3 Rules You Need to Follow to Avoid Being A Middle Class Asshole

Some truth in life and struggle from a pissed off mama

My roots as a reporter began in the field of community journalism. In this field, people from the most targeted and brutalized communities use the expertise that arises from personal experience to connect to large political, economic, and social processes that inform them.

In this spirit, I posted a tweet about my personal experience as someone that has never had the privilege of owning property, and connected my experiences as a low-income renter to my experiences as an underclass professional in the struggle.

The post describes how 2 years ago, when I was 7 months pregnant with my first child, I was living in a part of the city that began undergoing rapid gentrification. Out went the locally owned restaurants and community cornerstones. In came the brewpubs and Starbucks. Out went the poor folks and POC’s, in came the hipsters and the side-eyed white folks.

Out went the previous landlords and in came the white, upper middle-class gentrifiers.

The new property owners of the apartment building I lived in were led by a tall thin white man that wore a safari hat and often boasted of his trips to Africa to help the poor little black children. As if his racist, classist American notions of assistance are what the children of African struggle need most. But alas, he prided himself on his incredible generosity and was not shy about sharing stories of his false heroism and progressive values.

He was also not shy about raising the rent by 50% and gentrifying everyone out of the building.

Being kicked out of your home with little warning and no recourse is difficult enough for anyone, but it was particularly difficult as a woman of color with disabilities, a member of the lower class that has struggled with homelessness since childhood, a lifelong activist, and a soon to be first time mother trying to provide stability for her child.

That intersection of identities and experiences will make you feel a certain way about shit like being tossed out of your home so the Great White Hope in a Hat could make a buck or two. And that certain way, for me, was feeling fucking pissed off.

Fuck this great white progressive messiah and fuck his safari hat. Fuck his willingness to exploit poor folks to make a dollar and fuck the systems of gentrification that allow him to line his white progressive pockets with the trauma of people forced in or out of his white middle class plantations. Fuck his dreams. Fuck his needs. And especially fuck him for telling me that if I didn’t agree to leave early, that he could lose money by not turning the property over to a new, higher paying renter immediately.

And really, though, what could possibly be more pressing to a pregnant, formerly homeless disabled woman of color that’s being thrown out of her home than the finances of the upper middle class gentrifying asshole putting her out on the streets? What could possibly concern anyone anywhere with anything other than the needs of the goddamn white middle class?

Nothing according to the first person to respond to my tweet about being pregnant and losing my housing for a second time in 2 years. Absolutely nothing.

Completely ignoring my personal experience and the political context I was framing it in, his first response was the predictable go-to response of a person with privilege — especially a white middle class progressive — when they get checked on their bullshit: They try to re-center the conversation on themselves and their socio-political status.

In other words, they try to make the conversation about them and their middle class needs.

So, the multipart, middle class, white male response to my tweet ended with:

(It should be noted that this is the only image I was able to capture begore WMCM (White-Middle-Class-Man) deleted all of his tweets. I will do my best to paraphrase his subsequent responses.)

For some reason, the white middle class just can’t stand to let anyone else talk. And if we do, we’re only supposed to talk about things they want to hear about in the ways they want to hear about them. Worse, in the resistance, they often do this in the name of promoting some bullshit idea about solidarity.

The first response to the tweet about my housing situation was exemplary. WMCM (White-Middle-Class-Man) tells me he agrees to an extent, but wonders if my energy should be more focused on the middle class’s ability to change and do better. Because, really, how could this conversation possibly center on a pregnant woman of color being forced out of her housing when we can talk about the imaginary ability of the middle class to change?

So, Rule #1 for the White Middle Class is — Stop making everything about you!

In life, in politics, in your minds, in the world –stop. Just stop. Stop centering every goddamn thing on yourself. Your inability to see past your upturned middle-class nose functions to silence struggle, replicate our forceful battle for equal standing, eliminates any room for solidarity, and it’s really just a dick move.

I responded to WMCW with the following:

“Capacity to change? That’s a theoretical argument for apologists. Strategically speaking the white middle class works against us not for us. You are our oppressors. I don’t need to consider a hypothetical moral argument when this is a political struggle that kills people. I need to entertain your morality as much as I need to entertain a Nazis. What I need to do is help my communities fight you whether you figure shit out or not. Also, what kind of morality makes you think…hey a pregnant WOC with disabilities is losing her home. Good time to defend the white middle class? You don’t even have the capacity to change.”

But every time a white middle class person with power wants to make it about them, they generally succeed. They have the privilege, the power, the resources, the access, and the communication channels to force their opinions on us. And they have the privilege, power, resources, access, and communication channels necessary to transform those opinions into policies and processes that allow them to put their needs above ours and do some really fucked up shit because of it.

For example, because of the financial desires of the White Messiah of Africa, I was gentrified out of my building at 7 months pregnant. Because of all of the financial desires of all of the White Messiahs like him, communities across the country continue to be gentrified in the name of “better neighborhoods” and “community safety.”

