11:37pm June 27, 2014

When it comes to class, cluelessness is insulting

One thing that really gets me is how clueless and rude privileged people can be about the lived realities of poor people? Once I was telling a former friend about the difficulty I was having getting rid of roaches in my apartment and she was like “teehee I’ve never had roaches because I’m a clean freak!” And that slap to the face shut down the conversation immediately because I’d already shared with her that we saw a roach crawling across the floor the very first day we moved in and had had the landlord fumigate. That we’d fumigated and sprayed and cleaned and kept all of our possessions sealed in containers. We were beyond any level of ” clean freakiness,” we were obsessed and desperate and paranoid in our protocols to the point of poisoning ourselves with all the products we tried. You know when we got rid of the roaches? When we could afford to move to more expensive housing. Because when we lived in tenement housing the roaches lived with us. And it was in no way comparable to life in her uni dorms, or the house she grew upmin where her mother taught her to clean.

Conversely, when I mentioned where I used to lived to a similarly economically challenged co-worker he said “ah. You must’ve had roaches.” No judgement, just statement of reality. Because he had roaches too. We shared horror stories about how gross and pervasive they were. And that’s an understanding that is beyond the wit of ignorant person of privilege who baldly implies that I had roaches because I’m dirty, rather than dirt poor. Windbag just prattled on oblivious to how she’d just insulted me.

Think before you judge someone who’s poor as dirty. That’s some blaming B.S.. Don’t do that to people, don’t treat your friends like that.