OMG IM SO SORRY!

[Doktor Howl]

I see your point.  Anyone who graduated highschool, or can pass the unbelievably fucking easy GED test, can apply and receive Financial Aid and go to my school.  

I have now solidified my opinion.

Thank you for your time.

[trix]

There are a lot of kids of working-class parents who can't go to university because their parents can't pay for it and they don't qualify for financial aid because of their parents income.

The "anybody has that option" line is usually the first one that makes me assume middle-classness, because it's a pretty strong indicator that they have been sheltered from life experiences that would have showed them people who, for one reason or other, didn't have university as an option.

Community college, maybe.

You are right, that was a dumb ass thing to say.  I actually saw a friend of mine get rejected, due to a prior drug conviction, so I should have known better then to say that.

I suppose what I meant was simply, some of the folks from the poor area I grew up in could have gone to college as well.

[Elder Iptuous]

you own a refrigerator, right?

[Doktor Howl]

you own a refrigerator, right?

[The Rev]

Not that I entirely disagree with you, as nobody from my old neighborhoods ended up in college, but I don't really understand what you mean.

This further confirms your middle classness.  

If I still come home after school to my poor run down neighborhood, still have an income that a McD's employee would laugh at, and still wear the same worn hand-me-down clothing I've had for half my life, how does that equate me to the suburbanites I go to school with, "by definition"?

Because you got to go to university.  How you got there is irrelevant.  You're there.  That's more than what most people your age have any hope for at all, and far more than your kids' generation will even dream about.

If you can enjoy a university education during the decline of the empire you live in, you are doing better than 50% of your nation, and are thus BY DEFINITION "middle class" at least.

I see your point.  Anyone who graduated highschool, or can pass the unbelievably fucking easy GED test, can apply and receive Financial Aid and go to my school.  But yes, the fact that most of those I grew up with don't go to college, even though they could, makes your point.

Thanks for the clarification.  I never considered myself middle class before.  Does this mean I have to start hanging out at Starbucks!?

[Doktor Howl]

Rev, it is utterly impossible for a young white man to admit that he is middle class, because that precludes them from being "street"...Even though Milwaukee is about as "street" as Batavia, Illinois, or Oro Valley, Arizona.

I have spent a lot of time in all 3 of the above-mentioned towns, and they do not resemble Compton in any measurable way.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Rev, it is utterly impossible for a young white man to admit that he is middle class, because that precludes them from being "street"...Even though Milwaukee is about as "street" as Batavia, Illinois, or Oro Valley, Arizona.

I have spent a lot of time in all 3 of the above-mentioned towns, and they do not resemble Compton in any measurable way.

I've observed this to some ridiculous extremes, to the point of kids who actually came from very well-off families claiming that they were "poor" because they wore secondhand clothes and went to public school. One friend of mine tried to tell me that he understood what my life was like because his mom had also been a struggling single mom... let me just take a moment to laugh... his mom was a lawyer from a rich family, who, after her divorce, never had to work again because of child support and alimony. She currently lives in a paid-off million-dollar house in the West Hills. My friend (who used to claim he grew up poor) will be graduating from law school in a year with no debt, thanks to Daddy's money.

It's ridiculous. Other kids whose parents had a combined income of $75k claiming to be "poor" because their subdivision wasn't as nice as some other subdivisions. Or their parents were both teachers, so for some reason they think that automatically qualifies as "poor".

I guess it all depends on what you're comparing it to.

[Salty]

That just make me

This is much the same as when people don't understand racial inequity because they just have no frame of reference, the idea that someone could be treated as lesser because of their race is just an idea, one they often barely understand because they never experience it. It's a sense of entitlement people don't even know they have. They can only look to the people who have it better than they do and whine, occasionally seeing some truly hungry, desperate people and thinking, I guess it could always be worse.

[Elder Iptuous]

...
I guess it all depends on what you're comparing it to.

That's the crux of it right there.
it's all relative.  same as how you can ask just about anybody if they're 'rich', and the answer will almost certainly be no, regardless of their income or accumulated wealth.  people look up when they think of economic status.  that's where their desires lay, that's what they envy, that's what they want to see.
"sure, there's folks that have less than I, but i'm certainly not rich.  That guy over there is rich. he makes twice as much as me.  if i had that, i'd be rich and happy."  (of course that guy is thinking the same thing)

[Cain]

I'm middle-class as fuck.

[Elder Iptuous]

i also have no street cred. 

i do have excellent cul-de-sac cred, though. 

[Doktor Howl]

Rev, it is utterly impossible for a young white man to admit that he is middle class, because that precludes them from being "street"...Even though Milwaukee is about as "street" as Batavia, Illinois, or Oro Valley, Arizona.

