But to have someone suggest that I'm only doing what I'm doing because I'm rich and/or white...that's tough to swallow.
I think the idea behind the idea that it's a rich/white field is that a higher percentage of people who go into it can afford to not get a job (or to wait around for a job), because they have parents who can bail them out until they succeed. Of course, many people in many fields have parental safety nets. But because the humanities, especially lit/poetry is such a brutal, masochistic field to find a job in, most people who have to succeed in order to survive tend to avoid it, and instead choose fields they know might not be as fulfilling, but are more lucrative. Basically, fewer people can afford to take a chance in humanities/lit unless they have a fallback. Those who do take the chance and don't have parents who will bail them out(you, me, all the people in the "I'm going to end up living in a cardboard box because I chose a major I loved" facebook group) are anything but rich as far as money is concerned.
And that's why labels suck. Also, I've always found it interesting that we use bourgeois to mean entitled/rich when that entire class of people was basically created by merchants who worked their asses off to reach the same level of comfort those born into the aristocracy enjoyed from birth--you'd think that much work would be admirable, not something worthy of derision.
I think the idea behind the idea that it's a rich/white field is that a higher percentage of people who go into it can afford to not get a job (or to wait around for a job), because they have parents who can bail them out until they succeed. Of course, many people in many fields have parental safety nets. But because the humanities, especially lit/poetry is such a brutal, masochistic field to find a job in, most people who have to succeed in order to survive tend to avoid it, and instead choose fields they know might not be as fulfilling, but are more lucrative. Basically, fewer people can afford to take a chance in humanities/lit unless they have a fallback. Those who do take the chance and don't have parents who will bail them out(you, me, all the people in the "I'm going to end up living in a cardboard box because I chose a major I loved" facebook group) are anything but rich as far as money is concerned.
And that's why labels suck. Also, I've always found it interesting that we use bourgeois to mean entitled/rich when that entire class of people was basically created by merchants who worked their asses off to reach the same level of comfort those born into the aristocracy enjoyed from birth--you'd think that much work would be admirable, not something worthy of derision.
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