Education Action

First published on Open Left, 2008

Social Class and Social Action

People from different cultures have different ways of organizing themselves for collective action. They speak about and make sense of the world in different ways. Here, I talk about differences between people from working-class and middle-class professional backgrounds.

It’s important to stress that I am not talking about individuals, but instead cultural patterns that play out (or don’t) uniquely in the context of actual persons. These patterns can illuminate why groups act the way they do, but they can’t predict how any individual will act, and don’t capture everything (and sometimes don’t say much at all) about a particular group. In this post I am talking about approaches to social action fairly broadly, and not simply within the tradition of Alinsky-based organizing.

Those new to these posts may want to read Part I and Part II of "What is Organizing?". A paper giving an overview of current organizing challenges and a possible solution can be found here .

Note: this is a vastly simplified version of a paper you can find here —I apologize for the pay wall. I hope that with this simplification I have not ended up doing a disservice. The two key works I refer to are Unequal Childhoods , by Annette Lareau, and Coalitions Across the Class Divide , by Fred Rose.

Class Cultures Middle- and working-class cultures emerged in coherent form in America during the last decades of the 18th Century. Middle-class professionals, as a new group, increasingly built themselves a world of privilege doing non-manual work, while the working-class was buffeted by numerous depressions, poverty, and lived with often backbreaking work conditions. (For a more detailed historical overview, go here .)

When I talk about the middle-class, today, I am referring mostly to the culture that still dominates the way middle-class professionals interact today, albeit in intensified form. Working-class culture, however, has fragmented more over the last century, existing in its strongest form in some unions and in long-term communities where people still have deep relationships with neighbors and extended family. Class in the cultural sense I mean it, here, is less linked to income than to educational background and job type. Plenty of progressive professionals “choose” fairly low-income jobs, for example.

Middle-Class Culture

Middle-class professionals tend to be fairly mobile and based in relatively self-sufficient nuclear families. Middle-class professionals depend highly upon their credentials and learned practices, and often believe, at least, that they are judged in a meritocratic job market as individuals.

A wide range of studies have shown that the parenting practices of the middle class are significantly different from those of working-class families. Middle-class children learn at an early age to make their own judgments about the world, often participating in adult life as if they were “mini” adults themselves. They are frequently asked for their opinions and are allowed (and even encouraged) to disagree with adults. These families celebrate children’s unique characteristics and capabilities, helping them develop a sense of themselves as discrete and unique individuals. middle class parents focus so intently on their effort to “cultivate” their children that their “lives” can have “a hectic, at times frenetic, pace of life” (Lareau).

Collaboration and teamwork have become increasingly central characteristics of middle-class life over the 20th century. Group success often requires managers and professionals to work closely with people they have no long-term relationship with. Each individual in these contexts is expected to independently contribute his or her own particular knowledge and skills to an often weakly defined common project. Collaboration in these groups is facilitated by the relatively abstract, elaborated discourse predominant in middle-class settings

Working-Class Culture

“Woe unto the [worker] who stood alone in this pitiless struggle for existence [at the end of the 18th Century].” (Montgomery).

Working-class families are structured to a much greater extent around an established hierarchy between children and adults. In part because working-class parents lack time to constantly monitor children, hierarchies and limited tolerance for “back talk” make more sense than constant negotiation. Lareau found that “in working-class and poor homes, most parents did not focus on developing their children’s’ opinions, judgments, and observations.” In contrast with what she termed the “concerted cultivation” approach of the middle-class, then, Lareau argued that working-class parents are more likely to “engage in the accomplishment of natural growth, providing the conditions under which the children can grow but leaving leisure activities to children themselves.”

“Working-class people in the United States are more likely to live where they grew up, or to have moved as a family and not solo. They are more likely to live near extended family and [are] . . . likely to have been raised and socialized by traditionally rooted people” (Leondar-Wright ). Even though the old ethnic enclaves of the 19th and early 20th century have largely disappeared, Lubrano found that a “core value of the working class” still involves “being part of a like-minded group—a family, a union, or a community.” As at the end of the 19th century, today this tendency to value deep connections with families and communities is partly driven by the material conditions of working-class life. Many workers have no choice but to depend on a web of links with others to get them through hard times, and the impoverished, especially in the central cities, suffer greatly to the extent that these relationships have fractured.

