Comments on Reading Tonight

Wow, I really, really disagree with you on Nickel and Dimed. I'd be curious to reread it now with that critique in mind, but at the time I read it I thought it was an important look at something that doesn't get discussed often enough: the fact that even for those lucky people who don't fall into the ranks of the unemployed, just having a job isn't some magical key to a world of opportunity. I would imagine people who work at Wal-Mart and Merry Maids and the like would rather be seen and condescended to (even if one agrees that's what she was doing, which I don't) than invisible and ignored.

And so what is the new book about?

slave owner guilt is pretty well spread around via the magic of exponential growth -- every slave owner back when could have 5000 decsendants, now.

Plus throw in those who financed slave owners traded with them transported ofr them and, ahem, allowed them to continue slavery in the US constitution, and the guilty group gets larger.

Then consider other whites who got to get free land when AfAms couldn't, who got to start buxinsses when AfAms would be lynched if they did, whites who got to go to those beautiful land grant colleges for about 100 years when AfAms couldn't, the afact that although many whites died in civil war afterwards the northern whites let the southern whites take back all power often through violence, and that over much of our history, white non slave owners bot all the goodies that came with having voting power while AfAms didn't.

So while some groups have more of it, I'd the guilt is pretty well spread around.

You can throw in the African leaders who cooperated with slavery, too. Some of their descendants are still the leading families in a couple of those nations over in Africa, I've read.

What's striking to me is that we get into all these hot debates about a magazine cover or an image in a dream in a book and fail to address very real legacies of racism today which include: (a) our drug laws aimed at reducing the vote among AfAms resulting in massive disenfranchisement, and (b) lack of real voting rights for a few hundred thousand AfAms in DC.

Our entire society pretty much ignores this stuff, including most liberals and progressives who love to play gotcha based on who said what that was insufficiently "sensitive," or imagining (perhaps wrongly) what flyover folks think when they see the NYer cover, etc.

PC, you feel guilty because you're a racist and a liar. That's you. Normal people aren't all fucked up like that, and maybe you should face it.

Levislade @1: It's about the haves and the have-nots, basically. I know that you liked the book—I remember a comment you made last month about it–but it really, really angered me. Of course, I was in the middle of my 14-year stint as a bitter retail employee, too, which might have something to do with it.

PC@2: If there's something I can feel guilty about, I'll feel guilty about it, but I can't imagine that writing letters to descendants of your great-great-etc. grandfather's slaves is going to make anybody feel any better. And the Aunt Jemima thing is totally fucking ridiculous, whether you believe in slave-owners' guilt or not.

Did Ehrenreich have to do the squiggle? An entire chapter could be devoted to that shit.

I lived through the reality of what Ehrenreich described in "Nickel and Dimed," and I did not find it condescending at all; I would say the charge of condescension is more Paul's projection of his own issues onto another person than anything to do with the author. I have been very grateful she has shed light on the reality of what it means to be working-class in America today, a situation that has only gotten WORSE since "Nickel and Dimed" came out -- and will continue to get worse. Perhaps Ehrenreich's biggest crime in this regard as far as Paul Constant is concerned was that she upset his complacency.

Barbara Ehrenreich's essay on breast cancer "Cancer Land" from Harper's many years ago changed my life. My mom had just gone through treatment, and I had alot of rage about the breast cancer culture and everything surrounding it... her essay made me realize I wasn't alone in those feelings. That essay alone will give her a pass with me forever.

yes, mary@ 7,the breast cancer article was a revelation, and a breath of fresh air. bless you, barbara. and "nikel & dimed" was an important book, paul--whatever you quibbles (or squiggles) with it may be. she was talking about something very few bothered to examine in such detail. she deserves a lot of credit for that.

All that I can remember, from this distance in time, of Barbara E's N&D is:

a) her doing the simple math of wages & cost of living without looking at the reality of it, that people DO survive (eh, kinda) in these situations, with lots of help from family and friends, be it babysitting or fixing a car. Or not having your own place to live.

b) her peculiar assumption that it's just crazy to suspect that $6/hr worker may not be so smart. It's not fair to always assume that, of course, but in general, folks who are not total mouth breathers manage to get a promotion, or get a better job (esp. one not at Wal-Mart.)

Yes, that irked me greatly. Because she was just... passin' through. In my world, this shit's for keeps, and there are some really stupid people running loose out there, and you'll find them at the bottom end of the pay scale.

(Or at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.)

And you'll find them screwing things up, too, if you stick at a workplace long enough to notice or care how it runs. (And have to, and here's my corn pone opinion -- sweep up behind their mistakes.)

Work with those folks for a decade and get back to me, B.E.

Disclaimer: and I generally like B.E. and her politics.

@9

Susan, you're real fucking stupid and you're running loose. Kill yourself?

Barbara E was good on Colbert but the talk at the library was boring. Just whining about the usual stuff to people who already agree. I'm tired of it. Come back to me with a plan of action, or be really really really funny. One of the two.