People Like Us

Class has always been something interesting for me since I can remember. When I was kid, I lived in a lower class neighborhood, but there were some middle class people living too. I was one of them. Every time I would leave the house, I could see the difference immediately with the kids I played with. Some had cleaner clothes, and others were really dirty and old. But we would play anyways. I don’t think we cared about that kind of stuff when we were kids. At least I thought that was what everyone else was thinking, even though I felt like I was the only one noticing this.

The thing about my childhood is that I would not go to school anywhere near where my neighbors would go. I attended a catholic private school an hour away from where I lived. I think that’s what made it easy for me to identify classes. Most people at my school were living in a higher class. The neighborhood was cleaner and more modern than were I came from. My classmates had more toys and I think more than half of the people at my school were white. I would see my white friends and think to myself if being white has anything to do with being richer, or smarter, or better looking, or better people overall. This experience of all three kinds of classes had some sort of effect on me when I started to grow older. I became reclusive and was unable to socialize well with my peers. It felt awkward. But, when I became 12, everything changed. My parents couldn’t pay for my education for me or for my brother so we had to change schools in the middle of the school year to a nearby private school. That’s when I started to live real life with people of the same social status as me. It made me push harder and harder in school so one day I would have an education and have money to help the people living around me. I started to socialize more and became sort of popular. I had a bunch of friends. I felt like I belonged.

I’ve had my adventures with classism. And I still do. Even though I haven’t really experienced the extreme rich class society, I don’t think I would like to live like that. But it is highly improbable that I will become a millionaire anyway. I think that’s the reason why most people ignore the higher class society: most people don’t think they would ever experience it, so why bother. What we do have to worry about is our own social status and help each other progress.