Some Gleanings from Yearly Meeting

I went to Northern Yearly Meeting this year mostly to see a dear friend I haven't seen in far too long. When I got there, I found out that I could sign-up then to do an interest group. So I did.

I'm doing an interest group around Quakers and Social Class at this year's FGC summer Gathering, but I've never done such a thing. So I appreciated the opportunity to try it out at NYM.

I based the exercise we did on the meme I posted in November inspired by exercises developed by Will Barratt at Indiana State University. I turned the blog post back into a step-forward exercise as it was intended by Will and changed it a bit based on feedback and comments from the blogosphere (literally thousands of people blogged about it) as well as the demographic I thought would be at the interest group.

There were eight of us, four of whom had taken George Lakey's workshop on Quakers and Social Class before, and my partner, who'd heard a lot about the workshop. One of the remaining three had done a lot of thinking about class, and another had tried to get into George's workshop after having gone to his interest group at Gathering in 2005. The final person was there because he'd been in a workshop right before on spending money and thought it would be an interesting follow-up to be in the social class interest group.

The participants and I thought it went well, though I faltered a bit. I interpreted the wandering gazes at the beginning as boredom but I could have been wrong. And I planned how to start and run the interest group but forgot to plan how to end it!

I won't quote the brilliant interest group attenders here because I couldn't possibly do them justice, so I'll just tell you what I came to understand about myself and Quakers from my experience of the interest group.

1. Some people have questioned whether midwest Friends are quite as affluent and privileged and class-homogeneous as Philadelphia Friends. If the interest group is any indication, we are similar to east coast Friends. Most were within three or four steps from each other and and most took a majority of the steps.

2. When Friends reflected on their experience, they immediately talked about those less advantaged than "us," meaning Friends. I've said this before in one way or another: Friends are very good at helping other people but not so good at befriending those with less status, let alone inviting those people into our Meetings. And now I have direct experience to go with my opinion!

3. Someone pointed out that all groups, churches especially, need to be homogeneous around one thing or another: culture or faith. And since midwest Friends accept a wide range of beliefs, from nontheism to wicca to strict christianity, then midwest Friends need to be culturally homogeneous to stay together. This bothers me because while I have financial privilege and educational privilege, I haven't yet been able to have much social privilege. I haven't adjusted well to middle class culture and so I am often in pain when I'm among Friends.

4. Another Friend lamented the fact that many young Friends go to our Yearly Meeting because it's often the one place they don't "feel so weird." She wants young Friends to be excited about our Faith, and not our style of dress or political beliefs. I do too because I want to worship the way Friends worship but don't fit in very well culturally. And I want Friends to be very open to lots of other social classes, not just in ideal but in practice. I think that until we deal with social class, we won't be able to address racism within our ranks as fully as we need to.

5. Someone wondered aloud if the Religious Society of Friends should be laid down so we can start over. I was put-off by this at first because, I think, I couldn't imagine wanting to do that or Friends being open to such a thing. But, in retrospect, this might be the only way to overcome our unspoken insistence on cultural affinity. Unless you all have some suggestions?

At NYM, I also experienced being talked-at a lot. I would ask a Friend how they were doing and they would tell me their stories, then walk away, without asking me how I was doing. I wondered if this was a social class indicator and talked with another f/Friend about it a couple weeks later. During that conversation, another Friend walked up to us and demonstrated that behavior for us. She was wearing an Obama t-shirt and I asked if she was at the Xcel Center the previous Tuesday. She said yes and then started to tell me all about it, assuming I wasn't there. I listened. When she was finished, she walked away. My f/Friend thought about it and posed the question to herself, wondering if it's about social class or something else.

Talking at people and then walking away may be something other than social class. But I never experienced that behavior at my primarily working-class college. There, conversations were all give and take, talk and listen, seek compassion and give compassion.

***

On another note, I've been pretty silent of late. Obama's speech on race has really affected me in the way that deep Ministry can affect me--I want to act loving in the way he described when he said:

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

I've failed miserably at this in the past, and want to do better. I hope you all can forgive me for not being as loving as I could have been. Thank you for being as patient with me and kind to me as you can while I heal my wounds around class.

***

On yet another class-related note, George Lakey will be leading his workshop on Quakers & social class at Ben Lomond Quaker Center in March 2009. I will be there. Will you?

