Some manage to do just that, actually. They’re ashamed of their background and view the sacrificing parent as a sucker.

There is nothing heroic about escaping your own oppression. Helping to end oppression is what’s heroic. Escaping it benefits no one but the person who escaped.

That’s why people who escape hellish situations often have survival guilt, irrational and unfair as that is, about all the people they leave. For this Facebook group to call themselves heroes when all they did was look out for number one is more than a little sickening.

You have every right to feel great about escaping your own oppression, but if that makes you feel like a hero, I think you’ve missed the point too.

Would you rather we all just stayed where we were; didn’t try to make a little more money than our parents, go for a job we might actually enjoy, unlike our parents, maybe even work for a decent house rather than the rotting tenement we grew up in? Despite the fact that most of us won’t make it?

As Jennifer said, it usually takes generations to escape. I was a lucky one who did escape. And it was against the odds. I did well in school even though I had no parent to help me with my homework every afternoon. I managed to go to a pretty good university. Despite not having the money to pay for it. And even an excellent grad school. Again, without the money to pay for it. The first person in my entire family to do so. I now have a decent job. That I mostly enjoy. That allows me to not worry about whether I’ll be able to pay the rent. You cannot believe the anxiety I no longer feel.

I take exception to the idea that I left my neighbors behind and am now trying to blend in with the middle class. I look back on my accomplishments and I am proud of myself, but also of my mother, who sacrificed to provide me with the few opportunities I had and encouraged me to seize them. Just about every situation mentioned in the article (and more) happened to my mother – (community) college cut short; divorced by her husband and left to care for her two children alone; worked two (and often three) low paying jobs to make ends meet; suffered sexual harassment at a job because she couldn’t afford to quit; went without meals so her children could eat. Anyone who has watched her parent do all that, knowing it was for her and her sibling, cannot possibly betray her parent by trying to blend in with a group that more often than not dismisses her trials as something that simply doesn’t happen in this country.

When you have truly experienced the misery of being the working poor, and escaped it sometimes feels like you’re a hero. I do admit that some may try to forget where they came from, because it is such an unpleasant situation, nobody wants to remember. We are sometimes just so relieved to be out that we don’t want to think about it a second longer, even to advocate for those still trapped. It is when we remember that we feel like a hero. We just need to remember that heros take action on behalf of others as well as themselves.

I had a problem with them using the John Lennon quote, which I always thought was about solidarity with the working classes, not leaving your neighbours behind in the deteriorating tower block you grew up in while you put on a suit and try to blend in with the middle classes. (and probably talk about how lazy they are).
I can’t find the link unfortunately cos I’m at work and facebook is blocked.