Working class people know how to live in times such as these.
If you are feeling like there is more uncertainty, instability, loss of control of your life, you’re not wrong. Insurance risk analyses show that life now is indeed risker than it was 20 years ago. Flood, fires, domestic terrorism are indeed up. Economic and political stress too. How are you handling our uncertain circumstances? There are wise people among us who know how to survive emotionally, socially and spiritually in the face of constant duress. Poverty is violence, the pace and pressure of stress is scathing. And yet most folks live and laugh and love despite it.
I have learned that working class people, across race, have a lot in common. Mainstream culture pulls a lot from working class cultures—food, fashion, music–but there are more valuable lessons to be taught. Wisdom may not show up in the forms that we are used to respecting but that is so much packaging. A cognitive researcher I knew at the University of Massachusetts said that her entire career research program was finding empirical evidence for her immigrant Jewish grandmother’s sayings.
Who are we talking about? Working class people in the US. They are mostly invisible to outsiders—the folks who go to work, pay their taxes and love their children don’t show up on the evening news. If you are working for community change, they are your sweet spot and luckily, there are the majority. Also, communities of color, particularly Black and Latino, are more “conservative,” meaning that they do not change as much as other groups as they become more affluent. So here, social class is about identity and lifestyle and not just about finances, in part due to persistent patterns of discrimination. I forget the lessons of my parents at my peril.
Staying Afloat on the Currents
We are all living in a time and a place that seems less certain, more chaotic than we expected. In the last few years, I’ve noticed a decided difference in the ways that working class people and middle-class people are responding. Uncertainty, chaos, instability and scarcity is just another day for working class people. Those who manage have developed skills and wisdom that hold them in good stead as they navigate the daily strong currents of their lives.
Resilience is an overused word, but here it is appropriate.
I’ve talked to a lot of people about the presidential election. African Americans voted (again) actively and overwhelmingly for the Democrats in the presidential election. Yet, I have not witnessed the despair that I have seen elsewhere. Every Black person to whom I have spoken has said, unprompted and almost verbatim, “We have been here before. We will probably be here again.” Then most of them said, “We will keep going. We have no other choice.”
They never bought the claim of a post-racial America. People in their sixties and older compare this time to the times of their lives, that by any measure, were worst. Younger people are familiar with the stories and the trauma of their parents. The genius of Black people in this country has been survival. Slave owner Sam Houston said that we made good slaves because we did not die. Our ancestors did not die physically or emotionally or spiritually, though art, foodways and religion. In Baltimore, Black folks will say they are “all right”—pronounced “ah-ight,” meaning that times could be better but they will survive. They carry a wisdom and a spirit that is worthy of respect and admiration.
Lessons from the Folk
Expect the Unexpected Have you noticed that middle class people are often surprised when terrible things happen to them? Affluence allows them to avoid or smooth away the unevenness of everyday life. There is a sameness that does not exist in poor neighborhoods. If you are poor, there is a constant undertow, and it can suck you under at any moment. You come to understand that terrible things are part of life and many of them you will not be able to fix.
Face the Terrible Between Covid, floods, fires and mass shootings, we are surrounded by large scale death. Jesse Scott wrote that Black culture is one with death, violence and disease a regular drumbeat. Death is part of life. Homicide and health morbidities are not “rates;” they are people you know, and they die every week. The best people address it with a grace that I admire and respect.
Watch By my observations, it takes a working-class Black person about 2 seconds to read you, to decide if you are friend or obstacle. Before you have opened your mouth, the tells you cannot easily control–body posture, facial expression, eye contact, body proximity–have told them what they need to know. They approach the world with a watchfulness that notices the smallest of signs. That means they often know more than you meant to say. By my same observation, people who are accustomed to being in control miss the small signs. But all is not lost, I have often seen working class people make a quick judgement and then lean back, giving you an opportunity to get more comfortable. There is generosity. Crispin Sartwell wrote Act Like You Know. As a White child growing up among Black children, he was told “you can run with us, but you got to act like you know.” They taught him how to be with them.
Stay close to your people. Working class people have strong community and family networks, are less likely to move way than middle class families. They rely on them as a resource.
A student who grew up in working-class West Baltimore taught me that many housing buildings were really family networks, with extended families living in close proximity together. Black and brown people have different definitions of privacy—Auntie is going to be in your business! Affluence pulls people away from their families and middle-class families are more isolated for it. But your network can be your reliable friends. Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins coined the term “other mother” for the ways that Black women mothered other people’s children. The benefits go beyond the neighborhood. A military study found that Black mothers were able to stay in the military years longer than other women because of their informal mutual childcare networks. Even when you move away, keep in close touch. Black family reunions are large, orchestrated affairs with music, tee shirts and lots (and lots) of culturally appropriate food.
Ritual and Celebration An organization wanted us to find out why targeted African Americans were not responding to their printed material. We put together a discussion group of working-class African Americans and showed them the material that depicted a mom, dad and two children gathered around the dinner table. Less than five minutes into the discussion, they said “These people are poorer than we are—why would we want to be like them? They are dressed in church clothes, but they only have one meat, two sides and a drink for Sunday dinner!” The lack of food choices meant that the family was on hard times. Sunday dinner and other times of celebration require “real food” –a couple of meats, several sides (preferably including baked mac and cheese) and drinks. The well-meaning brochure had violated treasured traditions–weekly rituals, foodways and, oh by the way, the family needed to be more fashionably dressed. Rituals create meaning and structure, giving life a savor that supersedes circumstances and gives you something good to anticipate and remember.
Empathy African Americans and LatinX score higher on empathy, despite being met with less for themselves so regularly that there is a term, “empathy gap,” for how they are often treated by medical professionals, police and others. African American children display the ability to jump from cognitive culture to cognitive culture, much like bilingual children, a sign of intellectual empathy, being able to think like someone else. A group of empathetic people is a wonderful feeling. There is often a palpable, healing warmth in all-Black gatherings.
Spirituality African Americans more religious than other groups, but even more telling is the nature of their religion. Experiments on prayer and healing find that African Americans, even those who do not attend church, have a colloquial, friendly God with whom they chat on a regular basis. They implement “religious coping” Some will disagree with me when I say that specific doctrine does not seem to make a difference. Whether its Jesus, Allah, God, the Universe or the Ancestors, it is belonging to something bigger than you and a strong belief that rational thought is only part of our stories.
Humor: We know that slaves had jokes, that they mocked the people who owned and brutalized them. Finding humor even in the most troubling of times is a delightful survival tactic. It allows you to pick up the misery and toss it around for your own amusement. You can still see the same wry, observational humor on Black Twitter
Joy Comes in the Morning: “Keep hope alive” wasn’t just a saying. It captured a cultural truth, that even if we couldn’t see it yet, a change was going to come. Black stories and plays, even tragedies, often have a crescendo of joy at the end. Because no matter how bad it is now, life goes on. Witness the joyous second line of the New Orleans funeral march. The play, Antigone in Ferguson, a retelling of the bloody Greek tragedy with actual citizens and police of Ferguson, ends with a rousing gospel number. Of course it does. It must.
I am not saying that being working class is easy and happy all the time. It is the opposite of that—facing the constant challenge to stay afloat is difficult, wounding, scarring. I am saying that many people have learned to live a full life no matter what comes and that there is wisdom in their ways.
