By Jan Servaes*
MIAMI, USA. 6 October 2023 (IDN) — “There are a lot of things very few people—even my friends—know about me. Things like, when I was a kid, we often didn’t have coins to feed the washing machine in our apartment building, meaning we couldn’t do laundry and my clothes smelled of cat pee. Or that I slept on the sofa in my father’s one-bedroom apartment because there wasn’t enough money for a bigger place. Or that I dropped out of school because there wasn’t enough money for books and, at 18, thought it was time to go out and earn a living, anyway…”
This is how Deborah Dundas, editor at the Toronto Star, who has been writing for this and other publications for more than 18 years, begins her life story.
In this contribution from August 9, she talks about a past for which she was ashamed for a long time. But by exploring ideas about class, interviewing people from different backgrounds and sharing her own story, she wanted to look at how we talk about class—and also how we don’t.
Why are we so reluctant to talk about class? On Class is an exploration of who tells the stories and who doesn’t, which stories are most often repeated and why this needs to change. Deborah Dundas tackles this difficult topic in two integrative ways. She does a beautiful job of weaving the personal and the political together for a deeper understanding of class.
She uses her journalistic talents, conversations with activists and writers, and her own reflections from growing up in poverty to deliver a thoughtful and valuable story on a topic we don’t talk about enough today. She places the focus firmly on systemic factors and structural problems. But she also shares respectful stories and encourages reflection.
Hunger and dignity
Growing up in poverty, Deborah Dundas knew what it meant to be hungry, and yet to long for social and economic dignity.
At a time of rising wealth and income inequality—see Oxfam’s annual reports for example—you might assume that class is a frequent topic of discussion. Unfortunately, it seems that the term has disappeared from political discourse.
While new social movements have sparked an open conversation about gender and racism, Dundas believes discussions about class rarely highlight the voices of those most affected: the working class and the poor. After all, in our popular culture they are often stories in which someone living in poverty is compared and contrasted with those of a higher status.
Most books on this subject are written by economists or political scientists, and are full of alarming statistics and academic jargon about income, work, housing, education and the like. Dundas also regularly quotes interesting data from the OECD, World Bank, Pew Research and national governments (especially the US and Canadian), and proves with authors such as anthropologist David Graeber that she knows the academic world.
On or below the poverty line
But as an ‘expert by experience’ Dundas intersperses the figures with a glimpse into worlds with which most readers may be less familiar. And also let those who live just above, on or below the poverty line have their say.
Dundas is Canadian, so I found it interesting that much of this book, while told from a North American perspective, is not about the United States. The discussion is framed through a Canadian lens, which is interesting and insightful, especially the issues surrounding the COVID pandemic, which has similarities to the European case.
Dundas noted how our language about the working class changed early during the COVID pandemic, when frontline workers in food, health care and other sectors, where working from home was not an option, received limited salary increases. But that extra pay was short-lived. “And then they took it away. What does that say about the way people who do this kind of work are viewed in our society? That’s a class issue,” according to Dundas.
Complementing her own experiences of growing up in poverty with those of others, we get a very intersectional view of life that is not often presented, or at least not represented by those who actually live it. Dundas dissects the meritocratic myths foisted on us by executives and politicians, using data and research to unravel the illusions we’ve been taught are “objective reality.”
“Most people will say they work hard. People with higher incomes will say they worked hard to get where they are—long hours to climb the corporate ladder or studying to go to university.
People with lower incomes work hard too: people on the front lines, in low-wage jobs, the essential workers who have cared for us.
Yet, if we are all in this together, and if this work is indeed essential, why are the people we’ve deemed to be so essential in a position where they are being forced by the pandemic to work even harder while getting sicker? To work hard yet be unable to afford the resources to educate their kids? What makes the jobs they’re doing any more or less valuable than those professionals that allow people to work from home? Why has the system been set up in this way?” (pp.11-2). With these questions she opens this important 143-page ‘pamphlet’.
On or below the poverty line
But as an ‘expert by experience’ Dundas intersperses the figures with a glimpse into worlds with which most readers may be less familiar. And also let those who live just above, on or below the poverty line have their say.