Studies of Working- and Middle-Class Approaches to Social Action A small number of studies look at how middle- and working-class people engage in social action. The studies I refer to, here, focused on those groups that most seem to embody key characteristics of the class cultures described above: middle-class professionals and members of labor unions. In other groups you probably won’t find these distinctions showing up as clearly, or you may find other issues emerging as most important.

Social Action and Middle-Class Professionals

In organizations dominated by middle-class professionals, speakers generally need to be “comfortable with theoretical, impersonal discussion.” Because these groups generally lack formal rules for participation, they often expect people to be able to “just jump in when they want to speak,” following a format resembling “college classroom[s] . . . familiar to those who are college educated” (Stout ).

In part because the issues addressed by middle-class activists are usually only weakly linked to group members’ lives, (think of the Sierra Club or Greenpeace) Rose found that “even the most pragmatic middle-class organizations frame their issues in broad ethical terms, . . . never in terms of advancing the interests of a particular group,” possibly indicating how little the “struggles faced by low-income people” actually impinge on the “reality” of middle-class people.” In fact, middle-class groups generally believe that they advance universally valid goals, not “the interests of their class” (Stout)

Participants in middle-class, professional organizations are encouraged to “continue to act very much as individuals” (Rose). Groups often allot plenty of time for self-expression and see it as problematic if everyone doesn’t contribute.

A range of other characteristics of these organizations also seem driven by middle-class life conditions and culture. Reflecting the often fluid nature of professional lives, for example, participation is generally understood as an individual choice, and engagement with a particular issue “may ebb and flow depending on shifts in personal priorities and interests.” Joining a social action group is one of the best ways to meet people who think like them. “Middle class politics is therefore an extension of personal development” (Rose)

Not surprisingly, Rose found that middle-class groups “find the hierarchy and formality of the union structure foreign and distasteful,” since “peace and environmental organizations have few if any formal rules about membership and participation,” and “new arrivals are often asked” to take part in decision-making just like longer term members.” “One environmental activist described her experience learning to work with the formal structure of the labor movement in these terms: 'You've got to kiss the ring. That's my shorthand for paying deference. . . . So they go to the mechanism that they're used to working with, for the formal structure.'”

Because middle-class professionals assume that other people operate (or should operate) in the same individualistic manner that they prefer themselves, they often believe that “‘if people only knew about the problems being raised, then they would be more likely to act’” (Rose). The point is not that these groups do not often seek structural changes, especially in laws, but that the mechanism for this change is often envisioned on a model of reasoned, discursive democratic education.

Working-Class Culture and Social Action

The approach of many working-class groups to social action can be fundamentally different. In contrast with the comparably formless character of middle-class organizations, worker’s groups tend to follow established formal rules for participation and are generally organized around clearly defined hierarchies. In fact, “Labor activists frequently find the meeting styles of middle-class organizations difficult and tedious.” Rejecting wide-ranging dialogue about the personal opinions of individuals, they focus on pragmatic questions of action and on rituals that sustain group solidarity. As one union leader stated,

These peace people don't understand that it's a war out there. . . . The contrast between giving people hell at a bar over the union vote and then going to a conversion meeting where people sit around and eat cheese and sip herb tea is really frustrating. These people seem like they're from a different solar system. . . .. The peace people are too intellectual and always wanting to work on the structure of the organization. . . . The union is used to getting down to work and getting things done. They wouldn't talk to the governor more than once, and if he wasn't listening the first time then he'd read about it in the paper next. This is a war, and you can't be nice about it. . . . I feel a sense of urgency about it that I don't get from the peace people. (Rose)

Those who are most respected in working-class contexts are those who most embody the core values of the working class: speaking their minds, contending, often loudly, over their commitments, and expressing the emotions behind their commitments. Eschewing abstractions, they speak from experience, often telling stories that serve to embody their particular perspectives while demonstrating loyalty and connectedness.

Membership many of these groups is not simply chosen but the result of a long-term embeddedness in community and family networks. Identity is something that one has, not something that needs to be found; it “comes from being accepted and known” and “being a member of a . . . community with a good reputation defines who one is” (Rose). Thus, these “close communities” make “a clear division between members and outsiders.” Trust is built over time, and newcomers are not easily allowed entry.

