Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label class

Book Review: This is Not a Test by José Vilson

My family is privileged, especially in terms of education. We live in Chicago, home to the much-maligned Chicago Public School system. She has caring teachers who push her to be her best, encourage her when she is still learning a skill and remember us by name (at least first, some still fail to remember my daughter & I don’t share a last name). Outside of the weight of her backpack, we have little to complain about. For her. Yet we understand that where we are privileged, we know it is not an even distribution across the city. When I was pregnant and even throughout the first years of Ella’s life, we would field the question, “So you’re going to move to the suburbs right?” No. As a kid who grew up in the suburbs, I dreamt of moving to “the big city” of Chicago when I was old enough. And I did. I love Chicago and the fact that despite the economic segregation we live under, we still manage to have a diverse group of people in our lives. My husband and I are also committed to ...

Roe at 40: Poor Women and Abortion

Infographic courtesy of the Guttmacher Institute 

Nurturing Responsible Privilege

Can it be done? I sure hope so. While I still identify with my working class background, I also acknowledge the numerous privileges I have earned. My mother always let my sisters and I know that my parents moved us into our school district for the "better" education we would get. This wasn't just so we would get a good education, it was so that we would have better career options than our parents had and thus for our children to have a "better" life. So here I sit with bachelor's and masters degrees in my fairly comfortable upper middle class life. wow. What got me thinking about all of this were two things: 1) Our daughter came home with a note about an after-school science program. My husband asked her if she wanted to do it and she said yes. He immediately filled out the application and was ready to grab the checkbook to pay the almost $200 fee. WOW. I pulled out of Model UN and color guard camp for money reasons. Thus when I did get to participat...