Green-Colored Glasses

During the summer of 2007, I worked in New York City for a nonprofit organization and had the opportunity to explore a lot of different parts of the city. Although by no means coming close to checking out the majority of what it had to offer, about two months into my internship, I thought I had gotten a good sense of NYC. From having at least ventured into each borough at least two times, checked out live music ranging from old school jazz to hip hop-techno fusion, eaten things like cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery (a place featured in Sex in the City) and soulfood in some great places in Harlem (not to mention had more than my fair share of pizza by the slice!), and investigating nightlife in places from the Bronx to the Meatpacking District to Brooklyn, I had kept myself busy.

All it took to burst my bubble was a visit from an old high school friend and her mother. During the weekend I spent with them, I stayed in a really nice hotel only a few blocks from Times Square, took taxis everywhere, got to go on fairly expensive trips to Ellis Island and around Central Park in a horse carriage, at dinner at literally multiple Zagat “Very Expensive” restaurants a night, and went into stores into which I never really thought about going. It was an experience that left me grateful for my friend’s generosity but that also left me with many thoughts about the class implications at hand. I would later come to execute a Type I diabetes camp with children from underserved communities to find out that they not only did not know the side of NYC to which my friend had exposed me but also did not the side of it that even I had come to know.

My wake-up call all came back to me when flipping through one of my roommate’s Vanity Fair issues in which I came across its guide to Manhattan. Featuring a map with illustrations of the must-see places in the metropolitan area, the guide seemed to be depicting a side of New York City to which I had remained naïve during my time there. Online there is a comparable Vanity Fair Agenda, which explicitly claims to be “the inside story on the latest people, places and things that are shaping today’s culture.” All of this reminded me of points that came up in Professor Nelson’s Lecture 15 “Bourdieu and American Consumption” about cultural capital and that American Apartheid makes about residential as well as social isolation. The fact that the social and material norms associated with class could be powerful enough to keep people’s worlds fairly distinct in spite of physical closeness definitely humbled me during my time in the Big Apple.
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Toll Lanes of Life

I was sitting in an airport recently staring out large windows at planes landing near two men standing and enjoying the same view. It seemed as though they were traveling together on business, and I happened to overhear their conversation at the point when they began to discuss gas prices. At first they both expressed relief because of the recent drops in the price of gasoline, complaining about how extremely high they had gotten. Then one of the guys mentioned that he was apprehensive about increased traffic, noting to the agreement of his friend that he would be willing to pay more at the pump if it meant less people on the road.

While the man’s concerns about more congested roads were not realized, at least not in the month of October], I still wanted to write about how his points related to Pierre Bourdieu’s discussion of one’s distance from necessity and how it influences one’s class status. (Nelson, Lecture 14 “Accounting for Taste (Part II)”) The men’s agreement with one another that slightly higher gas prices would not be a major issue if it would mean saving them time stood out to me as an indication of their economic capital, since they had the luxury of being able to afford the costs, and to some extent their cultural capital, in that they valued their time more than saving some money.

Although I too would be willing to fork over a few extra dollars a week to alleviate rush hour traffic, I can definitely relate to those who are not really in a position to do so, financially or psychologically. In my case, having to rely on public transportation to get to places when in Boston and NYC during one summer there have shown me how dependent one can be on things completely out of one’s control when lacking money or material assets such as a car. More recently the costs of going to multiple medical schools for interviews have led me to always seek out the cheapest flights available, even when the itineraries are atrocious and I could technically have paid more. (I literally flew from Los Angeles to Los Vegas to San Francisco, making what should have been an hour or so journey about five so that I could save not much more than $100. Fortunately my trip in the other direction was direct between LAX and SFO) But the fact that I have not been able to work since my schedule is so demanding this semester and am not used to seeing so much money leave my bank account in general, “I could technically have” did not lend itself to “I did,” thus illustrating Bourdieu’s points about one’s structured habitus’ ability to structure one’s life.

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Whatever Happened to the Good Ol’ Hokey-Pokey?

Over Thanksgiving break a few friends and I were invited to the home of gracious woman with whom we work in Mattapan. Having been to her home before, I was excited to get the chance to see her outgoing family members and enjoy some delicious soul food, to which HUDS unfortunately cannot hold a candle. Upon arriving at her home, I was thrilled to find that a few of the younger kids remembered my face and others at least recalled the glitter war we had had the year prior. After having some good laughs and two trips to the buffet-style selection of food, a good number of us sat down to play cards and dominoes in the living room and listen to some music.

