Setting:
A classroom.
MR. PROVE-IT
Next up, “Class…” …It seems to me like we covered the “why we have to pay attention to class” in the background and experiences of Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett, as they related so closely to issues of race. Do you think we can just move on to pointing them out?
MR. WHINEY
You mean that…
(Pauses a beat for dramatic effect.)
…like race…
(Pauses for a second beat.)
…class has been a central contributing factor to how and why prisons exist in America—a history that will be discussed in greater length when we discuss the changing role of incarceration in democratic societies—and that the class status of any investigators is relevant information for a reader and should be made as authentically accessible as possible?
MR. PROVE-IT
Uh, yeah, that.
So, class.
Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett is obviously one well-educated and class-privileged dude, right? Who else has the time and energy to spend on an investigation like this: thinking about something that does not contribute to his own survival? Much less do it in such a pretentious and fucked up format that has us talking more about him than the subject we are supposed to be focusing on?
MR. WHINEY
(Says dryly in a flat tone.)
Zing— Certainly, he has benefited from class-privileges that, considered globally, very few human beings could match.
However, like race and gender, this might be a more challenging social identity to deconstruct than pushing squarely into round categorical holes like working-class, middle-class, or upper-class.
MR. PROVE-IT
(Giggles uncharacteristically)
Well, I want to give you shit over yr need to over complicate everything to the point of meaningless…but, since I started off the discussion of race saying identity was going to get tricky, I’ll be gracious—
(raises his voice to keep MR. WHINEY from interrupting.)
—This once…and let you continue before calling bullshit.
(MR. WHINEY, feeling playful, “Oooooo’s” like a first grader.)
MR. WHINEY
Getting fancy there Mr. Prove-it, you might want to watch it and stay in your lane there…
MR. PROVE-IT
Are we going back to this again?
MR. WHINEY
No.
(returns to his calm and scholarly persona before continuing.)
Understanding class in America is always a complicated endeavor. There is such an unfathomable and disparaging gap between wealthiest and poorest citizens of the United States, that it makes almost everyone believe that they exist somewhere in the middle of a spectrum that includes malnourished children and unimaginable decadence, even as that wealth is cause celebrity in the United States. When you have a country where a Billionaire presidential candidate can get elected by convincing enough people that he has best understanding of the issues faced by a blue collar American, because he is wealthy enough not to be impacted by the political machinations of his millionaire opponent, class-analysis is a confusing and convoluted beast.
MR. PROVE-IT
—That’s an awfully sympathetic way to describe how a sexist, racist, asshole, with the assistance of foreign spies, could bully an out-of-touch political system into giving him the presidency.
MR. WHINEY
Maybe so, but the point is that Americans fail to acknowledge the impact of class hierarchies as badly as Europeans fail to acknowledge racism when it is not codified into law.
Wealth moves so quickly in America that it is incredibly difficult not to get caught up in the fantasy of the American dream: that riches beyond imagining are just a spin of the roulette wheel away. When given the choice between the security of “good-enough,” and the lottery of “Big Money/Big Whammy,” Americans consistently prove themselves gamblers in ways that the entire world has grown to dread. Manufacturing the logic required to revel in the suffering of others is one of this nation’s biggest growth industries.
MR. PROVE-IT
Your claims are getting pretty bold there, but if I agree to the point that Americans have a weaker grasp of class than folks in many other countries, what does any of this have to do with our investigation?
MR. WHINEY
Isn’t stating facts your job? Why don’t you tell us what factors of Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett’s class upbringing are relevant to an investigation of McPherson’s Unit, and then we can talk about it?
MR. PROVE-IT
Fine then.
(responds with a snarky bluntness.)
The child of a single working mother, making peanuts as a hippy-dippy school teacher, it would be easy to suggest that Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett came up in a struggling working-class household.
For example, he has many memories of years spent moving from one cockroach-infested apartment to the next while his mother tried to stay ahead of bill collectors and eviction notices. But this telling of the story gets complicated by other realities of his childhood. Realities, like: his grandfather was a prominent civil-defense lawyer and his extended Jewish family placed such a traditional emphasis on education that he had aunts, uncles, cousins and -in-laws who ran a gambit of embarrassingly stereotypical upper-class Jewish occupations. When Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett dropped out of college at the age of twenty-one, it was a letdown that spoke to a lack of respect for the opportunities he had been afforded, rather than a decision made out of economic necessity, as he tried to spin the story at the time.