Meanwhile, poor people of color and people living with disabilities are forced out of our homes and out of our communities with little to nothing left for moving expenses, transportation, time needed to find a new place, first, lasts and deposit, etc.

But I’m supposed to take comfort knowing that at least my great white gentrifier will be able to take a few more trips back to the motherland.

With no small amount of luck, relative privilege and effort, my husband and I were able to find a new home across town in an unincorporated area of the city. It was in a “bad” neighborhood with people of color, poor folks, and people with disabilities. It was a formerly burned down house that had been occupied by homeless folks in need of a safe place to self-medicate (or a crack house as it was described to us). And it was across the street from low income housing and up the road from the WIC center and the tortilla shop.

It was perfect for us.

As far as safety was concerned, gunshots and sirens are a common feature of the neighborhood, but the only time I ever felt threatened was when the police turned their aggression on me as I filmed at least a dozen of them with guns drawn arresting two very small women of color and a black male.

That sense of security changed quickly, though, as this segregated community of struggle soon became the new up and coming part of town.

Almost overnight, the pho shops, the Brazilian restaurant and the Muslim bakery were gone and the Popeye’s, the vape shops and the brewpubs all moved in. As the hipsters began clogging the streets, they began turning their insults and aggression on the local homeless communities demanding these living threats to their very existence be swept off of the streets and into prison cells.

Community meetings are now filled with “concerned parents” trying to block homeless shelters and services for folks that they believe don’t belong in “their” neighborhood.

As if poor folks aren’t trying to protect their children from poverty and the middle-class assholes that wear pussy hats one day, only to put poor mamas of color in jail the next. As if we aren’t desperately trying to find ways to keep our children safe from both the middle class left and the middle class right.

Rather than showing solidarity with the people from the community who they defend relentlessly in their minds with their one day marches and soft fingered phone calls, when it comes down to real life decisions regarding solidarity, the white middle class is more than happy to unite with the political right to defend themselves against their common enemy — poor and disabled people of color.

Somehow unity doesn’t apply when it comes down to some asshole in a giant truck with the Confederate flag began rolling around the neighborhood, beeping his horn and playing the Dukes of Hazzard theme song and spending an especially long time gracing the largely African Muslim blocks of low income housing with his presence. The hipsters and middle-class families don’t seem concerned with his actions as much as they are the people he is targeting.

But us folks having to protect ourselves and our kids are pretty fucking concerned.

This proud white supremacist makes us feel angry and unsafe. He reminds us that just a few months ago, a black teenager was hung from a tree down the road and nothing has been done about it. He reminds us that we are never allows to let our guard down. He ensures that we know that we can’t avoid white middle class violence in our lives, in our communities, on our streets or in our own homes.

Because ultimately, it’s not enough for the white middle class to colonize our conversations and our space, but they must also work personally and politically to rob us of our dignity and attack our humanity. Whether they dawn a pussy hat or the Confederate Flag.

That’s why Rule #2 for the White Middle Class is — Stop insulting and attacking us!

Seriously, if you want to show solidarity — stop insulting us because we’re daring to exercise an opinion or an existence that doesn’t reflect your own. We don’t have to care about your opinion, or your ideas for strategic action, your pocketbooks, or your racist classist notions of safety and solidarity. We don’t have to listen to every single fucking idea and opinion you have before we are allowed to speak or take political action on our own behalf.

What we do have to do is figure out how to deflect your bullshit and defend ourselves from that bullshit translating into policies and processes that permanently put us in danger and at risk.

Failure to shut you all the fuck up results in people being killed. Whether it is because you are shutting down homeless shelters (in the dead of winter) or sending police after us or making excuses for putting us into poverty — your bullshit kills. And our only job is to shut it the fuck down.

WMCM, for example, was very upset that I didn’t want to entertain his discussion about the potential morality of the white middle class, and instantly began attacking my work and accusing me of trolling him.

Of course, I am an asshole in the world of the WMCM because throwing shade at a pregnant mother living with disabilities that is losing her housing is really the best way possible to show solidarity, and I was just too stupid to get that.

But, if we observe the white middle class individual in their natural habitat, we can see that the immediate response given when a person with less privilege refuses to let them take over the conversation is to lash out with insults and aggression. Whether it is as trivial as a twitter attack or as life threatening as criminalizing communities of struggle — it is an exercise of privilege and power that has no place in communities of solidarity.

It is also the step that proceeds the predictable break in alliance led by the middle class, but blamed on communities of struggle.

Ultimately, the middle-class alliance to the working and underclasses, especially communities of color and people living with disabilities, is completely theoretical. Correction, it is hypothetical. Almost imaginary.

People with privilege are able to enter and exit our lives and struggles as they please. They are able to feign solidarity or turn against us as their agendas shift. They are able to both provide us shelter and throw us on the streets. And the moment solidarity infringes on their finances, their comfort, their sense of security or their daydreams about reform — the privileged classes have the comfort and the ability to force their needs over our own and play victim in the process.

