Uneasy Street

by Sherman, Rachel

  Indeed it became clear that Beverly was quite uneasy with her social advantages. She first characterized herself as “uncomfortable talking about money. In any way, shape, or form.” She recognized her discomfort with her own privilege in particular when she said, “But another uncomfortable thing is, when you talk about 1 percenters, we are in the 1 percent. End of story.” Then, in a classic example of comparing oneself to those above, she went on, “The very, very bottom, probably, of the 1 percent. Like, the disparity between the bottom of the 1 percent and the top of the 1 percent is huge. So I can imagine why all the 99 percent thinks it’s so much. You know? But there’s a huge disparity between the top, and the people on top. So, it’s not real. It’s not real, that ‘affluent’ term. It’s—it’s—I mean, we’re not struggling to eat. We’re not struggling to go on vacation, we’re not struggling to clothe our children. But it’s not a real term.” Beverly is working hard to get over her discomfort. She acknowledges her privilege but quickly discounts it, primarily by focusing on the gulf between herself and those above her. She portrays those with less as “struggling to eat.” Like Monica’s reference to the “trailer park” or Zoe’s reference to the “underprivileged,” this frame situates Beverly as not-poor rather than as rich.

  In fact, Beverly explicitly identified two strategies for dealing with her discomfort vis-à-vis her more economically diverse African American community. On the one hand, she didn’t talk about it. She told me, referring to her parents and siblings, “I tend not to talk to my family about … money. Because the money stuff is kind of outrageous. It’s New York, too. And the amounts just sound outrageous and unfair. It sounds outrageous. I mean, how can I tell someone how much private school costs, when that might be [their] income? So, you try not to discuss those things.”

  On the other hand, she said (using the more distant second person “you”), “Because I’m uncomfortable about it, you have to be kind of unapologetic about [the fact that] there are going to be people that have some more means, and people that have less. And you can’t be apologetic for it. You just can’t. You still feel uncomfortable.” In order to avoid being “apologetic,” she has to rely on two ideas. The first is that there is an equivalence between those above her and those below, which puts her in the middle. The second is the idea (also articulated by Willa) that these inequalities are immutable, which implies that they don’t have anything specific to do with her. This is just the way it is, which means there is nothing she can do about it, and she is absolved of any moral responsibility. (I discuss this viewpoint further in chapter 4.)

  My unwise use of the word affluence ultimately led Pam and Beverly to describe fairly explicitly how their upward orientation is linked to a feeling of discomfort about privilege. Race may play a role here. The African Americans I spoke with had racially and economically diverse networks; their white friends were usually affluent, whereas their African American friends and family ran the gamut.11 As I’ve mentioned and will discuss further, having a more diverse network seemed to be correlated with a greater awareness of privilege across my sample. Ties to African American friends and family in other classes, and also the sense of being a small minority among the wealthy, could provoke the discomfort that Beverly talks about. On the other hand, other African Americans in the sample described feeling proud of their upward mobility; and, as Kelly indicated, in conversations with their friends even Pam and others like her were quite comfortable talking about the trappings of their privileged lives. I suspect that they express different feelings at different moments, all of which can be “true.”

  In any case, I believe that many of the other people described in this section, regardless of race, would also have resisted explicitly describing themselves as “affluent”—let alone “wealthy” or “rich”—if I had used that language in recruiting them. For example, I suspected that Nicole, a photographer, had inherited wealth. But in the first half of our conversation, she repeatedly downplayed her affluence. She told me she struggled to pay her kids’ private-school tuition, explained her mother’s having an expensive home by saying she had had it forever, and talked about not being able to afford certain changes she’d have liked to make in her home renovation. She did not mention having an inheritance. After an hour or so, I just had to tell her I was confused and ask more directly about her financial situation than I normally would have at that point. Even after coming clean about her inheritance (about $2.5 million), her household income (over $400,000), and her home value (over $2 million), she still tended to differentiate herself from people she knew—mostly other parents from her kids’ school—who were “ really” rich.

  Nicole also framed her inheritance as her “nest egg,” emphasizing that her family lived on her husband’s salary. She told me, “I don’t feel like we lead the life we do because of the family money, that the kids would not be able to go to private school without [it]. We could swing that.” In reality, her parents were paying for the private school, and she and her husband did not have to save money, thanks to her inherited assets. But it was important to her not to “need” the inherited wealth to sustain their current lifestyle. She thus casts herself, as I discuss further in chapter 3, as “normal” vis-à-vis those with more rather than advantaged vis-à-vis those with less.