Finally, the issues tackled by groups like unions and local community groups are usually closely tied to particular community needs. Instead of focusing on universal values (although they may often refer to these), they tend to define their battles in terms of “competing interests,” experiencing “their own interests . . . in opposition to the interests of others” (Rose). A problem is rarely seen as the result of a simple misunderstanding that can be rationally dealt with. Instead, power must be wrested from others who will generally not give it up without a fight. Win-win solutions may sometimes be possible, but experience has taught them that conflict generally involves a zero-sum game.

Class Tensions

It’s important to reemphasize that Rose, especially, focused on groups that especially exemplify the class characteristics I have been discussing. Even in less distinct circumstances, however, differences in approaches to social action frequently create conflicts and tensions between middle-class and working-class groups. In fact, I have watched these dynamics play themselves out in the context of community organizing efforts I have worked in over the past few years, and I’ll talk about some of this later. Because they have different ways of speaking, when people from different classes meet together, they often find that they can’t communicate very well, misreading discursive and social cues that seem so natural to one group and so alien to the other. Furthermore, the structure of each context tends to alienate and suppress the participation of people from the other class. For example, the quick repartee of middle-class meetings can make it difficult for working-class people to get a word in edgewise, whereas the formalistic and hierarchical structure of working-class settings can seem, to middle-class members, like a tool for suppressing their individual voices.

Rose summarizes the differences between middle-class professional and working-class organizations in this way

The middle class is prone to seeing the working class as rigid, self-interested, narrow, uninformed, parochial, and conflict oriented. The working class tends to perceive the middle class as moralistic, intellectual, more talk than action, lacking commonsense, and naïve about power. Each side has a different standard for evaluating information, with the working class trusting experience and the middle class believing in research and systematic study. The result is a wide gulf in understandings of nature, sustainability, economics, and human conduct. Worse yet, working-class unions and middle-class environmentalists seek change differently. The working class seeks to build power to confront external threats, while the middle class hopes to change people's motivations, ideas, and morality.

And he emphasizes that these differences arise, in part, out of very different experiences with power:

Different degrees of power and vulnerability are also decisive. Middle-class movements tend to have greater access to the bureaucracy because it is staffed by their professional peers. Bureaucratic processes also function through expertise and abstract rules that middle-class values. The middle class tends, therefore, to have greater faith in the ability of these institutions to accomplish its goals. The working class, by contrast, is often the weakest party in conflicts and tends to pay the costs of many political and economic decisions. Its strategies reflect both this vulnerability and the interpretation of politics as a conflict about interests.

Need for Bringing the Strengths and Weaknesses of Each Together

Despite these gulfs, Rose argued that when they operate in isolation, class-based movements often end up “reinforcing and reproducing [problematic] aspects of society even as they work to change other aspects”. For example, as we have seen, middle-class reforms have often “inadvertently served to reproduce the subordinate role of the working class in society and the economy” by placing decision-making power in the hands of experts or by downplaying the effects of inequality on democratic engagement. Working-class approaches bring their own problems, however. A tendency to focus on local interests has sometimes led working-class organizations to downplay more universalistic visions of social transformation.17 In unions and elsewhere, a dependence on hierarchy often threatens democratic engagement. And because working-class efforts have often depended on exclusion of other, less privileged persons from gaining access to limited resources, they can reinforce social divisions of race, ethnicity, and gender, among others.

Overall, the practices of these different groups embody contrasting strengths and weaknesses. Lichterman found, for example, that because of their loose structures, focus on process over product, and stress on individual expression, the middle-class Greens he studies often found it difficult to act collectively or even to decide on shared goals or tactics. In contrast, the focus on solidarity in working-class groups often limits broad-based democratic participation. Both sides have much to learn from each other, if they can find a way to listen.

And, in fact, many groups have increasingly begun to recognize these challenges (among other cultural gulfs) and have been trying to make changes in how they interact internally and with external groups. One key person who has been pushing nationally for recognition of these issues is Betsy Leondar-Wright, whose website, www.classmatters.org is a great resource.

Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing: Fracturing Across Lines of Race and Class

I wrote this more than 12 years ago, but it still seems relevant today.

Externally, community organizing groups split the world into an always flexible “us” and “them.” Until fairly recently, the group I work with, at least, didn’t look very closely at the internal fractures we had across boundaries of race and class. However the social and cultural power of privileged and less privileged members can create destructive patterns if they are not dealt with directly from the beginning.

