Has Class Trumped Race? Part 3.5 – An Aside

Now, on one hand, we can understand what Shepard is trying to get at in the book. Social mobility is possible in this country with hard work and determination. To Shepard, he was able to apply himself and lift himself out of poverty – a simple function of implementing and executing a plan.

However, Shepard’s analysis is flawed for many reasons. One of which is that he does not take into account any of his privileges which may have worked in his favor. Being an able bodied male – and being considered for the more lucrative, quick cash turn around day labor jobs – is one of them.

The second is that Shepard is able to enter a form of poverty that isn’t real. It’s poverty without the baggage – knowing you have a warm home to return to, good credit, and a college degree in the event that you can’t hack it on the lowest levels of society. As a person newly out of poverty and into the middle class, he just doesn’t have the baggage I carry. Most notably, he doesn’t have that fear that comes with being poor and knowing how close you are to being on the street. That fear is what drives me – and that fear manifests in the form paralysis to many of those who I knew that did not make it out of poverty. Being free of the emotional baggage of poverty is an amazing thing. I hope to be free of it myself someday.

Finally, the comparison to Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickled and Dimed rings a bit hollow to me. Ehrenreich took on a number of jobs in a few different areas and provided her own experiences and the experiences of the other workers. She accurately documents the fear that comes from being in poverty and the financial constraints that leave people trapped into a certain position. I will go and check out Scratch Beginnings whenever my library obtains a copy, but it appears that Shepard set out to quickly throw down roots and eke out an existence – he was not concerned with what most people want, which is a quality life of their own choosing.

I am currently working on the last part of the Race and Class series, but in the meantime, what do you think of Shepard’s experiment? Do you think he would have been able to do this so easily if he was a different race or gender?

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