Class
(page 2)
All these walls that keep us from loving each other as one family or one race — racism, religion, where we grew up, whatever, class, socioeconomic — what makes us be so selfish and prideful, what keeps us from wanting to help the next man, what makes us be so focused on a personal legacy as opposed to the entire legacy of a race.
I remember there were days when — and this is kind of gross — I would sleep in my uniform to save time in the morning and then get up and go to school... it didn't matter because I didn't have to impress anyone, and I didn't have to look cute in class.
It's — the working class of San Francisco and the Bay Area is being pushed out of its old neighborhoods because of the skyrocketing cost of housing, and there's no real working class left because these are jobs for engineers and managers and designers — very smart people.
I was performing at a New Jersey high school, and I asked a class of 2,000 students, 'How many of you love mathematics?' and only one hand went up. And that was the hand of the maths teacher!
The desperately poor may accept handouts, because they feel they have to. For those who consider themselves at least middle class, however, anything that smacks of a handout is not desired. Instead, they want their economic power back.
My freshman year at Harrison High School, I saw a journalism class where students were putting out a weekly newspaper. It touched a responsive chord in me.
You cannot further the Brotherhood of Man by encouraging class hatred.
I had always loved music. I grew up listening to classic country, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard. My dad loved Vern Gosdin and Keith Whitley. So I kept going to class and started getting totally into playing guitar and teaching myself these songs.
The uniform makes for brotherhood, since when universally adopted it covers up all differences of class and country.
My parents are the last of the middle class. My father worked for the government designing sea mines. My mother was a substitute teacher. Together, they worked really only until they were sixty.
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