Making a Difference, and Other Illusions
Christy Lambertson
October 1, 2001
I have never tasted government cheese. My friend Nicole raves about the stuff, and insists that there its nothing in the local grocery store to touch it. My unfamiliarity with the world of government commodity food is just one of the many differences between her life and |mine. I grew up in a fairly affluent suburb with happily married parents. Nicole's story is not mine to tell, but it's safe to say that government cheese was one of her childhood's high points. She jokes about my deprived childhood, but occasionally she stops joking and |asks me why we were given such different worlds. Why did I get a big backyard and a dog and piano lessons, while she got a minimum wage job at the age of fifteen and has paid her own way ever since? Some days she looks at me and says, "It isn't fair." My mother used to say that. She'd say, "Life isn't fair," when I complained that it wasn't my turn to do the dishes or that my brother got to borrow the car last weekend. What I don't remember her saying is that, for the most part, life's unfairness has worked in my favor. As a graduate student in sociology, I have learned to explain this at great length, using words like "bifurcation" and "capitalist ruling elite." But let's just go with Class Conflict 101 in a nutshell: the people with power and the people with money tend to be one and the same, or at least really good friends. Society simply works better for them, while poverty comes with more than its fair share of tragedy and powerlessness, unmediated by the ability to afford lawyers, political contributions, or savings for a rainy day. Nicole, who hasn't been to graduate school, would just say that the world is run by people who don't care about her. Back when I still thought that I could ...
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