If Aretha and Condi can do it...

It's sad that so many grown people are still hung up about who's too black, who is black enough, and who is too bourgie. That kind of thinking was silly in elementary school, crippling in the teen years, and it's just plain pathetic in adults. If the Queen of Soul can team up with the former Secretary of State, I think the rest of us can get past the arbitrary social distinctions that we've bought into and treat each other better.

Maybe there's an inescapable impulse to categorize people, but because everyone is born into a set of circumstances that they can't control it's pretty pointless to make value judgments based on where they grew up or what their parents did or did not do for a living.

In all honesty, it's easier for people in the same social class to get along with each other. But just because it's easier doesn't mean it's wise to avoid other groups of people all together. I'm sure I seem crass and boring to the rich, and stuck up and boring to the poor. I confess that when I first met very rich people, they were often irritating if not infuriating, but this was not a good enough reason not to take advantage of some of the knowledge and resources they had. And when I overhear poor people talking on the trolley some of their attitudes still amaze me, but this is no reason for me to stop riding the trolley and try to block these people from my view or remain ignorant about them.

Sometimes class walls seem even higher in the black community, even though the actual differences in our incomes may be smaller. The stand up comic Patrice Oneal has a routine about kids in the same neighborhood living on the same street making a big deal over who lived in public housing and who didn't. This kind of difference seems significant in the small world of a city block, but when you zoom out a bit, it's a joke.

Often it's the people who are middle class or who have middle class ties who get the most fired up about trying not to seem middle class. And if you're just talking about style, this is understandable, because the middle is boring. But this anti-bourgeois pose can lead to self-defeating acts and missed opportunities. And the people with working class backgrounds or experience in poverty often spend a lot of energy trying to act like money is no object. This leads to maxed-out, stressed out nonsense. What is the point of spending our limited resources trying to appear upscale or spending limited resources trying to seem more down (sometimes I think it's more expensive to avoid looking bourgeois)? The sadder question is, who are we really trying to impress?

You can feel proud about where you come from and proud of your family's strengths without trying to make others feel shame about their backgrounds.