Social Inequality Class

Note to a young woman who just completed her "Social Inequality" class at a top college:

Your social inequality class continues for a lifetime, a step along the road to opening your eyes to the core reality of the world we inhabit and broadening your perspective on it.

The challenge to those of us who have chosen the path of understanding is to embrace, organize and unite the disempowered - from a broad and inclusive vision of who we all are, how we came to be hers and where we could be going - to change that reality.

Which means embracing and accepting the pain of being one of us; not just the pain of being Black or Latino or female, or the pain of being branded gay or fat, a "sped" or disabled, an "illegal" or a "felon", but the pain of being working-class. This pain doesn't go away, but if you commit to the struggle it will not stop you from living your living life joyfully, and it can be a source of power. ...

But if you try to run from it and deny it, it will follow you, and then it will run your life and twist you.

Been there, done that.