Personal Reflection: Classism

My most memorable experience of classism was in high school. I was a very solitary person in school; I did not enjoy the company of others. However, in high school, it is nearly impossible to avoid everyone all of the time. As a result of my solitary nature, I often found myself socializing with what was at the time the smallest and most remote of the social circles: the punks. For the most part, they were an impoverished group with tense smiles stretched across thin faces. I saw hunger written in the outlines of their ribcages and in the knobs of their boney spines, both clearly visible through their tee-shirts. It was a hunger for more than just food; it was a hunger for an answer—an answer to the wild fists they threw in the air. It seemed to me that every patch and pin sewn and tacked to their battered denim jackets was a frustrated start in the fitful sleep of their young lives. They were living a nightmare from which they could not rouse themselves. They did not know what society would grant them in their tomorrow or even that it would guarantee such a kindness as a tomorrow, and it frustrated them.

I remember seeing all that the rich students had. I remember seeing new cars. And I remember seeing the newer cars that replaced those that had been wrecked in frivolity. I saw new letterman’s jackets and new sneakers. And it all stood in stark contrast to the punks’ canvas high tops, worn through from having to walk rather than drive. They did not have patches and medals on brushed wool and leather that told the story of the school’s appreciation for a job well done; they wore different patches. The patches they wore spoke of impotent frustration. I made a few friends in that community. I saw those same friends become the living manifestations of Rilke’s panther. I saw my friends lash out at everyone and everything before giving in to the despair that haunts poverty. It upset me greatly.

I remember visiting one of my friends a year after I had gone away to college. I remember walking into his room and seeing him lying in bed, completely strung out on heroin. I can still see the puffy skin around the track marks in his arms. At the time, I was so angry with him for becoming a cliché. But it is not a cliché; it is a reality. It is a reality that my friend shared with everyone who had been just as poor and just as desperate. Although I am not a social person, I miss my friend.

Now, when I hear upper-middle class republicans talk about socialism as if it were the most vile and cruel thing ever conceived of by man, I think of their sons and daughters who had all they wanted, and then I think about my friend with a needle in his arm and the thousand yard stare that told me he was gone.