However, the problem starts earlier. I tutor middle-schoolers in Harlem and I see intelligent kids who lack basic skills. The awful schools many lower-income students go to leaves them in large part unprepared for college, unqualified for scholarships and often harboring a hatred of schools

There are several problems. I will only mention the single largest.

Schools are paid for by local governments and funded by property taxes. Thus higher income neighborhoods are able to afford better and more teachers. Better-off parents move to areas with good schools forcing up property taxes, which serve effectively as tuition. Poorer neighborhoods conversely get worse schools, continuing the poverty cycle.
The obvious answer to this is an income-based federal tax split evenly but that smacks of -horror!- giving the poor our money entitlement, which all true meritocratic Americans have battled since at least the days of Lyndon Johnson. (It would also probably lessen the quality of education in certain middle-class neighborhoods until the system adjusted, which would bother many voters if they stopped to consider what they could do to fix the problem).
The secondary problem with this system is that it was designed with the expectation that a family would live in the same house for most of a lifetime. Thus the property tax for 40 or so years is intended to pay for 12 years of education for just the children of that family. With families moving into areas with better schools only for their children’s education, then leaving, to be replaced by another family with children, a debt is left over and absorbed by the school district. Over time this will have to be corrected anyway.

For the sake of brevity, I won’t mention broken homes, community expectations, nearby violence or any of a host of other contributing problems. (Any of which I could wax lyrical about.)

The entire American education system is a disaster that could hardly discriminate more against the poor. Its college-fixation and ridiculous tuitions are only one example of a systemic problem.

In any case, your example assumes everyone who can’t afford college comes from a non-college educated family, and that’s both untrue and classist.

Great article!

Despite this, my dad continually goes on about what a rip-off tuition fees are. He has all these figures – from where he got them, I have no idea – but the gist is, the government is ripping us off. No amount of explaining will convince him that $10K for a world-class degree is something of a bargain.

In Japan, as in America, qualifications are very important and a degree certainly looks good on your CV. However it’s not nearly as important as the exam that the company gives you if you apply for a job there. The exams are tailored to the job you’re applying for (a computer programmer, for instance, has to display their programming skills, while someone looking for a game planner job has to create a game proposal in the alloted time).

On top of that, there’s your portfolio and what certification exams you’ve earned. Typically in the IT industry that at least means the Fundamental Information Technology exam, plus whatever other ones are relevant (there’s Software, CG, MIDI, etc). While going to a technical school like the one I attend certainly helps to prepare you for said tests, it’s entirely possible to study for them on your own and pass.

As much as I complain about having to take so many tests (I hate tests), it certainly seems like a better measure of one’s actual aptitude than whether or not one has a university degree.

1) I am a high school student at a prestigious prep school after 11 years at a supposed prep school. College is on everyone’s mind.

2) The school I left was full of rich, privileged students, some of whom recognized what their money gave them, a few of whom recognized this and then still went beyond their money (<3!), and many of whom did not recognize this and did not want to.

3) I totally say yes about the college degrees. My mom has a fricking doctorate. It made her almost unemployable when she had to quit her job last year because of an awful administration. She had over 20 years’ experience, a top level degree, etc. etc., and no one wanted to pay the $200,000 (or whatever) expected if you follow the chart (she wasn’t, by the way. She just wanted to be able to feed us).

On the other hand, I have yet to meet a degreed secretary who can actually handle a copy machine with the ease and expertise I can. May I say again – high school student?

Other variants of the LIMRA exist and are used, but they all have the common denominator of fleshing out a job applicant’s socio-economic status. These tests all ask about your net worth quite extensively. Needless to say, job candidates who are smart and ambitious but who happen to be from the bottom socio-economic rung are deliberately left out; labeled as “not a good fit.” (Barbara Ehrenreich also addressed that issue in her books)

As to your observation about the beauty standard we women are unfairly held to in order to be “worthy” and “deserving”, you’re absolutely right – it IS about diminishing women.

It’s a form of silencing us, of censorship. We’re to be trotted out only when we’re desired by men to be their mommies, nursemaids, and playthings; and expected to silently go away, unseen and unheard, when we do not fill that need. And I hold the media responsible for a significant part of this issue and how it has harmed women across the socio-economic strata.

