A sociology major at Harvard is so afraid of rich people that she took to the pages of The Crimson to describe this fear. “It’s just that the sight and aura of the monied class sets my mind into overthinking mode, self-consciousness into overdrive, and robs my tongue of the ability to communicate,” Jenna M. Gray writes. “I’m not scared of being defrauded of millions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme.”
“White-collar crime doesn’t rob me of my sleep. I just worry that rich people smell my working class roots, hear my lack of boarding school training, see my discount-store garb, and think I’m inferior.”
Jenna needs to realize that in America we don’t look up to people or down on them but right at them. There are some indications she is on the verge of such an epiphany. “Class is an identity to be shed or forgotten as one’s material conditions change and one achieves success,” she observes.
Indeed, she may yet realize the startling truth that America is about the only country on earth in which you are not born into your job. It’s a very liberating realization.