The games were getting heated as points started to add up, and all of sudden one of the guys started laughing and got up to call some kids into the room. My friends and I looked over to see what was going on. Before we knew it, the stereo system had been turned up and two of the little boys who had been running in and out of the room to get sodas prior to this moment were standing next to the guy who had called them in and was currently explaining to us how they liked to dance to this song. The next thing I know, the two boys are dancing provocatively to ““Take You Down” ” in a manner similar to the way singer Chris Brown performs it.

All of us in the room, including myself, smiled and laughed, but what immediately came to mind were the points Professor Nelson had made in Lecture 12 “The Culture of Poverty” regarding lower class children being exposed to sex earlier than upper class children. While I cannot say if the children themselves were poor—in fact, I do not believe that they are because the woman who I was visiting is fairly well-off—Mattapan is known for having high concentration of low socioeconomic populations, which means that it is highly likely that these boys’ habitus has been informed accordingly. My friends also acknowledged being disturbed by the dance, although most thought it to be quite harmless. I too thought that the dance in and of itself was not the issue but the other related things discussed by Professor Nelson, such as abandonment of wives and children, since it seemed as though the children’s individual class status was not protective enough to prevent their mentalities and tastes from being influenced by media, their surroundings, and even their relatives.
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The Glass Curtain

Over the course of this past semester, I have been traveling what I consider to be an excessive amount for medical school interviews. After having to schedule and then go on trips to over ten cities in six states, I quickly became apt at navigating both Travelocity.com as well as airport terminals. Throughout all of this, it never crossed my mind to even think about taking a first-class flight, but on two occasions I did, and each time was fairly distinctive.

The first time I rode first-class, I actually had already boarded the plane and took my seat in coach. When the flight attendant approached me, I was quick to show her that I had my seat beat on. Shaking her head, she explained that a “friend of mine” had asked that I be moved up front. After assuring her she was mistaken, she insisted that the seat was still mine to take, so I moved up past the flimsy curtain that separated first-class from coach. Having been situated in my seat in coach, I immediately noticed the difference in space when moving up to first-class. I also noticed that everyone in the section with me was a white male above the age of 35, most in business casual attire. When the other flight attendant came by to ask me what I would like to drink, prior to take-off mind you, he bent down to make eye contact. During the short flight, I found time to pull out my laptop and was pleased to realize in the armrest there was a surface that spanned the entire width of the seat, which was far more conducive to doing work and having my Coke than the mini-fold down table on the back of seats in coach. But overall I was not really floored by experience, not thinking it worth the extra $100 or so dollars it would have cost me to upgrade. While the increased elbow and leg room as well as surface space was ideal, something that resonated with the ideas of space presented by Paul Fussell, I feel as though my distance from necessity as discussed by Pierre Bourdieu make it unfavorable for me to spend money of that luxury when I could use it for more pressing concerns. (Nelson, Lecture 14 ” Accounting for Taste (Part II)”)

My next experience in first-class was not any more remarkable, but one thing that was interested was that this time I boarded the plane on a first-class ticket because a gate agent had felt bad about some issues with my prior flight. I hesitated to board when first-class was initially called, electing rather to jump in line with the first group of coach passengers. Once I was seated, I wished I would have waited until the end. I think in part because I did feel comfortable again with the crowd, although this time it had more gender diversity. I was also bother because of the fact that I was unable to explain how I got to first-class to others walking by. I agree with Bourdieu’s assertion that “Social agents not only choose from among the available options, but are strategically self-aware of how their choices position them in the social hierarchy.” (Nelson, Lecture 13 “Accounting for Tastes (Part I)”) Accordingly, I felt as though people who saw me in first-class likely perceived me as privileged, wealthy and to some extent spoiled. At one point a women who appeared to be coming home from service in the army and with whom I had spoken prior to boarding walked past me, and I actually asked her if she wanted the seat. While she declined, undoubtedly taken aback by my offer, I would have preferred to take her seat back in coach because her service was more deserving then the circumstances that had gotten me the seat. Looking back, I still do not feel as though I was entitled to the seat, but now I see threads of the ideas articulated by Annette Lareau in Unequal Childhoods in that a sense of entitlement does not come easy to me because of my working class upbringing.
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The Coupon Contessa

Growing up, one of my favorite things to read was the comics section of the Sunday paper. Unfortunately for my mother, it was in the comics that the coupons were often placed and subsequently lost if I managed to find the paper before she did. Although I did not really pay much attention to it at the time, as I was growing up, my mother seemed to be less and less concerned as to where I had misplaced the coupons and did not seem unnerved at all when my dad threw out the though of cutting our subscription since he could access news via the Internet more conveniently. The reason I came to think about this was because over breakfast one morning I caught myself being floored by a woman named Nora Kapche who is also apparently known as the “Coupon Contessa].”