Class Privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack

If you've read Peggy McIntosh's White Privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack, you'll know what the title of this post refers to. If not, it's a list of privileges that white folks have in U.S. culture. Google it if you want--I'd prefer to protect McIntosh's copyright.

The lovely woman over at Education & Social Class has posted a parallel list from a social class perspective created by the wonderful folks over at Class Action.

I won't post the whole list here--you'll have to go to Jayne's site for that (and I'd strongly suggest you do so, and add your own suggestions there). If you have additions, please send them to privilege at classism dot org. Here are my additions and questions.

Suggested Additions to Class Privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack

a. My ignorance of cultural references, intellectual concepts or academic knowledge are not attributed to my social class.

b. My favorite foods are often served in expensive restaurants where I live.

c. My cultural habits and likes are viewed as appropriate and healthy and are not attributed to my social class by my peers when they deem my habits and likes as unhealthy or inappropriate.

d. The way I talk at home (my grammar and pronunciation and diction) is considered business standard.

There should be an addition about technology, but I couldn't come up with a statement that was exclusive because of social class, other than being always up-to-date technologically. Some not-so-middle-class people I know are up-to-date. Does anyone have a suggestion about a technology indication of class?

On Jayne's blog, I also posted a question about #18 on the list. Can anyone answer this question? Here's what I said:

About #18, that one is very interesting. It doesn’t necessarily get at your social class, but at the social class of your friends relative to you. I *do* worry about whether my friends can afford the things I can afford–I live an owning class life and almost none of my friends can match that. But I grew up working class–does someone who grew up owning class or middle class not worry if they have friends with different means?

Let Jayne know what your suggestions are!

Fun Little Thingy (and I promise, not a meme)

My partner forwarded to me a blog called Stuff White People Like, which is a satirical look on one person's experience of being white.

I actually think it's more of a satirical look at being a lefty middle class person, regardless of race (or mostly so), more than a commentary on race, even though race and class are closely correlated.

For instance, when I look at the Full List of Stuff White People Like, I count 36 of the 95 things that I like. Is that because I'm white? Or is it because I have some lefty middle class values? I know a few people of color who would count more in their Like column.

And just in case you're curious about what 36 I count, I list them here: #94 Free Healthcare, #90 Dinner Parties, #87 Outdoor Performance Clothes, #83 Bad Memories of High School, #82 Hating Corporations (which comes from seeing The Corporation at another love, #3 Film Festivals), #76 Bottles of Water, #75 Threatening to Move to Canada (well, it's not technically a Like because I don't *want* to move to Canada; it's just an expression of my frustration about the current administration, so maybe its that I LIKE TO THREATEN TO MOVE TO CANADA WHEN THE PRESIDENT IS AN IDIOT), #64 Recycling, #61 Bicycles (who doesn't like bikes, exactly?), #60 Toyota Prius, #59 Natural Medicine, #57 Juno (for which I now feel strangely guilty, as if I missed something about this movie and its whiteness), #54 Kitchen Gadgets (and, as an aside, other household things like making your own laundry soap...by which, I think, my mother would be horrified because her mother, the wife of a coal miner in Kentucky, probably made their laundry soap; my mother would see it as a step backward and probably ask why I would do such a thing. I don't know if I'd have an answer for her), #51 Living By the Water, #48 Whole Foods and Grocery Coops (and where else, exactly, would I find Crystal deoderant?), #47 Art Degrees (I can't deny this one since I just got one), #46 The Sunday New York Times (not the crossword puzzle though), #44 Public Radio, #41 Indie Music, #40 Apple Products (like the computer on which I write this post), #39 Netflix, #37 Renovations, #36 Breakfast Places (and who in the world doesn't like a good breakfast place???), #29 80's Night, #25 David Sedaris, #21 Writer's Workshops (heyyyyyyyyy, I take that one personally), #19 Traveling, #18 Awareness, #17 Hating Their Parents, #13 Tea (Casablanca from Mariage Freres in France, slightly sweetened Oregon chai, white-tip early grey), #12 Non-Profit Organizations, #8 Barack Obama, #7 Diversity, #6 Organic Food, #5 Farmers Markets, and, drum roll please, #3 Film Festivals (like, check my other blog at FilmFestGirl.)

This is the first post that I've done that isn't specifically Quaker, though anything lefty liberal, by default, appeals to liberal Friends.

So my count is 36. What's yours? You can post your score in the comments if you want (but please keep commenting light--this is humor folks).

