Since I began writing this column for The Daily Pennsylvanian, I've written a lot about things I'm against. I've shied away from overtly praising what I think is good in the world and at Penn because I think that in order to be taken seriously, I need to be critical. I have associated substance with suggestion, depth with dissent. But, lately I've come to realize that maybe this need to argue might be my biggest problem. So, I've decided to look at economic diversity -- an issue I'm particularly concerned with -- in a more optimistic, less divisive light. And what better time of year to start.
I got pretty upset in class this week, when my professor made an overarching remark about our economic status. In making a point about how difficult it is for people from one socioeconomic background to portray those from another in an unbiased manner, he mentioned how all of us in the room were from upper middle class families. Not so fast, I should have said. I know my professor was generalizing to get his point across and certainly wasn't trying to offend anyone, but I wanted to point out that we shouldn't be so quick to make those sorts of assumptions.
It's important to point out that even though I'm from a different background than a lot of Penn students, I still identify with some higher-class ideals by being at Penn. I'm by no means at the extreme end of the economic spectrum. Not even close. But, I certainly didn't fit my prof's category. Plus, he even knows I'm from a working-class family. Maybe he forgot for a minute. Or, maybe he didn't want to embarrass me by saying, "Well, all of us except Jamie-Lee."
That's the thing. We automatically associate negativity with economic diversity. In a society that has come to understand and embrace cultural differences (at least in theory), we still do our best to overlook socioeconomic differences. We don't want to embarrass people. We don't want people to feel like they don't measure up. So, we ignore the differences and group everyone together. We all need to get over this embarrassment, or guilt, or whatever it is that causes us to generalize.
As a university community, we talk about diversities of all kinds -- economic, ethnic, intellectual, etc. Penn has even addressed the importance of pride when discussing our differences. Just look at President Gutmann's inaugural address. "Our civic life fails to make a virtue of our diversity," she said. "The higher education community must take the higher road. We need to fix our moral compass, fuel our will, and fire our imaginations by what unites rather than divides."
In other words, we can take what we have in common -- our presence at Penn, our desire to learn, our desire to be united regardless of our differences -- and use that unity in order to build a community that embraces difference.
Easier said than done, of course. It's one thing to embrace diversity on paper, and quite another thing to do that in practice. We can have a need-blind admissions process, but that doesn't mean that students won't feel out of place (or thrown into one big socioeconomically-homogenous group) once they get to Penn. It's difficult to see economic diversity as a virtue in a money-makes-the-world-go-round place like this school. To borrow a phrase from President Bush, it'll be "hard work" to change the way this is viewed.
It has to start with those of us from different economic backgrounds. We are the ones who have to start the dialogue, especially since so many people see financial status as a touchy subject. As proud as I am to be someone from a working-class family, I often feel out of place, or jealous, or just plain inadequate. I need to stop feeling upset every time I see a Penn student with an iPod. I shouldn't be annoyed whenever I think about how most of my friends don't pay their own rent. And, I shouldn't feel like I don't belong here just because no one else in my family attended a university before me.
All of these things will continue to divide Penn, and they're all things I've created in my own consciousness. It's this kind of thinking that would lead other members of our community (such as my professor) to think that they can't address our differences. It's a cause-and-effect situation. The more negativity we associate with these differences, the less likely we will be to address and embrace them. Now is the time to be thankful for everything that has brought different points of view to our community.
