#542 Limbo (the book....)

Tuesday 01/24/06

I am reading Limbo, subtitled Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams, by Alfred Lubrano. It's about the role of class in American society, specifically about what happens to people from blue collar families when they cross over into a white collar life. Along with the different approach to college, the problems of "fitting in" socially, he points out that children of the working class are taught to "sit down and shut up", more so than children of the middle class. They expect conformity and supervision. In the working class home, there is less conversation, and what there is is more concrete, less about ideas and opinions than in a middle or upper class home. One is expected to "follow the line". This is powerfully reinforced by neighborhood peers.

College often opens their eyes. They go home with all kinds of new ideas and ways of thinking and looking at things, and it often causes them problems with the family.

As adults, people with blue collar roots tend to obey the rules, and rarely buck the system. They "talk straight", and expect straight talk, while in the white collar world, people rarely say what they mean.

I am only about a third of the way through the book, and my head is spinning.

My father was a officer in the Air Force. Through my high school years he was the base commander, which made us the top of the heap. Especially where we lived - on the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Heck, when I was younger, he was with the embassy in Canada (he wore suits, not a uniform), and because my mother was intelligent and beautiful and a much admired hostess, I many times ate Sunday lunch at our dining room table with the ambassador, who frequently just "dropped in". So I thought that we were white collar, middle class.

I was wrong. And it explains so much.

Neither of my parents had gone to college. My father got into OTS and flight training school during WWII by scoring highest of the candidates on what was essentially an IQ test. My paternal grandfather was a traveling salesman, and my maternal grandfather was a railroad engineer (as in he drove the train, not designed it). So I come from solidly blue, thoroughly working class, collars, and I never realized it before.

I think a lot of my father's anger and frustration was due to the fact that he didn't fit in socially with the other officers, his peers. He just wasn't smooth enough, just didn't use the same vocabulary and approach. I know he was widely respected for his abilities, he was often sent to problem bases as temporary commander to straighten them out, and he worked on Project Bluebook for a while, and yet his promotions always took that little bit longer to come.

I recognize the resistance to college described by Lubrano. I went only because I won all those scholarships and grants. My parents didn't even consider college until after I won the awards, which meant I applied very late (June, to be exact) and wouldn't have gotten in were it not for my test scores. None of my four siblings went to college, although they were all capable of college work. As is pointed out in the book, a "real job" was considered more important.

I recognize in myself the traits common to what Lubrano calls the Straddlers - those who straddle the blue-white line.

Jay, on the other hand, was pure white collar, middle class. Maybe even upper class without the patrician overtones. He had that sense of entitlement. I am starting to understand now why some of the attitudes and thinking patterns in his family were so confusing and foreign to me.

Because, hey, I think blue collar. Wow. Who'd a thunk it!