Assets

In a couple of places in the Quaker blogosphere, some people have suggested that Quaker theology should be a block to poor and working class people. The questions and answers (and the implications of the questions and answers) around this topic have been very hurtful and have made me ask why Friends don't see the assets that poor and working class people might bring to our Meetings.

So here I'll suggest some assets that poor and working class people bring to Quakerism.

Spiritual Assets

Individualism is very strong among at least Liberal Friends in part because the middle and owning classes value individualism more than community (where poor and working class people generally value community over individualism). I see this individualism sometimes in people's struggle with doing what they hear God telling them to do.

I read one example of this (and I picked this randomly, not to pick on anyone in particular or to criticize...it's just an example of something I've heard lots from Friends, and it's without judgment) on Friendly Mama's blog a while ago:

I want to open myself to God's will for me. I hide behind my own self; my day-to-day life based on my will and my desires. I want to learn to be trustworthy for God, to be faithful, to mind the Light, to submit.

This isn't a unique perspective among Liberal Quakers. I've heard Friends talk about their reluctance to follow God's will for as long as I've been among Friends (since 1991). I've always felt like I was supposed to feel this way, but this hasn't been my experience.

When I feel God's will, I feel like I want to follow it, like it's my only choice. When I've spoken in Meeting, I have felt God lift me up and speak through me, and it's a pleasure and relief. I feel the same pleasure and relief when I've done a good job. I feel God's pleasure with me when I've been faithful, and I crave that sense of satisfaction.

And it's what I'd been taught to do by my working class K-12 education and my working class family and my working class friends and my working class neighbors.

Obey. Do a good job. Do a job right. Do it quickly.

So, since Friends struggle so mightily to obey, is there something that working class and poor people have to offer Friends?

(And, as an aside, for some science behind my claim that middle and owning class people are more individualistic-focused, I read this New York Times article about MIT students--only 17% of whom come from households that make under $45,000/year--participating in a study about the compulsion to "leave options open," that found that students resisted closing doors when it was the most beneficial thing to do.)

A more class-diverse Meeting can bring a life and vitality that some Friends find lacking in their Meetings.

Johan recently said it more eloquently than I could when he wrote:

I remember one very dear Friends fellowship that was pretty homogenous but yearned for diversity; half a block away was an Elim Fellowship pentecostal church where there was ACTUAL diversity--racial, social, class, temperament, language. Spiritual power does NOT necessarily mean emotional contortions, but it does mean crossing a threshold of conversion and self-abandonment not typically found among the self-satisfied or terminally autonomous.

Working class and poor people are generally more emotionally expressive than middle and owning class people, and, as Johan says, this can be a theological asset.

This asset, I think, will be harder to see and even harder to accept, because plain speech and direct communication is frowned upon among middle class and owning class people (and, therefore, Friends). This is a cultural difference between middle and owning class people and working class and poor people; until we recognize and acknowledge it, we won't do anything about it. This isn't because we don't want to change, but because comfort encourages inertia.

So, what of plain speech, Friends?

Community Assets

Poor and working class values can help the Meeting community. We are hard workers, we bring the perspective of the not-so-privileged to committee work and MfWfB, and we can refocus conversation away from process and toward tasks.

That last bit, about process and tasks, needs a little explanation. Many Friends acknowledge that we can talk too much about something. Sometimes, we talk about talking about issues.

I know for me personally, and other working class Friends with whom I've talked, over processing something can be frustrating. But one thing I learned in the Quakers & Social Class workshop at Gathering was that when my gifts of being task-focused were acknowledged and valued, it was easy for me to stay in the process.

I think Quakers over value process. I think I (and other working class and poor people) over value tasks. We could be a good balance to each other.

In that same vein, valuing all the assets that working class and poor people bring could be one step toward helping our communities be more diverse. This means appreciating fellowship committee as much as we appreciate ministry & nurture. Not everyone has the gift of structure and organization.

Meeting & Individual Vitality

Finally, if our Meetings become more class-diverse, we, as individuals, will grow close to God's ideal for ourselves. As Tai from the Friends of Color blog said:

I find truth in opposites. I believe that when we are faced with someone who is culturally "opposite" from us, we learn. And it's not the kind of Barney purple dinosaur learn, it's the, this fucking hurts because I'm growing learning.

And if our Meetings become more class-diverse, our Meetings might grow. Martin, quoting statistics about a decline in both Liberal and Evangelical Friends' Meetings except where the Yearly Meeting is dually affiliated with both FGC and FUM, recently said on his blog:

Could it be that serious theological wrestling and complicated spiritual identities create healthier religious bodies than monocultural groupings?