A recent situation highlighting this was brought to my attention from a member of the local La Leche League. Breastfeeding moms have been illegaly harassed and ejected from places where women and babies normally have every right to be on the grounds that nursing in public is “indecent”, despite being very discreet and covering up with a nursing blanket. It was just the knowledge that the women were breastfeeding that resulted in violation of these mothers’ civil liberties.

I was dumbfounded because NO ONE ever complains about seeing half naked hot chicks (College Girls Gone Wild) frollicking on Daytona Beach during spring break week.

No one yells “Cover yourself up!” or “You’re going to have to leave!” at all the thin young “Barbies” sporting boob jobs and string bikinis that leave nothing to the imagination on any given beach or at any water park. They’re not the women who are routinely publicly humiliated and forcibly ejected unlawfully from various places.

Yet, nursing mothers are the ones targeted for this sort of harassment, even though they usually show less boob than what is seen on any given day at the beaches, swimming pools, restaurants (Hooters for example); or at the mall exhibited by the young “hotties” shopping at Abercombie & Fitch and Victoria Secret.

Apparently if women’s bodies are not fulfilling the role of entertaining men, we don’t deserve to be seen in public, on beaches, or in the workplace. And of course, we have no right to be “argumentative” and “complain” about it. I wonder who stands to benefit the most from that scenario.

Re: the LIMRA test – that’s mind-boggling. I’ll have to look into that a bit further… and yet I shouldn’t be surprised: the old IQ tests put “lower class” and non-whites at a disadvantage by asking questions that required middle class cultural knowledge.* I’ve even seen one really dismal example of a question that showed two roughly sketched faces and asked which was pretty. Both were female, of course. Both were pretty, in my opinion, so far as rough sketches can render. But one was clearly Caucasian and the other African-American. It’s really hard to fathom how that could have been a case of ignorant racism – it really had to have been a deliberate conditioning tactic. *I don’t know for sure that new IQ tests have improved, I just wanted to be specific about what I was talking about, which are old tests no longer (to my knowledge) administered.

Re: the beauty “standard” for women. Playing devil’s advocate, I’ve tried for years to see a “business” reason for encouraging women to look like Barbies. Sure, it might sell cosmetics and diet products and plastic surgeries… but a lot of women accomplish the look (or die trying) with cheap cosmetics and starvation, which profits no one. I really believe part of the motive – perhaps most of it – is to literally diminish women. After all, if we’re spending hours a week on our appearance that men aren’t spending on theirs, it reduces the “threat” of our talent in the job market overtaking theirs. (And no, I don’t remotely mean to imply that all men, or even all particularly privileged men, feel a need to oppress women – I’m saying it only takes a few crafty haters to set up a system and then create a rationalization for it, which perfectly nice people in their ignorance can find themselves perpetuating without any intent to do so.)

When I see that the fraudulent standard of beauty (thin, young, flawless female bodies) – which has disenfranchised all women unable to conform to it – I see white male upper-middle/upper class privilege. I also see a shallow selfishness rife with entitlement attitudes that makes me want to hurl.

Weight/appearance and age discrimination hurts women far more than it does men, and it disproportionately hurts poor women the most (left out of the dating/mating game and denied employment for being “too fat”, “too ugly”, etc). It was spoiled, coddled, over-privileged white males in positions of power who created this hell for us.

A recent survey in Minnesota revealed that 70% of all girls aged 9 – 12 had been on strict diets at least once. For every young girl who diets to the point of unhealthiness in fear of becoming fat (hence “unworthy”), I hold these superficial, shallow, rich white males responsible. For every new mom who suffers pregnancy and birth related PTSD out of extreme emotional angst over her changing body, I hold these superficial, shallow, rich white males responsible. For every middle-aged and/or overweight woman truggling in poverty because of being denied a job due to our culture of “body fascism”, I hold superficial shallow rich white males responsible.

The privileged take no responsibility for the social injustices left in their wake. Women who find themselves unemployable due to age and appearance discrimination are told that they must “do something about it” – that is to say, they must somehow find the money for abdominoplasty and liposuction and breast augmentation, personal fitness trainers, and buy over-priced “Frankenstein” diet foods loaded with more chemicals than DuPont.

Not having to risk death from anorexia or bulimia in an endeavor to conform to what is “attractive” and “desirable” as a wife, or as a middle class professional deserving of a job, and to maintain that status of what it means to be “worthy” and “deserving” in our society; is a social class privilege enjoyed by rich white males and to a lesser extent, thin, young, and pretty white females (“Barbies”).