Let me stress that the story I tell after the flip doesn’t necessarily reflect the current perspectives of the organization I work with, that I call CHANGE, or the larger umbrella group of which it is a part that I’ll call National Organizing. In the last few years I know they have begun to at least try to figure out how to address some of the core challenges I discuss. However, I think the experience I describe is important to hear about, because it raises a range of difficult challenges that community organizing groups need to address. There are organizations, like the Center for Third World Organizing , which have grappled with these issues from the beginning.

Those new to these posts may want to read Part I and Part II of "What is Organizing?". A paper giving an overview of current organizing challenges and a possible solution can be found here .

In my limited experience in Wisconsin with CHANGE--a congregational organizing group that is a member of the national National Organizing network—I have watched a range of race and class issues emerge that were not dealt with effectively. (Later I’ll talk about how intermediary organizations like National Organizing work with local groups). From what I have read elsewhere (see also this and this ), a reluctance to focus specifically on race and class in favor of more pragmatic and general visions of “self interest” and coalition building has been a problem with mainline community organizing groups more generally. This has led to the development of new groups outside of the larger national groups that deal more directly with issues of racial identity, nationalism etc. More recently, I know that groups like National Organizing have begun to address these issues more directly, but since my participation has been mostly limited to local work in our education committee, I am not a part of these wider discussions in the network.

In its early days, CHANGE was primarily made up of inner-city churches and the participants were mostly people of color. Shortly before I joined, however, the group decided that if they were going to have enough power to really make a difference, they were going to need to expand their membership to include churches outside the central city. Many mostly white middle-class churches joined.

What happened then will not surprise some readers. As the whites came in, the people of color began voting with their feet.

Ways of Talking One key problem is that middle-class, white professionals have a fundamentally different discursive style than lower-income people of color. While this issue seems to be more about class than race, it is important to understand that being middle-class and black on the edge of the central city places one in a much more financially and culturally marginal position than is common among middle-class professionals, as Patillo-McCoy, among others, has pointed out. So even though, as I noted earlier , it’s true that most members of congregational organizing groups come from middle-class mainline churches, what it means to be middle class, and how that links to particular discursive and cultural practices is much more complex than this observation might indicate. (Also see this earlier post about social class and organizing.)

”We Didn’t Mean to Take Over” For a while I attended a mostly white and mostly upper-middle-class (in culture if not in $$) Unitarian church in the city, and as a part of a CHANGE effort, we mobilized a number of Unitarians to attend a talking session with some local school-board members. A number of black churches also sent members, and participants of color significantly outnumbered the number of whites. This larger group broke up into smaller dialogue groups to come up with issue to present to the whole meeting. As I looked around, I noted that nearly all of the groups ended up having a Unitarian as their note-taker and facilitator. So when the groups presented back, most of the presenters were whites. Afterwards, predictably, the whites wondered aloud why the people of color didn’t participate as much as the whites, and the whites complained that they didn’t want to take over.

This is an incredibly common outcome when privileged whites and less privileged people of color come together in dialogue. Eric H. F. Law found in his work with multicultural/multiracial groups that “the white members of the group would disclose their insights and thoughts verbally and freely while the people of color would just sit and listen.” When whites work together with people of color who have been traditionally marginalized, white ways of speaking give them power and lead them to assume that their opinions are important and should always be heard. Law argues that these and other issues often lead people of color and others to believe (often correctly) that their opinion is less valued by the group. This often results in those with less social power becoming marginalized and ultimately leaving.

The powerful wonder, “why don’t ‘those people’ talk?” And the less powerful don’t feel welcomed and don’t come back.

Ignoring the Problem Won’t Make it Go Away Although I haven’t been to many large CHANGE events recently, I remember a few years ago going to training meetings and noticing that the number of participants of color was falling quickly.

At one point, a powerful black pastor tried passionately to explain to a group of mostly whites at a training mostly populated by whites why “his people” weren’t coming. This also involved a lecture about the different ways his community was structured, and how they depended upon him to tell them where they should put there time, etc., but it didn’t seem like others really heard what he was trying to say (and I’m sure I didn’t totally get it either). (Some of what he said relates to this earlier post about the different ways people from different classes tend to organize themselves.)