With the host of Great Day Houston, Kapche stood before various groups of grocery store items categorized by how much she would pay for them. To the astonishment of the audience and myself, she started out with items like mustard and deodorant and asserted that she never pays for any of the items; according to her, one could get all the items in the group for free with coupons and strategic shopping. The next group was of items she would pay about a quarter or less on, and the rest of the groups were equally cheap. Stunned I stuck around to learn how she did it only to find myself disappointed when she pulled out a huge binder and discussed how “all you have to do” is keep a log of what you need, which stores carry those items for what price, when those stores have sales, and so much more information that overwhelmed me to even think about.

While I quickly discounted such Coupon Contessa’s approach for myself, my mind quickly though about the class issues at work, particularly in regards to Pierre Bourdieu’s idea about one’s distance from necessity. Although it seems as though Coupon Contessa seems not to be indigent, her preference to be thrifty still seems to be a “taste of necessity.” (Nelson, Lecture 14 ” Accounting for Taste (Part II)”) Not only did Kapche share how she began her strategic saving strategies during times of financial hardship, but I also began to see how my mother’s relationship with coupons changed as money became less of a concern in our house. While she still uses coupons that come in the mail for her favorite stores and goes for sale items, she no longer is anxious about finding coupons that seem to have lost themselves in the depth of her purse and the like. It is only because we have the luxury of not having to exert ourselves to save a few dollars a week that we elect to do so, but it is humbling to think about how others are essentially forced to expend energy and resources to do so.
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IVY League Incest

People often joke about how individuals go to Harvard Business School to network, but building connections and getting competitive positions are pretty serious activities in the lives of quite a number of undergraduates. Recently when interviewing at a medical school at another Ivy League university, I was flipping through a book of its current students and their undergraduate schools when at one point one of my fellow interviewees commented on the fact that almost everyone had went to an Ivy League school or the equivalent (i.e. Stanford, Hopkins, etc.). While the vast majority of schools can claim heterogeneity amongst its students’ class demographics, it was interesting to get a sense of the class-like system at the university level.

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to live with some guys who go to Rutgers University, where I was able to discern first hand about the privileges that underlie attending a school like Harvard. One of the guys was majoring in economics and spoke about how it seemed to him as though Ivy League students get recruited whereas comparable students at other institutions have to compete for quite disproportionately fewer spots in areas like investment banking and consulting. He attributed this to the fact that the people who run the relevant companies tend to be Ivy League students or run with that crowd, which made me think about a talk that I attended last year during which the founder of a job placement company noted that quite a number of employers would ask explicitly for only candidates from Ivy League institutions, with a few actually explicitly asking that their candidates not be. This called to my mind points Professor Nelson brought up in Lecture 10 “Networks, Cliques, and Clubs” regarding self-selection and class patterning because one of the reason cited by the aforementioned founder for such requests was because of sentiments towards the “secret handshake” that seemed to characterize the relationship between students from Ivy League institutions across graduating classes.

Given the comments Professor Nelson made about prep schools often providing entry for many, it seems as though the selectivity of who is able to come to schools like Harvard is what perpetuates such close ties in its alumni network. The fact that people in higher socioeconomic brackets are less likely to separate work and play probably gives more traction to the idea of looking towards select schools for recruits. Still, awareness of this phenomena make class mobility seem that much more constrained because the greater part of the student bodies at Ivy League institutions are already from fairly high socioeconomic backgrounds whereas students who could benefit more from the agility of an Ivy League institution can confer are more likely to not attend one.

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Escaping the Harvard Bubble

I think in many ways Harvard does a great job of leveling the playing field for people with different levels of economic capital through things like its all inclusive meal plans and partially randomized housing system. While not able to get at all the nuanced ways that material assets create differences, it has made class less evident for better or for worse. When saying this, I am thinking in particular about how I often find myself not realizing how some of my friends fall much closer to the extremes of the socioeconomic class spectrum only after knowing them for quite a while.