What Quaker doesn't want their Meeting to grow and doesn't want to grow personally?

Some Thoughts From 2007 Summer Workshop On Quakers and Class

I was going through my email and found these things that came from the summer 2007 FGC Gathering workshop on Quakers and Social Class with George Lakey. At the very end of the week we shared on our thoughts about promoting class diversity in our Meetings and questions we may need to ask ourselves about our class diversity.

The workshop participants agreed that these things could be shared. And here I offer them in their rawness (and I use that word because that's what this list feels to me, raw, like a newborn, like a seed burst open ready to sprout).

PROMOTING QUAKER CLASS RELATIONS

This is the thinking of the workshop on Social Class and Quakers held at FGC Gathering, 2007.

-Welcome diversity of foods at events
-Get your Meeting to identify its own culture in specific terms
-Support leadership and the risks leaders must take to support growth and change in the Society of Friends
-Bring class awareness to problem-solving
-Ensure that transportation, childcare, and location of Meetinghouse are accessible to working class and poor people
-Accept the likelihood that we are clueless regarding how middle class and owning class Friends come across, and make a decision to become aware and curious, including curious about how life looks to working class and poor people
-Invite emotion at appropriate times, being aware that suppressing emotion is often (usually?) a class characteristic and an imposition of class-based conditioning on the group
-Support plain speaking, an old Quaker practice that has lately been trumped by middle class niceness/politeness
-Bring to worship our need to heal from our woundedness from class society
-Be aware of the role of entitlement when some Friends speak frequently and at length, filling the space that might be left open to Friends from working class backgrounds.



QUESTIONS THAT MAY HELP US GROW
IN BETTERING QUAKER CLASS RELATIONS

This is the thinking of the workshop on Social Class and Quakers held at FGC Gathering, 2007.

-How can we welcome all classes to our Meetings?
-How can we become more aware of our own class backgrounds, with the assumptions that we take for granted?
-What's the culture of our Meeting, in specific terms?
-How can we increase the safety of the cultural mainstream of our Meeting and the margins as well, and put them in dialogue with each other?
-How did emotions get sorted into "positive emotions to express" and "negative emotions to express" in Meeting for Worship? What could we learn from taking a fresh look at that?
-How can we appreciate and embrace conflict and its gifts, including the bluntness and anger that often come with conflict?

An Attempt at a Definition Part 1: Questions

Pam's comment on my previous blog post said

Also, we haven't yet defined "working class" and probably simply can't in any meaningful, consistenlty useful way.

So here's my first attempt at a definition of class. This isn't Quaker-specific, so I'll be inviting bloggers outside of the Quaker blogosphere to participate in the discussion. I welcome everyone's insights, additions, subtractions, criticisms, and praise.

I've been thinking about Pam's comment and wondering if I can't at least try to define class in a way that makes sense.

I have come to understand gender to exist on several continuum along several axes: sex (the physical sex with which you were born or assigned at birth or discovered at puberty), gender identity (the gender with which you identify internally, or you internally experience), gender expression (the gender with which you present to the world at large), and sexual orientation.

What if class were also expressed along continuum on several axes? What would the axes be? Can they be as simple as the gender model?

Off the top of my head, I thought of several continuum:

Education, income, cultural values & norms, and family of origin class status

Then I began to wonder how these things should be weighted. Certainly the first three would definitely be impacted by your family of origin's class status. So then should family of origin class status even be included or should it just inform the other three? Should income have equal weight with education and cultural values, or is there another measure by which we can judge economic class status (like spending, for instance, which was written about in a recent New York Times article)? Some have suggested that education shouldn't have as much weight as income because a high income can get you an education but an education doesn't automatically confer high income on a degree recipient. What about cultural values & norms being more highly valued than income because social capital can get you things (like jobs and material items) that money can't?

Part of the problem with using the gender model is that while each of the four continuum inform the others, I don't think that's true for gender to the extent my categories inform each other.

I think the three axes could be weighted equally. I also like the idea that one axis is based on consumer spending and ownership rather than income. I would add savings, investments and retirement to that value. So, for instance, you might go up a notch if you own your home outright, but down a little if you have less than 50% equity. You would go up a notch for each car you *could* afford to own (here I'm thinking of people like my partner and I who choose to share a car rather than own two). And "could" afford would assume a full-time income at your income-earning potential(because, again, I'm thinking of people who choose to live below the poverty line in order to protest war taxes). We could prioritize spending. For instance, you get more upward movement by spending money on dental care or a computer than say buying a pop-up tent you can hitch to your car.

