LITR 5731: Seminar in
American Multicultural Literature: Minority
Sample Student Final Exam Submission,
Kathleen Walker-Anderson
My Experience with the Issue of Class in American Minority Literature
For my midterm assignment, I attempted to grapple with the issue of class, specifically objective 2b, to detect “class” as a repressed subject of American discourse. It is extremely crucial for me to be able to understand this theme in depth and be able to decipher its presence within American literature with a critical eye. If I am to successfully write a collection of short stories about the working class, then I better be able to examine the function of class in American literature. This essay will discuss my experience with this course relative to my previous studies of Minority Literature which first brought the issue of race and class to my attention, while also attempting to revisit the repressed subject of class in several of our class readings.
I ran into trouble with thematic focus in the midterm, which became complicated by trying to decode the complex and lasting effects of the Color Code in relation to the working class. Instead of being able to approach the subject solely with the idea that “race replaces class,” I found that the deep rooted issues of the characteristics associated with skin color overrode my approach, until the focus switched to “decoding the Color Code” in order to see how race replaces class. The Color Code, which defined the association of ‘dark skin’ with ‘uncivilized’ and ‘uneducated’, allowed race to replace class, therefore the language of class must still exist across color lines.
Race can never be ignored, but class needs to be discussed also. The foundation of Western society is rooted in European influence. We discussed during the seminar how the hierarchy of the European aristocracy over peasants was translated in America as the hierarchy of white masters over black slaves. The former constituted an economic distinction, while the latter defined two sets of people by race, so the economic became confused with racial distinction. Foundations, however, don’t disappear. What began as strictly a class distinction did not morph into a racial distinction; it has just been repressed by race.
My first experience with a Minority Literature class was my senior seminar, Writing American Memory, during my undergraduate studies. It was the first course I took that incorporated a variety of literature written by Minority Authors. The course was designed very similar to this one in that we studied African-American, Native-American, Mexican-American, and Gay Literature. The focus of the class dealt primarily with personal memoirs instead of fiction. As I went through the readings, I began to notice similarities across color lines. In Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, Dorothy Allison related her poverty-stricken rural upbringing in South Carolina. When Zora Neale Hurston returned to Eatonville to collect African-American folklore and stories for Mules and Men, she did not pull into a middle class neighborhood. There are no oral traditions rooted in dreams of wealth in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller. In general, I noticed that within the literature, though the races were diverse, the economic factors were always there. And I began to wonder, why does it seem that you have to be poor to be a Minority? Is it possible to be a Minority and not have a background rooted in the working class experience? Can you be poor and white, and still be a Minority? Or does being white automatically keep you from being anything but part of the dominant culture? Whose American Dream is it? Those were not questions, but conundrums.
What I found during this seminar was that although the economic factors are there, they are replaced by race, repressed by race, intertwined with race, and difficult to separate from race; yet I would still like to attempt the task of keeping the theme of the working class experience across color lines as a backdrop for my thesis. If it wasn’t difficult to analyze, I guess it wouldn’t be worth writing about.
“You know you’re American if you can’t talk about class.” [from Stanley Aronowitz]
Oppression of African-Americans began as a strict hierarchy of whites and white masters oppressing black slaves. As Toni Morrison examines in Song of Solomon, after emancipation, oppression comes in the form of fear tactics. The “white bull ghosts” that Freddie saw kill his mother are a symbol for that sort of white oppression of black people. This symbol focuses strictly on racial oppression. When Milkman and Guitar see the white peacock, Milkman is surprised to discover it can’t even fly. Guitar explains that his tail is too large, “All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity” (179). This statement denotes a higher class designation, and within this line there is an allusion to the old adage that money can’t buy happiness. This is the language of class and denotes economic oppression by subverting the dominant culture’s language of toiling for “luxury and gain” (Equiano 63). Money “weighs down” the rich man with greed, yet it also weighs down those who feel the effects of toiling for survival. The description of the peacock as white leads us again to race where the wealthy white dominant oppresses the poor black minority.
The presence of the subject of class is most visible in the relationship between Guitar and Milkman. Where Milkman’s journey south brought him to an understanding of who he is, Guitar remains trapped in the ideology of oppression that leads him to turn on his lifelong friend. Guitar’s working class background gave him certain experiences, such as the circumstances surrounding the death of his father, which were quite distinct from those of Milkman despite the generality of their similar skin color. The difference between them is their economic class. The narrator relates that money had no “exotic attraction” to Milkman as he had never been denied money. Milkman’s quest for the gold is motivated by his desire to escape “the house on Not Doctor Street.” Guitar’s motivation is inspired by his working class experience, wherein the possibility of finding the gold allowed him “the pleasure of waking old dreams” (179).
In Black Elk Speaks, he talks of the “yellow metal that they worship and that makes them crazy” (7). This could be a description of the quest for the American Dream comprised of success and wealth, owning property, and making oneself worth something. Yet in these lines Black Elk seems to say that worth isn’t tangible just as knowledge isn’t tangible. Yet the idealized and idolized ‘symbol’ of the American Dream has fooled the working class into believing that it must be, as worth has been determined by the ‘democratic’ notion of ‘equality’ in the Declaration of Independence.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” ‘All men are created equal’ is a conundrum as truth can only be as self-evident as it is allowed to be when ideals do not match actions. The history of this conundrum is the history that American democratic ideology attempted to erase by denying the acknowledgement of every man’s humanity to excuse the inferiority that was forced on ‘others’. Remember, the winners write history. ‘Their Creator’ is not a blanket deity, so these ‘inalienable rights’ come with strings attached, especially if a culture must be forced to decide whether or not to resist or assimilate.
The only way to discuss class is to avoid the generalities of history, and look at the subjective reality of the details of lived lives. Love Medicine covers several generations and keeps as a backdrop for its stories the overall experience of Loss and Survival within American Indian culture. June Morrisey is a fractured woman, a cracking shell. Her appearance is tattered and broken but she still attempts to hide the rip in her shell from the “rich, single cowboy-rigger oil trash” (9) she has sex with in his truck. She noticed “he had a good size wad of money” before she left the bar with him. Although race doesn’t disappear, these are descriptions of lower class characteristics in general. Lynette is not associated with the dominant culture even though she is white; her negative characteristics are associated with her ‘uncivilized’ and ‘uneducated’ lower class status. It can never be ignored that the Color Code came to define the many ways in which race and class become confused and intertwined. Class as a repressed subject of American discourse is not easy to discuss as its repression could be attributed to a multitude of factors throughout American history. But like I said, it wouldn’t be worth writing about if it was easy to understand.
