I've learned a lot recently about how "the other side" gets treated - It's been an eye opener.
A few weeks ago, I was shopping in T+T Franklin, wearing my "work" (read: Blue Collar) clothes. People kept walking into me, cutting me off, like I wasn't there. While I'm usually a courteous pedestrian, I've become accustomed to a certain degree of courtesy from others. I figured that this was some kind of standard behavior against non asians.
Fast forward a week later. Against all odds, I'm at T+T again, in my "other" work clothes: White collar, professional, with a touch of dandy. I seem to have no trouble with traffic flow, or with people walking into me, or cutting me off. It occurs to me that my previous experience wasn't based in race, but in class.
Fast forward to this weekend: After a day of dry walling, I end up at the post office. I'm filling out a form, and hear the clipity-clop of heels. I Glance up, make eye contact with a well coiffed woman a little younger than me. After .25 seconds of eye contact, she's rolls her eyes. WTF!!! DID YOU JUST ROLL YOU EYES AT ME BIATCH!!!! While I'm no stud, I can't recall the last time I'd been so rudely and overtly been given a "you can't look at this" by a woman.
Ironically, the woman who rolled her eyes at me was black, and probably privy to all sorts of scholarships, opportunities, and sympathies that would be denied to a white blue collar man covered in drywall mud.
Altogether, it's been a growing realization of just how shitty people are to blue collar folk... It's mind boggling... like people just automatically think it's ok to shit on these folk.
While many of us are guilty of being classist to some degree, I don't think I ever appreciated the sheer degree of callousness.