and badly in debt (my parents declared bankruptcy shortly after

I graduated), and my actual class was lower than what I passed for.
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This personal anxiety regarding class has continued in my adulthood. I have chosen a

field that I know will keep me in a roughly middle class position, but I still feel self-conscious

when I compare my position with that of my peers who are buying homes in nice neighborhoods

and new cars. Reading the Adams’ introduction to class (2013) and Mantsios’ article about class

in America (2007) and contrasting that with my reading of Bowles and Gintis (1976) and Gorski

helped me realize how easy it is to compartmentalize my awareness of class and continue living

and reacting based on assumptions that wealth corresponds to merit. On the one hand, I am very

knowledgeable of the facts of the matter; I know that there is an increasingly widening gap

between the wealthy elites and the lower class, that there are huge differences in lived experience

even between individuals who do not occupy class extremes, and that capitalism is an

exploitative, self-supporting system of oppression (Adams, 2013; Mantsios, 2007). Yet I still

catch myself slipping into the deficit based models of thinking that Gorski (2008) describes

because I’ve been so efficiently socialized to believe that class is a marker or intrinsic worth,

even when I myself am far from the highest class rung (2008).

The immersive socialization that takes place and encourages us to accept capitalistic

norms was made explicit in the article by Bowles and Gintis (1976). I found their depiction of

education as a sphere to replicate capitalism, reify its values, and train students in its

perpetuation particularly cogent (Bowles & Gintis, 1976), and a call out of the invisible

mechanisms that are at play so that class, like other forms of oppression, is self-supporting. I also

find that it’s important to see, as these readings make clear, that while my experience of class

mostly plays out as an occasional anxiety about my self-worth, for others, their class is a source

of daily oppression that impacts their everyday experiences and limits their access to such basic
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things as fair treatment at school or unbiased assessment in their job; additionally, it is my

privilege within this system that makes its working so opaque to me.

In order to better understand how class operates and my role in supporting it as a form of

oppression, I believe that I can apply many of the skills as outlined by McIntosh (1988) and

DiAngelo (2011) when they saw the work needed from white people so that those who were

white could still see how race operates. The need for constant and continuing critical self-

reflection to see how my class status frames what I believe about class and under what

assumptions I operate is necessary to break down the compartmentalization of thought that

allows me to unconsciously oppress while not being an overt or conscious classist.

My knowledge and awareness of microaggressions will also help me make this

empathetic leap to understanding how class oppresses. I am extremely familiar with

microaggressions; on an individual level, that is the form that most of the racism I have

experienced takes place. Very occasionally have I had someone say something obviously racist

to me, but throughout my whole life and on a very regular basis, I have had others reinforce the

idea that I am not really American, and that I don’t fully belong because of my Asian

appearance. Sue’s research on microaggression (2007; 2010), particularly the microaggressions

specific to Asian-Americans in terms of constant interrogations of where I am “really” from,

observations that my English is really good, attributions that I look Chinese or Japanese or

Korean or pretty much anything but my actually ethnic identity, definitely resonated with me on

a direct and personal level. All of these microagressions, as outlined in Sue’s papers (2007;

2010), served to tell me that I wasn’t a true American, that I was always an other, and that this

otherness was so inconsequential that it could be conflated with other, distinctly different

cultures, erasing my own individuality. I also encountered the same difficulties that Sue and his
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team described in terms of talking about microaggressions with perpetrators where I felt caught

in a “catch-22” (2007; 2010). Either I said nothing, and felt angry and frustrated for not standing

up for myself, or I tried to engage, but was met with hostility and defensiveness, and told that I

was making a big deal about nothing. In both outcomes, I often felt impotent, unable to

effectively communicate what bothered me about the microaggression in a way that was

understood by the, often unconscious, perpetrator. I hope to apply my personal experience and

awareness of microaggressions towards a greater awareness and sensitivity to the daily,

unacknowledged assumptions I may act upon, and a willingness to be open to criticism when

called out. Just as others have unintentionally made me feel that I wasn’t a true U.S. citizen,

despite being born in this country and speaking no other language besides English, I have made

assumptions about others based off of class that likely made others feel excluded because of their

socio-economic status.