This was particularly true for me with one of my roommates. Always aware that she dressed well and liked to eat out, it was only when we came to share a suite that I was able to get a more accurate sense of how much she was spending and was subsequently floored. I began to realize that many times when I had assumed she had eaten in the dining hall a different time than me that she had actually gone out to eat and that shopping was a regular pastime for her. For the most part, my growing awareness of her class did not change our relationship although my denials of her requests to go out did occur more frequent since they increased in number whereas my budget did not.

When reading Benjamin DeMott’s The Imperial Middle: Why Americans Can’t Think Straight About Class this week, certain parts of it caused me to think immediately of my roommate. This was particularly true for DeMott’s assertion that, “Bemused by the mystique of access—of intouchness with ‘all walks of life’—rich and middling-rich finagle summer jobs for their children on road crews or as muck-out hands in racing stables.” (80) The reason for this was because midway through the semester she and I started to share a suite, my roommate decided that she was going to work as a waitress in a local restaurant. Sort of taken aback by this, I asked her why she was going to do this, she casually mentioned wanting to have more readily available spending money but more adamantly that she wanted to get out of “the Harvard bubble,” a commonly used phrase by students who want to get out of the social network affiliated with the school. This “idea of visiting another life, a life of art, a life above, a life below” (DeMott, 80-81) was interesting to me because my friend did not really see herself as doing anything profound whereas I saw it as clearly class-related. Whereas the thoughts that came immediately to my mind were that she was going to find it tough to balance a physically demanding jobs with class, she saw it as an opportunity to socialize and meet new people.

After a few weeks into her job, my roommate told me proudly that she had been moved up to a semi-management position much to the dismay of her co-workers, who, according to her, did not demonstrate the leadership skills she had. Her points about being able to direct people and the like resonated with Professor Nelson’s points in Lecture 3 “Revenge of the Nerds” about the correlation between education and management skills, whereas her points about not being able to communicate easily with them resonated with points in Lecture 9 “Language and Social Class.” In the end she left her job out of frustration, unknowingly going against the ideas of classlessness that her employment illustrated in my eyes.
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Cashing In on Health

Last semester I took a course with Professor Christakis in which we discussed at length the Health Transition Pattern], illustrated below:

Essentially depicting the general trends that characterize societies as they move through pre-modern to industrial to post-industrial status, the model illustrates how health concerns transition from acute, infectious diseases to more chronic and mental conditions. While there is a lot of effort to increase awareness of the growing prevalence of chronic diseases in developing countries, there is a fairly pervasive understanding that the spread infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and AIDS is ramped. This cartoon] poignantly depicts how developed countries take for granted some of the issues that we have the luxury of placing as top concerns such as obesity and depression, which, all be them important concerns, do not pose as immediate and undeniable threats to one’s live as do many infectious diseases.

But the preceding inequalities are not only present on a global scale—there are obvious disparities within our country. The positive correlation of higher socioeconomic status and improved health outcomes is one that characterizes the realities around a number of diseases. Professor Nelson briefly mentioned in lecture one day how the rich tend to be germaphobic not to mention they tend to live in less cramped, populous areas according to Paul Fussell. There is also the fact that the higher one’s class, the more in tune one is with the latest information on healthy behaviors such as nutritional concerns and screenings as well as the more able one is to act on that information. The fact that unhealthy food is often more affordable and convenient for burdened families not to mention the tendency for concentrated areas of poor people tend to lead to undesirable contexts for being outside and engaging in physical activities are part of the reason. There is also the issues concerning personal agency, particularly when considering Oscar Lewis’s points about strong present-time orientation and other things that likely influence individuals’ predisposition towards preventative measures that seem constraining in the moment. (Nelson, Lecture 12 “The Culture of Poverty Thesis”)

Over the summer I worked for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, whose philanthropic activities focus on improving the health and health care of Americans. It was there that I learned more about the relationships between class as well as residential status, race, and other factors on health outcomes concerning anything from domestic violence to substance abuse. I also learned how initiatives could be framed to challenge health disparities, which are distinct from health inequalities in that they account for differences in personal agency, by address some of the issues linked to class such as access to certain material goods, which can lead to low cultural capital taste for fast food and the like. (Nelson, Lecture 15 ” Bourdieu and American Consumption) As an aspiring physician, I strive to be cultural competent, which makes a lot of what I am learning in Sociology 155 all the more relevant.
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His and Her Class Statuses

I am an unapologetic fan of R&B. While able to look back on my youth and point to a number of songs to which I had not business listening during elementary and middle school, I can honestly say that some of my favorite songs have been with me for over a decade. But more recently I have had my interest peaked by a remix to a song called Ms. Independent. Known as “” She’s Got Her Own” ,” the song features Ne-Yo, Jamie Foxx, and Fabolous.