  Moral anxieties around privilege and a desire to keep it unspoken also emerged when I asked these respondents about their political views, especially in the way they talked about President Obama’s critiques of Wall Street. Several people I spoke with said they (and/or their partners) had voted for Obama in 2008 but were reluctant (or had refused) to do so again in 2012, less because they liked Romney than because they were angry at Obama. I initially imagined that this anger had to do with Obama’s tax proposals (especially the proposal to let the Bush tax cuts for households earning over $250,000 expire), because such a change would have affected their incomes. But they talked mainly about the symbolic dimension of the proposal, indicating that Obama had transgressed by simply talking about inequality. Maya, for example, appreciated Obama’s healthcare initiative. But, she said, “I think his economic policy and the ways that he talks about people that make a lot of money, I don’t like that. I think it’s wrong, and I think he’s creating a divide.” More than disagreeing with his tax proposals, she said she and her husband objected to “just the way Obama is talking about business. And almost making it like they’re evil.”

  Marie said something similar about Bill de Blasio, who had recently been elected mayor of New York City when I interviewed her. She told me, “I don’t love de Blasio so much. … I think he started his platform in a divisive way that says basically ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’ And then he made up an arbitrary number of haves versus have-nots. And you can’t start a platform in a divisive way, in that way. I mean, I think that’s a bad thing.” By talking about division, Maya and Marie both suggest, politicians are creating division. In fact, of course, the division is already there. These wealthy people are trying not to acknowledge it because they don’t want to be the moral bad guys, especially given that Wall Street is associated with massive economic collapse. But inequality is harder to avoid as it enters political discourse.

  Overall, then, upward-oriented people situated themselves in the middle both directly and obliquely. They socialized with people like themselves, and they “saw” and compared themselves mainly to these people and those with more, a practice facilitated by the extreme wealth of a few in New York City. Comparing themselves to those above allowed these interviewees to position themselves closer to the morally legitimate “middle,” as did casting those with less as extremely disadvantaged. They did not like to discuss money issues, but when they did, they often focused on anxieties or limits. The idea that society “will always be this way” also helped muffle their discomfort.

  FACING DOWNWARD, RECOGNIZING PRIVILEGE

  Like Keith and Karen, introduced at the start of the chapter, and Scott and Olivia, described in the introduction,
many of those I interviewed did talk openly about themselves as privileged. They described conflicted feelings about their social advantages and about social inequality generally. Unlike those who aspired to the middle, these interviewees were usually either inheritors of wealth who worked in creative-class jobs or earners who were upwardly mobile (or, in a few cases, married to people in creative occupations). Partly for these reasons, as I discuss later, their social, professional, and familial networks were diverse economically, and sometimes racially. They were typically more liberal politically than upward-oriented people.

  These interviewees recognized their privilege and were willing to talk about it much more openly than did those who faced upward. Nadine lived with her partner and their children primarily on income produced by her family’s business. They also owned a large home and held about $7 million in additional assets. She said:

  It’s always amazing to me. I know a lot of people with a lot of money who are not very generous. Or who don’t think they have a lot of money. It’s like, “You’re kind of bitching about your situation. And you, like, have more money than 99 percent of people on the fucking planet.” You know what I mean? … Especially [given] what’s happened with this economy. It’s, like, my brother, again, another case in point. He was complaining to me the other day that he can’t buy a new house until he sells his house, and it’s such a terrible position to be in, and he needs, like, more liquid assets. And they just have to get this new house, and it’s three million dollars, and he can’t, you know, afford it, unless they sell their house for two million, and how frustrating is that? I’m like, “Dude. I mean, I love you, and I know why it’s frustrating to you. But let’s have a little perspective.”

  Many people emphasized having freedom of choice in their lifestyles as a result of their privilege. Asked to characterize her lifestyle, Wendy, a corporate lawyer married to an economics professor, with a household income of about $500,000, said, “We live a very comfortable life, where we feel like we have the money to have whatever we need for us, for our family. We live in a really comfortable apartment in a location that we want to live in, and we haven’t had to make any compromises around that.” Gary, who had inherited wealth of over $10 million and worked as an academic, said, “I don’t think we ever make a decision that’s a trade-off with another decision.” He also told me that he had been able to purchase his second home, over other prospective buyers, because he could pay cash, which “immediately got me the hook” with the seller. Then he spoke of spending time at the house:

  Let’s say we go for the weekend. Or in the summer. Well, we go to the grocery store. And come home with three hundred dollars of groceries. Not for caviar. But we’re often going with friends, so there’s four of us [in his family], and three or four others. You know, I don’t walk down the aisle and compare the generic brand to the Green Giant brand. You know. Or the Bounty paper towels to the Pantry Pride paper towels. … That’s a huge luxury, right? You’re going to spend three hundred dollars on groceries for a weekend.

  Gary is very aware of and forthright about these advantages. (Note, however, that he says his spending is “not for caviar,” thereby casting himself as a reasonable consumer; I discuss this tendency in chapter 3.)

