In my experience not that many academics are from working class backgrounds, though being from one doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be a good person much less a communist.
michael yates
Frances Bolton (PHI) wrote:
>
> On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > Maybe Kelley thinks that we college teachers are 'middle-class
> > professionals' whereas I think that we--with the exception of stars--are
> > objectively part of the working class doing service labor (mainly teaching
> > + grading, while a minority of us get to do research + writing
> > occasionally). Only in ideology are we 'middle-class professionals.' Maybe
> > she doesn't think that but just writes as if she did.
>
> I tend to be a bit suspicious when I hear leftist academics insisting that
> teaching makes them a part of the working class. I wonder if they are
> perhaps making this claim simply to deny their own privileged position.
> Must say I thought the same thing when Michael Moore was here and called
> us a bunch of bourgeois smarty pants, or however he phrased it--I was
> somewhat shocked by how many of us began talking about our own working
> class backgrounds--you'd think from hearing us that no one on the left is
> from a middle class background, when, in fact, since the New Left, we've
> been disproportionately middle class. While I'm at it, I'll throw in those
> middle class white boys who insist that they are bisexual so as to avoid
> the onus of being straight white males.
>
> frances