One of our biggest focuses at the Institute for Educational and Social Justice is pushing educators, non-profit leaders and others to challenge the “isms” they hold – knowingly or unknowingly.
These “isms” can take a number of forms, including racism, sexism, classism, sizeism and ageism.
Addressing our biases and how those may subtly or not-so-subtly affect our attitudes, behaviors and decisions on a day-to-day basis is difficult work, because it requires us to be brutally honest with ourselves about where we are, what we think and how we behave.
If we are truly honest, the work is difficult – in part because just as we think we have a check on one “ism,” we discover that another needs to be addressed.
Classism is the “ism” I probably struggle with the most – but my struggle doesn’t involve efforts to value or embrace people from low-income backgrounds.
Instead, I find myself guilty of a reverse classism, assuming that people from very high income backgrounds have all the resources that they need and don’t really need support.
But in recent weeks, I have been placed in a number of situations where I have been surrounded by people who are quite wealthy – and I am realizing that they, too, have needs that need to be addressed.
One young man I have met comes from a family that easily makes more than $3 million a year. His family owns more than one Jaguar and his house is probably worth 15 times what mine is.
His test scores are high but his grades and extracurricular activities are lackluster at best. But he will probably get into a fairly good college – in part because of his family’s money.
But this affluent young man experiences a poverty that my children do not know.
His parents frequently travel the world, going to places like India and Africa and Italy. But they always leave their son and his two older sisters behind. “I guess they wouldn’t have as much fun if they took us along,” he explains, seemingly without bitterness, adding that he and his sisters have never been out of the country.
He often finds himself without a ride because his parents have forgotten to pick him up. Calls and text messages go unreturned – and he seems unsurprised by any of it.
This young man doesn’t have many adults in his life who truly care – he says the adult he talks to most is actually a teacher. And that teacher probably doesn’t fully realize how important he is to this student.
This wealthy student also struggles a great deal with motivation. He wants to go to college “because that’s what you do, you know?” but he has a hard time even envisioning a major because he isn’t sure he will even be doing much paid work after graduation. “There’s already money, you know, set aside as long as I hold it together until I graduate.”
This student – whether we think it’s fair or not – will likely inherit a lot of money. And with that money will come a great deal of power, which can be used for good, or wasted, or even used for destruction.
Who is reaching these students? Should we, as leaders interested in educational and social justice, be concerned with this student’s needs? What would programs for these students look like? What misguided assumptions do we make about high-income students? How do we change?
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