Uneasy Street

by Sherman, Rachel

  Eliana also wanted to distance herself from people with money and was glad when it seemed that others in her social and professional circles couldn’t tell she was wealthy. In explaining why, she said, “I have class hatred, too. … I believe, like, a lot of totally knee-jerk things. Like, that a lot of those people are, you know, total assholes. … So I can’t completely align with the rich, because I also have that antagonism.” Eliana had “spent a year in deep agony” about putting her daughter in private school. Speaking of that decision, she said, “Part of it was just like, I’m going to be in self-hatred all the time. Because I’m going to go pick her up at school. I’m going to line up with the other white mothers on the street, and I’m going to hate that I am indistinguishable from them. It’s, like, an affront to my pretensions of uniqueness, or inhabiting it in a particular way, or whatever.” I asked her if it made her “feel better, to be, like, ‘Well, at least I’m conflicted about it.’” She responded, “Yes! Yeah. It does.” She described having the conflict as “a moral appeasement to self.”

  In the end, she told me, “I decided I’m going to have to accept that these are really very deep contradictions. And I feel, in a lot of ways, like, just a completely thoroughgoing hypocrite all the time. But I also feel like it’s not un-thought-through.” “Thinking it through” partially alleviates the sense of hypocrisy that Eliana describes, though she is also trying to accept these contradictions (an issue to which I return at the end of the chapter).

  It’s also striking that Eliana recognizes her “pretensions of uniqueness, or inhabiting it in a particular way.” This recognition shows how deeply her sense of occupying her privilege appropriately depends on not being like rich “assholes” in terms of her lifestyle choices, although she may be exactly like them in terms of her economic situation. And even when the choices these women make—to send a child to public school, to buy a second home—are the same as the choices “rich assholes” make, having struggled emotionally with the decision is a way of differentiating themselves from people they believe have an illegitimate sense of entitlement.

  RECIPROCITY, EQUALITY, AND EFFACEMENT

  The people I talked with translated this broad imperative of “awareness” into their interactions with others. But being aware of difference, ironically, meant acting as if it didn’t exist. That is, these interactions were largely governed by norms of civility that effaced class difference. First, a norm of silence prevailed, as I have already pointed out. Many respondents told me they avoided discussing certain issues, such as the hassles and costs of home renovation, when talking with people who had less. Talia said, as noted, “You don’t want to brag” about your advantages. Others didn’t want to be “stuck up.” Maya told me she tried to be careful about what kinds of clothes she brought on “girls’ weekends” with old friends who had less than she.

  Second, my interviewees emphasized the importance of treating other people well, meaning with kindness, respect, and gratitude. As we will see in chapter 6, parents repeatedly stressed how important it was to inculcate this value in their children. The Golden Rule—“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”—mandates this norm of reciprocity. The norm applies regardless of the class position of the other person. Like not talking about money, “being nice” obscures class difference by treating everyone the same. It presumes equivalence, and therefore equality. Furthermore, to be nice to others is to demonstrate that one does not feel entitled in the negative sense. Alexis made this connection most explicitly in speaking of restaurant servers, saying: “I’m always appreciative. I don’t feel, like, entitled to service.” To appreciate the work of others is to recognize a responsibility (a form of awareness) and to demonstrate the proper unentitled affect.

  Again, those I interviewed drew boundaries against wealthy people who transgressed these norms by being rude or unappreciative, and they praised those who were “nice.” Stephanie told me, for example, “Well, once summer hits [in the Hamptons], I can’t stand—like, we don’t go out to dinner. We don’t really leave the house, other than going to the beach. Because the people are just awful, you know—too much money, spoiled. They hate locals. They’re rude to people that work in restaurants and everything, because they’re locals.” Linda articulated the importance of being a nice person in order to occupy wealth legitimately when she described a wealthy friend, saying, “He’s a really nice guy. He’s really, really, really rich. I mean, I have a lot of questions about the values in our society that enable him to be so rich and others to not be, but he’s a nice person. His child is a great kid.” Linda’s friend (and Linda herself, though she is less wealthy) can thus distance themselves from the “values in our society” that lead to this kind of wealth by adhering to another set of values about behavior, which indicates that they are a certain kind of people.5

  The service providers I interviewed likewise differentiated among wealthy people on the basis of behavior, prizing reciprocal and friendly interactions. When I asked what it was like to work for wealthy people, many of these service professionals responded by telling me how “nice” their clients were. They were adamant that they would not work with people who didn’t respect them. Annie, a personal concierge, told me, “If they’re not going to treat me properly, I’m not going to take it. I’ll walk out, away from the situation. You know, simply because you’re paying me to do the job doesn’t mean that you should have any right to treat me any less than you would anybody else.” David, the interior designer, put it more concisely, saying simply, “I don’t work with assholes.” Regina, a longtime interior designer, differentiated among wealthy people on the basis of character, saying, “I don’t work for terrible people. There are a whole bunch of rich people out there who are so—their character is so bad. They are so greedy. And, well, you know what’s happened to this country [in the economic crisis]. And I don’t decorate for those people. The people who I work for are really, really kinder, gentler, caring about other people.” By making these distinctions, these interviewees set up a requirement that clients be “good people” in order to deserve the service providers’ services (and, by extension, broader entitlements as well). Being caring and kind is the basis of legitimate entitlement.6