Dundas is Canadian, so I found it interesting that much of this book, while told from a North American perspective, is not about the United States. The discussion is framed through a Canadian lens, which is interesting and insightful, especially the issues surrounding the COVID pandemic, which has similarities to the European case.
The middle class
“When we talk about class today, we tend do so using the hierarchy of the upper class, the middle class, the working class and the poor – and still assume that that class defines a common set of interests and values. The idea of the middle class is the one we hear about endlessly from politicians and mainstream media” (p. 18).
We are constantly reminded that as the middle class “we will be better off than our parents, better off than we are today, that we will be able to move ahead, that we’ll progress and prosper” (p. 21).
And today it seems like everyone is middle class. Although numbers and statistics contradict that: “In 2021, typical CEOs in the United States earned 351 times what the typical worker did (p. 38)”—“It takes, on average, between four to five generations, or ‘up to 150 years,’ for a child born into a low-income family to reach the average level of income” (p. 68).
But they, who cares about that? “After all, part of the idea of being middle class lies in feeling as if you’re middle class” (p. 23).
“But by not talking about class, we reinforce a narrative that is part of the very DNA of Canada and the United States, the narrative that anyone can achieve the American dream or its Canadian cousin: the opportunitie sare there for the taking. That if you work hard and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and follow the rules, you, too, may find yourself in a room with billionaires, and not on the outside looking in with the people who are just scraping by.
The flipside of this egalitarian ideal is that if you don’t make it, it’s your own fault” (p.33).
The ‘losers of globalization’
As a result of globalization and the feeling of ‘powerlessness’ among large parts of those at the bottom of society, right-wing populism is once again emerging.
“Feeling like they’ve been left behind by globalization, many members of the working class seem to think former US President Donald Trump is ‘more relatable’ than Democratic leaders with more obvious blue-collar credentials… All parties—right and left—have been perceived by the dispossessed as having been taken over by ‘the elite’” (p. 104). The intellectual elite dominates the ‘left’, with its focus on identity politics, while the ‘merchant elite’ – those who make their money importing and exporting goods—controls the ‘right’.
“And so those who don’t identify as being part of an elite, who might not see themselves as budding intellectuals or academics, or who didn’t have the financial or business backing to join the merchant elite, can still at least dream about one day getting rich, and someone like Trump, with his self-propagated bootstrap mythology (of the self-made-man), is understood to represent something attainable, something to which they, wherever it is they currently find themselves economically or socially, could aspire” (p. 105).
We’re all in this together?
Dundas asks how things can be done differently now that class is no longer measured only in terms of income, but also in personal and community values and beliefs. After all, no class is a monolith, and neither is any community, no matter how hard you struggle to adapt the labels to the changing times.
Solidarity is the word that unions used; solidarity was also initially chanted during the COVID pandemic. But, “the qualities that bring communities together—shared experiences, shared histories, shared values—are also the issues that drive us apart. Understanding each other, within our own communities and listening to the experiences of people in other communities, is the thing that will bring us together” (p. 113).
“And if these stories aren’t told, how are lawmakers and policymakers to understand lives they haven’t experienced themselves? We don’t get change—we get a reinforcement of a specific set of values. In this milieu, where can change come from?” (p. 124).
But, Dundas concludes, “once the conversation has started, it’s important to keep it going, to create spaces that centre respect and dignity. We’re all in this together, after all” (p.135).
This is a thought-provoking book that opens the door for more conversations about class, inequality, respect and dignity in the hope of bringing about change in the future.
Reference: Deborah Dundas, OnClass, 2023, 143 pp., BiblioAsis, Windsor, Ontario, Canada. ISBN: 9781771964814
* Jan Servaes is editor of the 2020 Handbook on Communication for Development and Social Change (https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-981-10-7035-8) and co-editor of SDG18 Communication for All, Volumes 1 & 2, 2023. [IDN-InDepthNews] (https://link.springer.com/book/9783031191411)
Photo: Deborah Dundas. Source: University of King’s College.
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