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

Cheryl Simrell King
it would be to return home, not only as the dark horse or black sheep, but as an
“other,” and how hard it would be to maintain a sense of history and familial
identity. They could not tell me I would, at least early in my work, be constantly
questioning my veracity, feeling an imposter, always looking over my shoulder
waiting to be called out and told to go back where I belong.
I appreciate midlife because I am beyond most of these struggles. My family
members and I have negotiated new relationships based on my leaving a great
deal of who I am out of these relationships. I have learned to love and respect
their need to hold a part of me constant. Meanwhile, they have learned to love
and accept parts of me that have changed. I remain in limbo and always will. I
accept that I will forever have one foot in one place and the other in another;
this rarely pains me. Perhaps this is why a regular practice of yoga (or something
similar) is essential—in yoga, I learn and develop the ability to balance in
precarious poses, to build strength from balancing, and to lean into twists and
turns because they are cleansing and grounding. Through leaning into the twists
and turns of my life, I no longer question my purpose, my right to be where I
am, my intellectual capacities, or my abilities. I no longer feel like an imposter.
Moving beyond these struggles and learning the delicate balance of limbo
brought me to a full awakening about class.
TRANSLATING CLASS INTO THE CLASSROOM
I now return to the beginning of this essay, to the conversation with the
working-class student. When asked what she wanted people to know, she said
not to presume equality of access—to know that not all students have access
to the same resources and this is based in large part on one’s class of origin. In
response to her request, I posited that middle- and upper-class folks carry an
invisible knapsack of class privilege, much like the invisible knapsack of White
privilege that Peggy McIntosh (1988) described in her germinal work on White
privilege. My recommendations for what we can do inside and outside the
classroom to raise awareness of the role of class in our field, and in our teaching,
are organized around the assumption that many of us fail to recognize the
privileges of class, nor are we aware of how these shape our students’ experiences.
To this end, teachers and scholars of public administration can do work in
three areas to make social class an integral part of our discipline, including: (a)
raising your own class consciousness and, if needed, seeking colleagues to whom
you can refer first-generation students; (b) integrating class into your courses
both as a matter of study and as an analytical frame; and (c) disempowering
“covering” and making the mainstream more inclusive. Each of these suggestions
are addressed briefly below.
Raise your own class consciousness; seek out colleagues to whom you can send
first-generation students. Teachers and scholars of public administration need an
awareness of how class shapes and delimits students’ experiences and possibilities.
In turn, we must translate this awareness into our interactions with students
62 Journal of Public Affairs Education