WINTER 2012 - National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and ...

What’s a Girl Like You
full-blown act of resistance to/defiance against middle-class norms, “over-wearing,” so
to speak, their working-class markers. If working-class students do not approach,
me, I find a way to talk with them outside the formal class environment, whether
they ask or not. And beware the clever, brilliant first-generation students! I hone
in on them with well-developed radar, offering them advice they did not ask for,
holding them to standards to which I may not hold others.
This pattern manifested itself recently with a mid-30s undergraduate woman
I will call Jean. Jean goes out of her way to mark herself as a working-class,
first-generation student, over-wearing the markers. Her clothing, comportment,
language, speech patterns, interaction style, and attitudes scream “Working
class!” Early in the quarter, she told me about one of my colleagues who
dismissed her intellectually early on in his work with her, and advised her out
of college. She told me this proudly, almost as if she were challenging me to
do the same. When she spoke in class, her contributions were usually off the
mark, overly personal, and defensive (she presumed everyone would attack her
because of her conservative leanings). She did not know how to have reasoned,
intellectual conversation/debate about policy issues. She knew how to get
reference material from popular press/culture sources but did not know how to
access more reliable, scholarly materials.
I watched the non-working-class students quickly dismiss her. They had
the tools Jean lacked—they knew how to debate/argue, how to access and cite
legitimate sources with standing, they dressed differently (more polished, even
if they were sporting a carefully coiffed bed head), they were not defensive, they
had a wealth of experiences to draw on, and they knew how to talk with the
professors. But everything about her demeanor made her “untouchable” to the
very students from which she could learn a great deal, and they from her. And, as
is often the case with race, students “sat together in the cafeteria” (Tatum, 2003),
metaphorically speaking, with like-class students.
About one third of the way through the quarter, after I required Jean to
revise and resubmit assignments and challenged her to step up her work, she hit
the ball out of the park in a writing assignment. I saw in her writing someone
very different from the person she publicly presented. I sat her down and told
her my story. I said she could be taken seriously by others and has the potential
to achieve great things, but she needs to be willing to adjust some essential parts
of herself. She must become bicultural by acting, comporting, and writing like
her middle- and upper-class colleagues. If she does not make these changes, she is
not going to be successful in many educational or work environments. Her other
professors may dismiss her, as my colleague did, because she was not bringing
her best self to her work and they, likely, would not have seen under the surface
to the class differences affecting her performance. If a professor is not living
biculturally when it comes to class, or has no consciousness about how class can
present itself in a learning environment, he or she can miss that class of origin
may be at the base of a student’s struggles.
Journal of Public Affairs Education 59