These assumptions and stereotypes such as deficit-based thinking and the culture of

poverty are important to stamp out with regards to stereotype threat as well. While stereotype

threat was mostly discussed by Steele (2010) in terms of gender or race, it seems that it would be

applicable to any performance situation where there is a salient stereotype, and there are multiple

that are related to class. Steele’s findings were of particular notice to me because he showed that

stereotyping had negative affects on subjects especially when students were successful or if they

particularly valued high academic performance (2010). Steele proved that it is not enough to

simply open access so that marginalized people gain entry into good schools or are considered

for good jobs. It is precisely these marginalized students who are seen as successful, perceived as

disproving a negative stereotype, who are at particular risk of underperforming due to stereotype

threat because they have to deal with the added stress of not only representing their own,
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individual success, but that of an entire group (2010). Opening the door to entry without

addressing stereotypes still allows oppression to operate, and we must overtly dismantle and

demolish the assumptions and beliefs that oppression is based on to truly interrupt the cycle.

This brings me to Harro’s cycle of liberation, which coupled with DiAngelo and Sensoy’s

advice on how to do critical multicultural education leaves me feeling optimistic in trying to do

this difficult, hard to do work. In some areas of oppression I’m in the building community phase,

in others, like classism, ablelism and religious oppression I’m still in the earlier stages of waking

up or reaching out (Harro, 2008). In combating all forms of oppression, I hope to get to the point

where I am actively creating and maintaining change to replace the cycle of socialization with

that of liberation. Multicultural educational will play a major role in breaking out of the cycle of

socialization and establishing the first few stages of liberation, for myself and others. I appreciate

that DiAngelo and Sensoy (2010) refused to give simple answers as to what multicultural

education looks like or provide a rote checklist. The cycle of liberation is a cycle; the work is

never done. Similarly, educating ourselves towards recognizing multicultural perspectives is

work that will never be done. With intersectionality, altering the ways different identities express

themselves at different times and allowing for oppression to either be compounded or mitigated,

plus the individual, specific history that each person brings to their experience, context matters.

We must challenge ourselves to try and see as much as possible of what is happening on a micro,

meso, and macro level from moment to moment, for both ourselves and others, and to have a

strong understanding of how what is happening now is connected to what has transpired in the

past. It is through constant, critical, adaptive awareness that we can remain within stages of

liberation, and I look forward to developing my critical lens and applying it towards recognizing

social justice issues, today and everyday, in all aspects of my life.

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References

Adams, M. (2013). Seaction 3, Classism: Introduction. In M. Adams, W. J. Blumenfeld, C.

Castañeda, H. W. Hackman, M. L. Peters, X. Zúñiga (eds), Readings for Diversity and

Social Justice (3rd edition, pp. 141-149). New York: Routledge.

Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Beyond the educational frontier: The great American dream

freeze. In S. Bowles & H. Gintis (Eds.) Schooling in capitalist America: Educational

reform and the contradictions of economic life.

DiAngelo, R. (2011). White fragility. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3(3), 54-70.

DiAngelo, R. & Sensoy, Ö. (2010). “Ok I get it! Now tell me how to do it!”: Why we can’t just

tell you how to do critical multicultural education. Multicultural Perspectives, 12(2), 97-

102.

Gorski, P. (2008). The myth of the “culture of poverty.” Educational Leadership, 65(7), 32-36.

Harro, B. (2008). Updated version of The cycle of liberation (2000). In M. Adams, W. J.

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diversity and social justice (pp. 618-625). New York; Routledge.

Harro, B. (2008). Updated version of The cycle of socialization (2000). In M. Adams, W. J.

Blumenfeld, R. Castañeda H. W. Hackman, M. L. Peters, X. Zúñiga (eds), Readings for

diversity and social justice (pp. 15-21). New York; Routledge.

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McIntosh, P. (1988). White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see

correspondence through work in women’s studies. In M. Anderson, P. Hill Collins (Eds.),

Race, class, and gender: An anthology (pp. 94-105). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
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Steele, C. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: How stereotypes affect us and what we can do. New York,

NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., Torino, G. C., Bucceri, J. M., Holder, A. M. B., Nadal, K. L., &

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Sue, D. W. (2010). The manifestation of racial, gender, and sexual-orientation microaggressions.

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