Until relatively recently, the National Organizing was very reluctant to deal with these issues directly. In classic Alinsky-based organizing form (although there is evidence that Alinsky was more savvy than some of his followers) they tried to overcome these issues simply by finding common areas of interest that would allow different groups to come together on shared projects, making these other challenges irrelevant.

A Lack of Workable Solutions to Inequality in Dialogue There is surprisingly little in the literature about how to deal with the inevitable power differentials that emerge when privileged whites and less privileged people come together in dialogue.

Law’s short book also indicates how difficult it can be to find effective procedures for structuring meetings that promote more equality in diverse settings. And the particular solutions Law recommends seem inefficient for a direct action organization like CHANGE. In leadership training, at that time, the National Organizing tended to promote a very pragmatic and results oriented approach that would seem to conflict with the slower, more process oriented procedures recommended by Law.

Many solutions involve highly trained facilitators or intensive training, but community organizing groups seem too fluid and resource limited to allow this to happen in most cases. It is also not clear what kind of training would be effective, “who” would need to be trained, or how long such training would take. As Law points out, much of the inequality that arises in dialogue is unconscious and unintentional. Our “internal cultures” as Law calls them, are difficult to change, since they arise out of the fundamental ways we understand and perceive our environments, as well as out of our inability to acknowledge the different levels of power and privilege we bring to the table. This isn’t about acknowledging our “internal racist” or something like this; it’s about changing the very practices we use moment-to-moment to engage with other people. Others may know of successful training efforts, and I’d love to hear about them.

Law came up with a process that seems to work for groups engaged in cross-cultural dialogue, but it seems to me and to other organizers I’ve talked with to be too cumbersome to work in action oriented settings like community organizing meetings. CHANGE does not have time, for example, to operate like an “encounter group.”

The point is not that nothing works. Instead, except in exceptional circumstances, it may simply be too difficult to find procedures that will allow equal dialogue in such settings without prohibitive amounts of educational and facilitational superstructure. A couple groups may be able to pull it off, but it seems doubtful that a reliable model could be created more broadly. The fact is that even though I know all of this, I often find myself butting in and interrupting as the white male that I am. I have had real trouble even training myself out of this.

One Possible Solution: Internal Representatives of Caucus Groups There is some evidence from classrooms and elsewhere, however, that people from less powerful groups tend to feel more empowered if they participate in dialogue as representatives of external collectives. They come not just as themselves, but as representatives of the power of a number of people. (Of course, this idea fits quite well with more general organizing perspectives).

In CHANGE, I recommended at one point that we try to recreate a space or spaces where there aren’t many privileged whites, where inner-city folks can build their own sense of collective identity and then send representatives to meetings with the larger organization that includes surrounding white churches. I actually wrote this up, exploring possible structures, checks and balances, that would insure that internal groups like this would not become marginalized. I have also heard that there are other examples of organizations with a “black caucus” or “inner-city caucus” but I don’t know the details. For a range of reasons, this hasn’t happened in CHANGE, but it seems like it might be a productive strategy.

Hannah Arendt once argued that power can be divided without decreasing it, and the counterplay of powers with their checks and balances is even liable to generate more power, so long, at least, as the interplay is alive and has not resulted in stalemate. More than a few community organizing groups may be in the situation where the existence of a single overall organization inadvertently reduces opportunities for participation for all. By creating internally differentiated groups, it might be possible to create space for more participation. The problem faced by congregational community organizing groups, especially, is not that they lack potential participants, but they we lack enough people who have decided that they want to participate. As Arendt noted, creating multiple arenas for participation—as long as they are planned carefully—may actually increase the power of an organization by drawing in members who might not otherwise be willing to participate actively in what they may perceive as unequal spaces.

This sounds nice in the abstract. But does it work in reality? I honestly don’t know. I’d be interested in hearing other people’s experiences with a solution like this. There would certainly be difficult tradeoffs involved in creating artificial boundaries of some kinds within organizations like this.

A Final Example I vividly remember a meeting a few years ago where the head of the National Organizing stood in front of a large group of members, berating us for our inability to get as many people out as CHANGE had done in its early days. At no point did he point out that most of his audience was white, in contrast to the early days when almost everyone would have been black.

Astonishing.