  Some service providers believed that their clients tried to mitigate their discomfort with economic disparity by being nice. For example, Robert, a real estate broker, said many of his clients were conflicted about money. When I asked how he saw these conflicts, he invoked reciprocity repeatedly in his response: “Basic things. Are they on time for the appointment? Do they apologize? How do they treat the doorman?” Robert, who is African American, also said that he saw the conflict in the way his black clients would greet workers. “If you’re black, and you’re here looking at a three-million-dollar apartment, and there’s some black guys on the job site, and you say, ‘Hi,’ [you’re showing] a certain guilt that ‘[I’m] a shithead, and I’m looking at a three million dollar apartment.’ So you try to equalize it.”

  Reciprocity suggests that everyone is entitled to the same recognition of personhood (“I treat everyone the same”) regardless of material resources. It thus denies that having fewer resources makes a meaningful difference. Monica explicitly distanced moral worth from having money, saying, “I don’t know what my friends make a year. I don’t really care what they make a year. I don’t need to know. I just need to know that they’re nice people. Nice to me. And they have good kids. … Those are the values that are important to me.” She creates silence about difference by denying that money matters, elevating the ideals of “niceness” and good personhood instead. In the main, awareness and treating others as equal go together—the private affect recognizes difference, but the public interaction insists on equality.

  At the same time, many of my subjects also talked about being generous financially to people in their own lives—a practice that does acknowledge their advantages relative to these more intimate others. Many gave money on a regular basis to their f
amily members, especially parents, but sometimes also to siblings or extended family. They also talked about being generous on an everyday level. Alice said, of her family and old friends who had less than she, “For them, my thought process is always sort of, ‘What can I do? What dinner can I buy? What trip can I have somebody tag along on?’ Because most of that group of people in my family or friends circle are not in a position to be able to do things that they necessarily want to do, or buy the things that they want to buy.” Gary said, “We have an ethos of trying to share it. So we’ll lend our house to somebody. We’re the host of the class party.” Others also shared their homes in various ways.

  Unlike “niceness” that obscures class difference, these efforts sometimes caused tension, precisely because this kind of generosity between friends and even family members exposes inequality. Scott, for example, spoke of the strangeness created for Olivia when she went back to her working-class family of origin with what he called her “infinity checkbook.” This kind of exchange also breaks the taboo on talking about or even acknowledging financial differences. Nadine said, “You’ve got to start where you live. Who you are. You know what I mean? Like, you can think about feeding, like, starving people in Ethiopia. But if you’re fucking miserly in your everyday life, you know? Then that’s a problem.” Part of her rule was to “take people out to dinner, unless it’s really awkward and they don’t feel like being taken out to dinner. Because I think class is a big reality, and people get—I totally understand it—defensive about being taken out, or it feels weird.” She told me a story about a recent encounter with a friend with whom she had planned to have dinner, but he couldn’t afford it and was uncomfortable with allowing her to pay, so they ended up having a drink instead. Other respondents also described this discomfort, and some complained that even their parents or siblings resisted taking money from them.

  Several people also talked about trying to be fair employers of domestic workers. Sara said, “I mean, the most stressful part for me of employing a child care provider at home has been being a good employer for them.” She emphasized paying more than her friends did and asking less of household workers. Janice told me she paid her nanny twenty dollars per hour, above the going rate in New York of fifteen dollars or so. She said, “That’s a political thing for me, and a social justice thing. … I want to pay well for that work, and treat whoever’s doing it well.” One respondent sent money to her former nanny for years after the nanny returned to her country of origin; another “helped” her nanny financially when someone in her family had health problems. As I have already mentioned, Zoe wanted to treat her domestic employees well, saying, “If I don’t give my clothing or anything that we’re giving away to the church, I give it to them. They’re very happy with how they’re paid. Days that I give them off. I like to keep them happy.” Zoe explicitly compensates for her advantages over her nanny and housekeeper (and their access to her lifestyle) by treating them generously. These choices also expose class asymmetries between workers and employers but seem to create less tension in these relationships than in relationships with family and friends, likely because these differences are more taken for granted.