After refusing to accept attempts to make my experience about his needs and rejecting his insults, our WMCM engaged in the twitter version of the third state of response to having their privilege checked: Leaving the interaction and taking both their privilege and solidarity with them.

In the case of our twitter scholar, that meant deleting all of his tweets and blocking me. In my personal life, this meant that the process of gentrification began once again in my own home.

Our slumlord, who doesn’t think it is his responsibility to do anything but collect our rent money and ignore every leak, repair, bug infestation, appliance malfunction, and plumbing issue that has occurred in the past two years saw an opportunity for himself and decided he wanted to sell the property. A person of color, but someone with property owning middle-class privilege nonetheless, he gave us 20 days notice to vacate and a request to allow potential buyers to view the property immediately.

I am due to have my second child in 19 days.

None of this is legal. And my landlords have turned to harassment as a method of encouraging us to cut ties with them.

They are also good churchgoing people of color that see themselves as shepherds of the poor and defenders of the left. And they are trying to illegally kick a woman that is 9 months pregnant out of her home to try to turn a quick buck. Because Who Wouldn’t Jesus Gentrify, right?

This is why Rule #3 for the White Middle Class is: Fuck your solidarity!

Your solidarity and trust has to be proven, not expected. And so far, dear white and non-white middle class, you’ve done nothing to prove it and everything to show us that when push comes to shove — you will act in your own best interest, not ours.

In our daily lives AND our organized efforts to defend our communities, we not only have to fend of the attacks from the right, but we have to fend off the equally oppressive assault from the progressive left. We have to waste our time and energy actively strategizing around the middle-class messiahs of struggle putting their voices and needs in place of ours. We have to figure out how to get through the wall of privileged progressives before we can even attempt to confront the GOP and its white supremacists.

And it’s fucking ridiculous for you to pretend that solidarity is even possible with you until you make some serious changes.

You are our landlords that raise our rents and kick us out of our homes. You are the business owners that fight raising our wages and prevent us from receiving benefits. You are the community members that want to remove our shelters and sweep us off the streets. You are the organizations that demand police training and apologetic language when we demand permanent political justice and for the cops to just stop fucking shooting us all the time. You are the activists that coopt our struggles, insult our communities and substitute our needs with yours. In our name and in your own names. You.

You fuck us up in real life and you fuck us up in the struggle. Because…solidarity?

Fuck your solidarity.

Your twisted concept of unity is a one-way ticket headfirst into a brick wall. Your idea of unity means everyone in the struggle is supposed to band together behind the white middle class and their white middle class serving agendas, but when we ask for the middle class to support our needs and our agendas?

The middle-class excuses come as easy as breaking rules 1, 2 and 3.

It seems they even take pleasure in promoting their agendas in the name of our communities. Names they can’t even fucking pronounce or spell. Names they’d rather replace with numbers and dollar signs.

So, dear white and non-white members of the middle class, if you find yourselves engaging in any of these behaviors as an individual or someone working in the field of reform — do us all a favor. Shut the fuck up. Just shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down and find a sponsor to slap the shit out of your privileged, well-conditioned middle-class head. (Metaphorically? Sure. Physically? Great. Whatever.)

And know that every time you fall into one of these selfish traps, you hurt the real communities of struggle, you expose yourself as a poverty pimp, you support oppression and fascism and all those white words you like to put on the genocide, enslavement, exploitation, and exclusion of our communities.

And in general, you suck and are a shitty person.

No, fo reals. You are. Just let it sink in and then do what it takes to not be such a privileged fucking asshole. Because we see you. We’ve met you a million times. We know you better than you know ourselves. And we know what your bullshit notions of solidarity and unity are.

We also know we are too busy fighting for our lives and livelihoods to entertain your bullshit.

Don’t blame us for being divisive, blame yourselves for fucking up the unity we seek in our defense. Blame yourselves for putting your needs first and then acting out when we call you on your bullshit. Blame yourselves for not being there to support us but expecting us to line your pocketbooks with our struggles whether we want to or not.

Shut the fuck up. Feel like shit. Learn the rules. And if you really want to show some solidarity, live by them. Revel in them. Call out your white, abled bodied middle-class buddies on their bullshit when they break the rules. And start earning our trust by doing what it takes to support our agendas — even and especially when that means shutting the fuck up about your own.

Cuz you and your “solidarity” are killing us. And we have enough to deal with without having to fend off your progressive oppression.

(Author’s note: if you think for one moment you need to email me or tweet me about how your privileged middle-class ass is insulted by my language or my content or my description of you as people or political actors or you want to tell me about how not all middle-class folks are bad — go fuck yourselves. And I’ve got to find a roof for my kids so another middle-class asshole can buy his daughter a new fall wardrobe. I am not here for you. True allies already get this shit. And please go back to Rule #1)