There is a general trend these days in America concerning the treatment and view of the working class. People with skilled labor or even unskilled labor positions are viewed by the upper class, and what’s worse, by college kids, as being stupid. This is just inherently ridiculous and downright ignorant.
Today in high schools across the nation, the students who elect to attend a vocational school are said to be taking the easy way out, to be too dumb to attend college.
This trend doesn’t end after high school. College students treat members of the working class as substandard and even sub-human at times.
Far too often, I have heard students ridiculing factory workers, highway laborers and members of the service industry in casual conversation. Even to these peoples’ faces. If these students would stop and think for a minute as to what they are saying and doing, they may have a bit more respect for those individuals.
It is not just students, either. Yuppie-type urban professionals think that they are contributing more to society and view the working class as peons.
Stop and think of that moronic reasoning. How did these young urban professionals get to work? In a car that was built by workers in a factory, driving on a road that was built and is maintained by the local laborers’ union. Where do they work? In a giant office building that took thousands of electricians, carpenters, masons, laborers and other such individuals to even be erected, much less maintained.
This general trend of devaluing and disrespecting the working class often times has fatal results.
My father is a laborer – registered in the union – and works as a road construction foreman. My father has buried too many of his fellow workers, union members and in some cases friends because some yuppie refuses to respect the speed limit laws in a construction site.
For these diluted individuals who think that just because they have some sort of degree they are smarter than the working class, I ask them, can you change a fuel injector on that impossibly expensive Mercedes?
No, you probably can’t.
Roll that around in your head next time you call a waiter a moron because the lobster bisque is too hot, or yell at a mechanic because he can’t repair an engine that you drove without oil for 100 miles.
Stop and think for just a moment about where you came from, and who your family is and was. Perhaps your grandfather was someone who didn’t go to college, who was a member of the working class. Then picture his face next time you see a man in a hard hat and jeans and think to yourself, “God, I’m glad I’m not stupid like him.”
(i)Eric Harrelson is a senior in English. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].(/i)