Initially attracted to the beat as well as the overall theme of a successful woman being attractive, I came to hear upon more careful listening later the Fabolous’ lines:

And there’s not many, who catch my eye
We both wearing Gucci, she match[es] my fly.

This immediately reminded me of some of the points brought up by Professor Nelson in Lecture 10 “Networks, Cliques, and Clubs.” One’s pool of potential partners seem to fall into the category of secondary group members since relationships with them do have a specific aim that can lead to them rising into the category of primary group members. The themes of self-selection and class patterning found by Ed Laumann resonate with the lines rapped by Fabolous in that he seems to be seeking out women who are able to dress a certain way that is comparable to him, which can be seen as a hallmark of their class similarities. While not as explicit as finals clubs or other entities Professor Nelson discussed in class, the individuals with whom one is considering a prospective relationship too seem to be screened by a similar criteria. To reflect on a personal anecdote, one of my good friends was going out with girl since the beginning of freshman year. While they were together for a long time, almost right off the bat people started to make off-handed comments that they were going to get married because they were both upper-class, both of the same race, and both had parents who met in Ivy League colleges and got married. The fact that they are no longer together proves that class similarities are not all it takes to maintain a relationship but nonetheless their relationship was likely enhanced by the ease with which they were able to go on skiing trips with one another’s families and the like.

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To SEF or Not to SEF— Is that the Question?

I remember about hearing about Student Events Fund (SEF) prior to even stepping foot on campus. During the meet-and-greet dinner in Houston for accepted students, I met a rising sophomore who I talked to for quite a bit about Harvard and my concerns. When I brought up my uncertainty about the cold weather, he told me not to worry about finding money to buy clothes because Harvard gives students money to buy winter clothes. Imagine my dismay when I found out the checks to which he was referring only went to students who were SEF-eligible, which also meant that they were able to get tickets to practically any Harvard event for free. While I take some personal issue with SEF because of its all-or-nothing characteristic since it arguably leaves students right above the unreleased cutoff in an undesirable situation, I do believe that SEF has tremendous implications for the ability of students with little economic capital to acquire cultural capital.

According to Douglas Holt, lower culture capital taste is realized under financially trying circumstances were as higher culture capital taste spends a lot of money. (Nelson, Lecture 15 ” Bourdieu and American Consumption) What SEF does is help alleviate eligible students’ economic barriers so that they can enjoy things regardless of costs. This undoubtedly enables students who would not normally be able to attend things like operas, ballets, and the like to go. Most students with SEF that I know take advantage of the opportunities they have to attend events, but it is interesting to note that they do not always go to things that may be associated with higher cultural capital.

My roommate and I were talking about it, and she told me that as someone who has planned a number of events on campus, certain ones have large percentages of SEF students come. I do not want to conflate issues concerning the intersection of ethnicity with class for the events with which she works are often with are Latino. At the same time, it is interesting to consider the fact that what could be considered a change in the composition of one’s capital because in essence SEF increases one’s socioeconomic capital, it does not necessarily change their tastes. This may have to do with the fact that while no longer financially constrained, their habitus, as it is defined by Pierre Bourdieu, is structured in such a way that they are not exposed to other things or do not have a preference for them. (Nelson, Lecture 13 “Accounting for Taste (Part I)”) Even the fact that some people with SEF are vocal about it, including one of my friends who often asks at certain club meetings if he can SEF particular events and claims he will not go if he cannot more so out of principle than inability to pay (as evidenced by his constant eating out and Blackberry), is more characteristic of those with low cultural capital, whereas the ability to downplay financial issues, which SEF allows Harvard to subtly do, is more indicative of high class culture. (Nelson, Lecture 15 “Bourdieu and American Consumption”)

On a sidenote, another roommate of mine joined the conversation, a which point I choose to gripe about the need for SEF to be done on a gradient because I feel as though people right above the cutoff likely go to far fewer shows than those with SEF for financial reasons. In order to make my case, I threw out the idea of doing a randomized study. One of my roommates, who too is concentrating in Sociology, pointed out that I could not select a particular house since socioeconomic status is not random once blocking occurs because of the ideas about self-selection and class patterning begin to take shape.

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