Race And Class Reflection

As the daughter of white, upper-middle class parents, the dominant aspects of my race and class have offered both obvious and unseen privilege and power throughout my life. I have been exposed mainly to only people of similar race and class in my neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and social gatherings. I have been taught to evaluate and recognize people of similar background. I remember my mother stating on innumerable occasions, “We do not speak that way,” as I excitedly relayed a school day story in the local dialect of the hard-scrabble Pennsylvania city we lived in, transferred by my father’s employer from my parents’ native New England. My mother’s grammatical corrections, in addition to a proclivity her daughters wear acceptable