  People who recognized their privilege also talked about freedom from fear as an advantage. Donovan, a nonprofit executive with both inherited and earned wealth, said, “It seems to me that one of the real benefits of having money is not having to worry about it! Not having to count pennies here and there. … I’ve never had to worry about food, clothing, paying for school. Enormously beneficial for a guy like me, who’s—I’m a naturally anxious person. I just don’t have a lot to be anxious about in my life.” Echoing this sentiment, Eliana, who worked at a charitable foundation and owned about $9 million in family wealth, saw “safety from anxiety” as an aspect of privilege, “because most people’s lives are deeply colored by anxiety over money.”

  Downward-oriented people seemed to have a larger space in their consciousness for others who worry about money, in both an abstract and a concrete sense. Janice, who worked in marketing part-time, had some inherited wealth and a household income of about $500,000, mostly from her partner’s job in business. They had carried out a $700,000 renovation on their million-dollar house. Janice told me, “You know, it’s a huge privilege to be able to buy a house in [this neighborhood] and renovate it. And just decide, like, what’s here’s ugly and I’m not going to live with it. I’m just going to make it my own. It feels like a huge privilege to be able to do that.” She said, “I’m very aware that my kids’ friends [from their public school] and my friends don’t have this.”

  Linda, a professor and mother of two whose family had inherited wealth, said:

  There was a big article in the New York Times recently, and I showed my kids. … It was about people in Haiti making these kind of, like, crackers out of dirt. I don’t know, it was just really horrible. So I always think about that, I just think about that a lot. Just, we have so much—I mean it’s just crazy. … I go to the grocery store, I buy whatever I want. I don’t look to see if the organic—I mean I do look, but it’s like, I don’t care that it’s five dollars for organic raspberries. My kid likes raspberries, I’m gonna buy raspberries. I’m really aware that people are looking and rationing and paying attention, and I am not, in that realm.

  These accounts make visible social others who have less, people who are “looking and rationing,” as Linda said, who can’t spend $300 on groceries, who can’t afford to buy and renovate a home.

  Penny, a part-time legal consultant, and her husband, who worked in management consulting, had a household income of about $3 million, which was far beyond what either of them had grown up with. Their young children attended a public school with an excellent reputation. Penny said: “You know, there’s always someone in New York, especially—New York City, Manhattan—who has more than you do. And there’s always a lot of people who have less. And going to a public school, you know, I mean, I would say we’re on the higher end of having more [relative to the other parents]. And having an apartment like this. And when you see other people’s apartments the kids go to school with, they’re not as nice.” Unlike those who situate themselves in the middle, Penny acknowledges that there are more people below her than above, even in New York, and that she is privileged relative to other parents in her kids’ school. She followed this statement with a reflection on the desirability of this awareness, saying: “And it’s a funny thing, but I think a good thing, perspective. I mean, I feel this way, perspective-wise, that—you know, I feel lucky, every day. That [her husband] has this great job, and he makes money, that we can do an apartment renovation, or this or that.” The sentiment here is of gratitude that openly recognizes privilege rather than a euphemistic reference to it.

  Downward-oriented people also mentioned the domestic workers in their homes much more frequently than upward-oriented people, and often expressed conflicted feelings about them. My conversation with Beatrice, a nonprofit executive with inherited wealth of about $3 million, focused largely on two decisions: one, whether to enroll her son in private school, and two, whether to buy a second home. One consideration, she said, was “Am I going to buy a house in [an affluent area] when this poor woman works in my house and takes care of and loves my child?” Teresa was a stay-at-home mother with two kids whose husband earned over $1 million annually in finance. She told me about her housekeeper, who had sent her own children back to her home country because she could not afford to keep them in the United States, and had also to leave Teresa’s employ for full-time work. She said, “Who am I not to work and to have someone watch my kids, when she can’t even afford to keep her kids here?” These struggles locate these women themselves and the workers they employ in larger structural relations of inequality, which contrasts strongly to Zoe’s assertion that “we treat them very well,” which takes these relations for granted.

  Unlike upward-orien
ted respondents, who described their friends as having as much as or more than they, those who faced downward tended to talk about friends, acquaintances, and colleagues in a wide range of economic circumstances. For example, Danielle, a banker turned stay-at-home mother with inherited and earned wealth, said, “We have a huge range of friends that have a huge range of lifestyles.” These diverse networks came about for a number of reasons. Some people had grown up middle-class or, in a few cases, working-class, and retained ties to family members and friends who had less. These were mostly earners, as we might expect, but a couple of inheritors had also spent part of their childhoods in much more economically constrained situations.12 Those who worked in class-heterogeneous fields such as academia, nonprofits, and the arts, mainly inheritors, came into contact with more diverse groups of people in their jobs. Both inheritors and earners who tended to face downward had college friends or other longtime acquaintances with less. Like Janice and Penny, some of these parents had enrolled their children in public school, which further diversified their networks.