I have spent a lot of time in all 3 of the above-mentioned towns, and they do not resemble Compton in any measurable way.

I've observed this to some ridiculous extremes, to the point of kids who actually came from very well-off families claiming that they were "poor" because they wore secondhand clothes and went to public school. One friend of mine tried to tell me that he understood what my life was like because his mom had also been a struggling single mom... let me just take a moment to laugh... his mom was a lawyer from a rich family, who, after her divorce, never had to work again because of child support and alimony. She currently lives in a paid-off million-dollar house in the West Hills. My friend (who used to claim he grew up poor) will be graduating from law school in a year with no debt, thanks to Daddy's money.

It's ridiculous. Other kids whose parents had a combined income of $75k claiming to be "poor" because their subdivision wasn't as nice as some other subdivisions. Or their parents were both teachers, so for some reason they think that automatically qualifies as "poor".

I guess it all depends on what you're comparing it to.

My family became fairly wealthy over the course of my childhood and teenage years.  When I was a little kid, it was macaroni and Goddamn Shake & Bake 5 nights a week, but as my parents' careers progressed, things got better and better.

But even as a teen, I got my brother's old clothes.  That was considered perfectly natural; I still consider it natural.  Why the fuck waste perfectly functional clothing?  

I was about as "street" as Bryant Gumbel.  I got in trouble, but it was suburban whitebread trouble, mostly having to do with drag racing, drinking beer, etc.  I do not consider myself less credible because I didn't grow up in some awful ghetto in Gary, Indiana or Bellewood, Illinois.  I do consider myself extremely fortunate, but pretending I had a rough childhood would be nothing short of ridiculous.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

My family has always been middle class but I definitely had a rough childhood that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Lots of violence, threats of violence, guns, knives, outpatient, shrinks, lawyers, confusion as to who's story to trust, drugs, foster homes, arrests, SWAT teams, juvey,  sleeping out in the cold or in unsuspecting people's garages, running from the po-po (and getting away :P), and some serious KYFMS material.

Portland is by no means a rough city, but it IS a city.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

...
I guess it all depends on what you're comparing it to.

That's the crux of it right there.
it's all relative.  same as how you can ask just about anybody if they're 'rich', and the answer will almost certainly be no, regardless of their income or accumulated wealth.  people look up when they think of economic status.  that's where their desires lay, that's what they envy, that's what they want to see.
"sure, there's folks that have less than I, but i'm certainly not rich.  That guy over there is rich. he makes twice as much as me.  if i had that, i'd be rich and happy."  (of course that guy is thinking the same thing)

Having been poor as fuck, when my ex and I were making six figures each I told the kids "we are rich." I didn't want them to harbor any illusions that that was how most people live. Even right now, we're broke, but we're not poor; so I made 13k in taxable income last year, but I'm getting child support and sitting on about 100k in equity, which means a small measure of security. Of course, it also means that unless things improve radically I'm exactly two years of recession from losing everything.

Being middle-class doesn't undermine anyone's credibility, but when people who have never actually experienced poverty declare that they came from a "poor" background... not "working class", not "middle class", but "poor"... they undermine their credibility and they certainly undermine my perception of their intelligence. Because it happens so very frequently, it's difficult to automatically accept that claim at face value. Sure, Trix MIGHT have grown up below the poverty line. I'm just skeptical. I'm betting that his family had a modest house in a working-class subdivision, at worst.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

My family has always been middle class but I definitely had a rough childhood that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Lots of violence, threats of violence, guns, knives, outpatient, shrinks, lawyers, confusion as to who's story to trust, drugs, foster homes, arrests, SWAT teams, juvey,  sleeping out in the cold or in unsuspecting people's garages, running from the po-po (and getting away :P), and some serious KYFMS material.

Portland is by no means a rough city, but it IS a city.

Portland is a pretty soft and safe city now, but the Columbia Villa was not cool to grow up near 20-40 years ago. Lots of drive-by shootings, junkies, a crack house across the street, my neighbor got stabbed to death, kid across the street was shot in the head, constant petty theft and break ins, the guy up the street was shot in the back by his tenant, one of the crackies across the street killed three people, bullet holes in our front window, the occasional stolen car abandoned in the yard, girls on my street pregnant by 13 or 14... it sucked. I think gang activity over there started to decline in the early 90's, about when I moved back to Portland after a nice 6-year hiatus.  

And no matter how "nice" Portland is, there is real poverty everywhere. Some cities just hide it better than others. You can have a shitty experience like you did in Santa Clara, and kids do.