In the six years that followed his “dropping out,” he spent jobless and hitch-hiking across America, crashing alternately between friends’ couches and abandoned buildings. This time period again exists problematically in defining his class experiences.
Sure, he learned how to survive eating food out of trash cans, but he was also testing the limits of the incredible strength of the safety net that existed to keep him from hitting concrete when he fell off the high wire of his political fantasies.
Class is complicated in America, not just by the extreme disparity of economic wealth, but by how successfully the benefits of class are buried deeper than can be dug out of a bank statement. Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett is a product of privileges, class-included, that can’t be taken or given back just because they have been observed.
MR. WHINEY
Wow, that kind of describes some of the heaviest issues we are having with a lot of these constructed social positions that Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett occupies, doesn’t it?
MR. PROVE-IT
Maybe so, but class—more so than race or gender—is a site of potential concern because Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett has conflicting enough experiences with its privileges to get ugly defensive about things that he has no right to take so personally—
MR. WHINEY
—and thus, is far more traditionally American than he would like to admit.
MR. PROVE-IT
Probably…
(MR. PROVE-IT trails off for a beat in thought before returning with a sigh.)
Well, that feels to me like about everything that could be said of Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett and how his identity signifiers might impact this investigation. You think we can finally move this thing along?
MR. WHINEY
Well we never explicitly discussed the relationship of sexuality to issues of incarceration and identity, which will problematically lead most of our readers to make heteronormative assumptions about Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett and desire, but it seems rather invasive to make a case that who Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett has or has not copulated with is relevant to this investigation.
MR. PROVE-IT
You mean fucked. Right?
Well, we did discuss sexuality and incarceration, when discussing masculinity, we pointed our audience to Michael Foucault. I think it’s alright if we leave the discussion about the relationships between sex, power, identity and incarceration, for our audience to explore on their own time, now that we have pointed them in the right direction.
MR. WHINEY
Perhaps so, perhaps so.
Perhaps, it is enough to admit that sexuality is confusing enough of an aspect of social identity that we must be observant of the ways in which heteronormative constructions of masculinity attempt to frame this investigation, even if only resorting to default assumptions, both on a public and private scale?
MR. PROVE-IT
That is an awful and indirect way to admit that we are just not sure how queerness factors into this investigation beyond assumptions about gender and sexuality. So, we did our best to cover them both together, and if we left something out, we’d sure like to hear about it. Is there anything else?
MR. WHINEY
Well, national identity seems pretty clearly established as American. And we are woefully under-qualified to discuss the relationship of Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett’s identity as being abled-ish, Neurotypical, and with no known diagnosed physical or mental health concerns to really take that conversation anywhere more useful than stating everything I just did…
(Takes a beat to catch his breath and ask himself if he misstated any of that in a way that would be hurtful to someone he didn’t mean to offend or harm. He does not give himself a reassuring answer.)
We stated that he was Jewish when discussing his class privileges, and to discuss the philosophical impacts of being a Jew and asking questions about respected institutions in the South—any deeper than its class impacts—might have to be an investigation of its own for another time. This is especially the case since Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett’s loose linkage to formal Judaism rarely manifests in one-on-one interactions while he researched this investigation. It does feel pertinent to state that he is religious and culturally Jewish enough to have had a Bar Mitzvah and deliver the HaMotzi in Hebrew when asked to do so.
It is possible that the recent and growing wave of anti-Semitism in America will catch up with Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett at some point in the future, since he is an outspoken Jew with radical political affiliations, but it hasn’t yet—
MR. PROVE-IT
—Speaking of politics, Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garret certainly has a history of radical shit-disturbing that can be found without too much searching on the Internet.
MR. WHINEY
Well, that is true, and we have left that subject suspiciously vague.
In reality, his politics might prove to be the most salient identity factors of this investigation, as will become painfully obvious when we have to address why the State of Arkansas decided to be so uncooperative with this investigation. But I think we might just have to leave that dramatic tension alone for now and see what happens.
MR. PROVE-IT
(laughs heartily.)
Well, Mr. Whiney, Examiner, have we finally talked around these issues of identity politics enough that we can move along into…you know…REAL TALK about McPherson’s Unit and the place it occupies here on planet earth?