I also like the spending model because it's what so many people talked about when they took the "What Privilege Do You Have" meme. Some said, Yes, I went to summer camp but it was sponsored by the Y and my parents didn't have to pay anything, or Yes, I went to private school but I went on scholarship because I was raised by my single dad who worked two jobs to keep a roof over our head. It became about how much parents paid for those things, rather than the things themselves and the privilege they conferred.

So what do you think?

Answers, Answers

When we ask questions like the ones I talked about in my Questions, Questions post, we reveal our biases. This is even more true when we answer the questions.

I'm taking these answers from blog to which I link in my Questions, Questions post, and since I can't directly link to the parts of the comments I want you to see, I'll quote them here for you:

But by the time working class/degreeless adults walk through our meetingroom doors, they've likely been exposed to the more black-and-white thinking all their life that somehow works for them as adults. And without an education or role-modeling that teaches them to think beyond short-term, tangible results, won't they be lost in the abstract critical thinking and philosphizing that goes on during fellowship hour? from LizOpp

Really? Working class/degreeless adults in Meeting need education from privileged folks like you? Working class/degreeless adults need to learn a better way to be and only privileged people know what that better way is?

One mistake middle and owning class Friends make when relating with poor and working class people is paternalism, which, according to dictionary.com is defined as "the system, principle, or practice of managing or governing individuals, businesses, nations, etc., in the manner of a father dealing benevolently and often intrusively with his children."

It's good to be benevolent, isn't it? But don't we know that benevolence can go too far? Like, say, telling a working class or poor person that the middle class way of doing things is better.

One of the hallmarks of Quaker theology (as I understand it) is the ability to live in the moment and the Presence, even if that means dealing with the tensions of not having answers or not knowing. Most educatiors would say that living in such ambiguity is a sophisticated place developmentally. from Omar P.

My first response to reading this was "So then what in the world drew so many poor people to early Quakerism? What in the world drew unsophisticated me? Free coffee and cookies after Meeting?"

Is Omar really saying that God should only be accessible to the intellectual elite?

Nope. it's paternalism again. But his answer also reveals an intellectual arrogance that keeps poor and working class people away. The Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church and the Episcopal Church and the Baptist Church all accept different levels of engagement, from going to church and doing as the minister or priest says, to intellectual book groups. In those churches, God is accessible to everyone.

It's still very hard for me to "live in the moment and the Presence," but when I do and can, it's more rewarding than any other church service I've ever attended. I had to learn to do it, but I did it on my own terms and in my own way. If I'd read Omar's post when I first came to Meeting, I would have left because I was not intellectually as advanced as him (and most people in Meeting). I worry that other working class or poor people will read his statement and unnecessarily choose not to go to Meeting. I worry that other Friends are saying similar statements because it's so appealing to acquiesce to an academic authority.

Most Friends to whom I've talked says it's hard for them to acquiesce to God's will. Giving in to the will of an authority is something many working class people understand because it's what the system has taught us to do. Why isn't this talked about as a Quaker theological asset, as something working class people have to teach privileged Friends whose entitlement gives them the idea they get to pick and choose what's convenient for their lives?

When you receive a messege, run it through your mind a few times. Can you use a simpler word? Can you drop, or at least quickly explain, an obscure reference? Would a child understand it? Or at least a teenager? from Jim

Jim grew up working class so I was at first confused by his comment. Then I went to his web page and saw that he has a PhD in mathematics. He seems to have acclimated well into middle class life (and now that he's retired at 36, an owning class life). Then I realized he might have meant what he said.

What's that definition of paternalism again? Something about managing children?

Poor and working class people aren't children. I know some working class people who are better read and more articulate than some middle class people I know. So please don't talk down to them or anyone. You can, however, not assume that everyone in the room knows everything you do. Especially if you're well-educated.

***
I shared a much shorter version of this post with one Friend (no, not my partner) and she called it rude. According to dictionary.com, one definition of "rude" is "without culture, learning, or refinement."

Hmmmm. I guess I have some learnin' and refinin' and culturin' to do.

(And if you're not getting the irony, find a clued-in middle or owning class person to explain it to you).