The issue of “paying your dues” is one more systemic barrier of classism to keep the poor and lower-middle classes out, preserving opportunity for the “haves” and “have-mores”. The film and literary industry are not the only ones where this is customary.

After graduating from college in 2001 at the age of 34, I was hired as a stockbroker/financial planner by a brokerage firm in Philadelphia, PA. It was customary in that field for the broker (who is a commissions-only paid sales worker) to pay the up front costs connected with the NASD and state insurance licensing exams and all continuing ed requirements. I was also expected to not only feed and house myself while working for next to nothing in that racket, I was also expected to be able to afford the “right image” and country club memberships as part of the “cost of getting on the team”. I couldn’t afford that. I also couldn’t afford to work for nothing, either.

I was a poor (albeit well-educated) woman without resources. If I could have afforded to be able to work for free, I certainly would not have done so in a job where I had to kiss spoiled rich people’s asses to get their accounts in order to MAYBE earn a paltry 1% commission.

The insurance companies that hire agents as ‘in-house” employees and pay for their office rental, their office equipment, utilities, high-speed Internet, their C.E. requirements, and a base salary ALL require job candidates to take the LIMRA test. The LIMRA test is supposedly a personality test that determines whether or not you’re psychologically suited for work in the insurance and financial sales and services industry. Bullshit.

I took the LIMRA profile test. Every question asked had to do with what amount of liquid net resources I had: cash in savings, investment portfolios, IRA’s, and home equity versus the total debt I had (student loans, mortgage, etc). My guess is that the companies want workers who don’t need jobs because they need to be paid in order to be able to live – they want people who can afford to work for free, or even PAY TO WORK. Poor and lower-middle class people can’t afford to pay in order to work, or work for free.

The LIMRA test had everything to do with ferreting out the socio-economically disadvantaged job applicants and nothing to do with actual, bona fide job qualifications.

As an author making between $30 and $100 a month in royalties from book sales (supplemented by food stamps), I’ve seen the same thing in the literary fields. In order to get hired as a staff writer with a liveable salary at some mainstream news rag, I would have to be a thin, 20-something year old “Barbie doll” – not the chubby 41 year old that I am.

In order to gain recognition and credit (and renumeration) for my work writing for online newspapers, and eventually profit from being an author, I have to work for free as an unembedded journalist – risking threats to my health and life – until I get a big enough scoop to get recognition and get funded with grant money by organizatins such as DemocracyNOW.org or The Nation in order to continue writing about events that the mainstream news media will not.

I never had the opportunity to travel abroad like so many upper-middle class/rich people have. But I have been to, and witnessed first hand, the hellholes of the maquiladoras in Ciudad Juarez in Mexico (created by NAFTA, GATT and CAFTA – all which benefit rich white males at the helm of corporations).

I am going to Logan and Mingo Counties in West Virginia this week. I will see firsthand (and document) the devastation caused by strip mining and mountain top removal, and the poverty in which many locals must endure in a region ruled by “King Coal”, a petulant and sadistic monarchy that made its pile off of the debt peonage system they’ve forced on the poor and working classes there – people that the middle and upper-middle classes castigate for being “white trash”, “hillbillies”, and “uneducated rednecks”.

Companies that have cornered the fuel and energy market, companies that make everything from clothing to machinery; all want workers to work for nothing while sacrificing the global and domestic environment in the process.

http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/2007/10/16/don-imus-might-make-30-million-for-getting-fired-and-rehired/

On my other website, The Hathor Legacy, I’ve talked about leaving the film industry because they said I had to make white, straight men the center of every story, and I found that appalling. But there’s another reason I left: the long period of unpaid or below-living-wage work you have to do that’s called “your dues.” Film is so competitive that they can get people who are willing to work for nothing. Unfortunately, these are mostly upper-middle and higher class kids whose exposure to people other than white men begins and ends with mom and the hispanic housekeeper in their Bel Air home. No wonder Hollywood is bigoted – its very hiring practices discourage diversity somethin’ fierce. (And ignore anyone who says this is bullshit because you just have to make sacrifices – they’re assuming you have the resources to get yourself fed WHILE literally working full-time for no money at all, which is a very privileged assumption coming from people who take for granted their own resources and don’t realize what having “nothing” actually means.)