  In talking about the workers who were renovating her apartment, Betsy said she felt uncomfortable with their having less. I asked, “And what do you do with that?” She responded with significant hesitation and atypical inarticulacy, perhaps because my question implied that there was something she should “do” beyond feeling uncomfortable. She said, “Well, my—I mean, the way that I deal with it, is that I—I talk to them. I want to know, like—if they want to tell me. I treat them like I would treat anybody else. And—but I’m aware that that’s—you know, that that—that—that—they’re making very little money in a week, and doing a really hard job. You know?” I asked, “Do you think there’s anything that you can do about that, in some way?” She said, “Well, I’m tipping them all. You know? I don’t know whether that’s standard or not. But no. There’s nothing I can do about it. I plan to write them all a thank-you note and give them a tip. You know? Because, whatever they can do with it, that’s extra money that can make them happier, then I’m more than willing to do it, and they deserve it.” I said, “And beyond that, I mean, in terms of kind of inequality generally. I mean, do you feel like there’s anything that you can do, or can be done?” She said, “Personally? I mean, no. No—Not right—not—not—not now. For me, not now. But I feel badly about it, and I’m aware of it, and—I just—am aware of, like, not making people feel worse, or uncomfortable around that. You know? Understanding it.” Betsy describes not only her own awareness, but also two forms of interaction with these workers, which stand in tension: treating them as equals (which denies difference) and tipping them (which acknowledges difference). But she frames these as an inadequate solution to the structural problem of inequality, as I discuss later.

  GIVING MONEY AND TIME

  The traditional way to “give back,” of course, is with charitable contributions and volunteer labor. Nearly all my interviewees said these forms of giving were important in principle, and nearly all said they gave some money away. But not all were equally active or identified with giving. The amounts they donated varied widely, from a couple of thousand dollars annually to over half a million, though very few gave more than 5 percent of their income.7 The recipients of their money and time also spanned a wide range, although their alma maters and their children’s schools were by far the organizations they mentioned most often.8 The vast majority also gave at least something to causes that mirrored their own interests or those of their children. Lawyers gave to legal aid; artists gave to arts organizations; parents gave to groups their children participated in; people with certain illnesses in their families donated to cure those illnesses. African American respondents gave to racial empowerment groups or volunteered with Jack and Jill (a social organization for the black middle class and above) or in African American communities in other ways.9 Women of color volunteered on the diversity committees of their children’s schools. Some women gave to women’s and girls’ rights groups; gay people gave to gay rights groups. They participated in neighborhood groups or served on their condo or co-op boards.

  People for whom charitable work is a significant part of their identities fall into two broad groups. The first comprises philanthropists and volunteers in a fairly traditional model, who seem relatively comfortable occupying public roles. Some people with this orientation identify strongly as community philanthropists and volunteers. Others take on a similar role but to a lesser extent, partly because they have younger children but also because they identify less as wealthy. The people in the second group, composed mainly of liberal and progressive inheritors, tend to donate large amounts of money, but they feel torn about developing public identities as philanthropists. They are more likely to work full-time and hence less likely to volunteer large amounts of time, although many serve on at least one board. The rest of the sample comprises people who are less involved in this kind of charitable work, although most imagine it will become a bigger part of their lives in the future.

  Traditional Public Philanthropy and Volunteerism

  Many people in families with male earners and stay-at-home wives saw charitable giving and volunteerism as quite important to their identities. I typically interviewed the wives in these families, who reminded me of the wealthy women that scholars such as Susan Ostrander have written about, in that it was part of their lifestyle and their sense of social obligation to give away money and do volunteer work.10 Some spoke of having grown up in families with traditions of charity and volunteering. One woman told me, “My dad was always a big volunteer. And believes very much in giving back. And so, that’s definitely been instilled in us.” The idea of noblesse oblige that implicitly governs this giving tends to be unapologetically public, and my interviewees did not express ambivalence about it. These givers are often photographed at charitable galas and luncheons, and at least a few have been reco
gnized in their communities for their philanthropic or volunteer efforts.

  Some women, especially the wealthiest, were prominent community volunteers, spending a few hours a day on this work in busy times. They and their husbands often sat on the boards of at least one organization. Several women I interviewed had run major fundraising drives for organizations they supported. Their families gave away tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars each year; a few had set up family foundations. These women did not express conflicts about taking on public identities as volunteers and philanthropists, which is the norm in these communities. Except for the very wealthiest, who are downward-oriented because it is nearly impossible not to be, as I have discussed, the people in this group tended to face upward, comparing themselves to others like them or those who had more.

  Beyond their own and their children’s schools, these women had strong and ongoing commitments to particular organizations, such as a local hospital or religious or civic organizations. Several in the suburbs belonged to the Junior League. They also gave to causes associated with extremely poor people, such as foster care, homelessness, or food pantries. One mother, who was active in her children’s school as well as in an antihunger organization, told me she and her husband gave away money because “we realize how lucky we are” and because she wanted to distribute the money before her death (“I just would rather do it, and see people being able to enjoy that money”). She signaled the twin concerns of the “less fortunate” and her own community when she said, “In the end, I think we give money because we want to improve the lives of other people, either less fortunate than us or our kids, I guess, to some [extent].” In this sense, the practice of people in this group was consistent with research indicating that wealthy people often give primarily in ways that both benefit and reproduce their own communities and community institutions and that, when they give to recipients outside these communities, it is often to mitigate the most pernicious effects of capitalism and curb more radical alternatives.11