working class
By shag carpet bomb • Jan 17th, 2010 • Category: Class, Fuckstainery, Horseshittery, Identity Politics, Political Economy, douchebaggerygood lard save me from the essentializing crappola! brownfemipower is writing about working class men and i just want to scream. i really dislike the implicit assumption that, somehow, it is only working class men and women who are owned by corporations, that what it means to be working class is to do manual labor that callouses the hands (i originally typoed it as ‘nads’ heh!). yeah. a security guard sitting on her ass at the front desk all day, shonuf has calloused hands and feet! the pizza delivery driver. the customer service rep sitting on his butt at a computer, fielding phone calls for $9/hr, trying to keep you stalled on a battery of scripted questions until you give up and call again - which was the point, to keep you endlessly looping.
whatever.
i just rilly rilly hate the romaniticization of the working class. i hate writing that tidies it all up as if there were some sort of value in being working class in and of itself. the valorization of working class. the idea that there is some truth found in manual labor of any sort. the idea that it is somehow morally superior to be working class or to have a working class job. that there is value in suffering. that through suffering you somehow have a better grasp on the truth than other groups who don’t suffer so much.
all of it makes me want to stab forks in my eyes to have to read!
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well you know how it goes.
you know here in Seoul, white folks get off the plane to find themselves a minority and simply begin whining because they learn rather quickly that they cannot simply cash-in on their oppressed status as if it were measurable in points, stamps on a coupon card for each time you’re mistreated and ten stamps gets you the conch for the day. they really whine about how important they are to daily life here and how awful it is to be ignored, to not have a meaningful say in making important descisions, whine about the government, the senseless tasks, the paperwork, and that finally Koreans are racist.
essentializing but the other way. self-romanticizing their own plight.
suffering as a measurable value, though; it’s a prevalent belief that it’s worth something in the market.
how are white people in korea oppressed? and isn’t find nothing but ickiness in white people just as bad as finding nothing but glory in the manual laboring white working class?
“i really dislike the implicit assumption that, somehow, it is only working class men and women who are owned by corporations, that what it means to be working class is to do manual labor that callouses the hands”
Ok, good. I wondered if it was just me.
i don’t think white people are oppressed in Korea. at all. we have to jump through bureaucratic hoops of fire at times but what immigrant worker does not? on the other hand, when many, white Americans get here***, they immediately obtain (take) some weird sense of minority status and claim it as part of their identity. to me, it’s ludicrous. after reading your rant about identity and essentializing and so on, i thought you’d get a kick out it.
finding ickiness in whiteness is not like glorifying the working class for their labor. i find it icky because the behavior is icky–makes me squirm. and i think it’s icky as whiteness. i’m not going out on a limb when i say that a Korean in the United States would not be doing the same thing in the same manner. (and, yes, i’m focusing on Americans. i don’t think i know enough about the Australians here, for example. Though the bitching among whites is generally agreed upon though handled differently.) it’s not like i see white people and barf or something, sheesh. i have found white icky since my childhood days right after the Vietnam War in Tulsa, Oklahoma. maybe it has shaped me to kneejerk a response in some cases. i imagine you can imagine the things i saw and heard. and once you see and hear these things and choose to betray that grotesque inheritance i think it’s hard not to see the white power structure everywhere. i don’t know, maybe i’m overreacting to your response to my comment.
but it’s safe to say, i think,white people think that racism is a conscious choice and claim they can’t see it and when you make them see it they claim that what you’ve done is racist. (see Palin and her claim that Trent Lott’s treatment was unfair in the wake of Harry Reid’s comment about Obama.)
so simply by being in Korea, a typical American (only based on my observations and conversations, so i’m using typical in that manner) will tell you, with only a little pressure, that Koreans are racists. i hate that and have complained about it on my blog. maybe i am guilty of essentializing. aren’t we all? but i fight the urge. anyway, sorry if my first comment lacked necessary clarity.
***and, by the way, i can complicate this by noting simply that all Americans in Korea aren’t white, but i hope folks realize i am talking about my white colleagues. Koreans are actually quite comfortable with white Americans…i don’t want to get off the subject tho…