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My sympathies have always been for working-class people.

The idea of victimage is a dreadful thing, a product of a safe middle-class perspective. What people who are not safe develop is a tragic wisdom, a wisdom that embraces contradiction and seeks a sense of balance rather than going to extremes.

I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result.

Remember, social progress only happens when those in society's privileged classes choose to give up their status.

Abstract sympathy with the working class as an economic entity is easy, but the feeling can vanish on contact with actual members of the group, who often arrive with disturbing beliefs and powerful resentments - who might not sound or look like people urban progressives want to know.

Is class snobbery a social reality in the United States? Absolutely, and the kind that's codified by meritocracy is probably more toxic than the old-fashioned kind based on bloodlines.

The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.

Of course the lower classes have always felt downtrodden and aspired to a better life. But there is this theory that people respond to a class structure in England - there was a time when people knew who they were and knew whom they served and as long as management wasn't abusive, it was a good life for people.

I definitely caught a lot of backlash in my situation, not just from students but also from faculty, which was unfortunate, given that I was spending a lot of my time outside school working on a career, which a lot of people didn't really agree with.