<p>
[quote]
...faculty members who would carefully consider whether their comments might offend members of many groups do not feel the same need to be sensitive to those from poor, largely white, rural communities in Appalachia.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Sadly, the Naked Guy at who attended classes at UC Berkeley with naught but a book bag passed on.in 2006. Are there seriously schools where you can’t go to class barefoot?</p>
<p>I would expect bare feet to be forbidden in science buildings (broken glass, chemicals, etc.) and where food is served.</p>
<p>Oh man. Back in our day, didn’t we always have some hippie sorts who walked around campus barefoot? And many of us thought it was somehow just fine? </p>
<p>Without seeing the original comment, we don’t know if the very first faculty member to bring it up tied the barefoot kid to Appalachia in any way at all. (For all we know, the kid wasn’t from there. This got around because a second- or third-hand reader passed on the comments of someone else not directly involved.) </p>
<p>Should people use ‘hillbilly?’ Oh, I guess not, in today’s sensitive world. </p>
<p>
I certainly don’t feel that this statement applies to myself, although I don’t believe I have students from these areas in my classes. Or at least, if I do, they have not distinguished themselves as somehow different than the rest of the amoebas occupying the seats. :)</p>
<p>I would think that closed toed shoes are a safety requirement in science labs but don’t know how enforceable this would be. At some point students would be responsible for being sensible. The student who tries walking barefoot around campus might have some sore feet at a point. It never occurred to me to try it. </p>
<p>Proper lab attire was pretty well enforced in my undergrad for course labs. Showing up to a lab section in open toed shoes (some labs/TA’s also insisted on long pants and tied back hair) would result in being barred from entering the lab and would be recorded as not having shown up for the lab at all (if you were fast enough you might be able to get changed in time to finish the work, but the TA would still be pretty unhappy with you). These things were all spelled out in the syllabus.</p>
<p>I used to go to class barefoot all the time. UCSB early 90’s.</p>
<p>Interesting that this has become more about proper attire in school than what the subject line is.</p>
<p>I think the acceptability of fat-shaming is another area where prejudice is perfectly acceptable both in and out of academia. That also has a class-based overlay to it. </p>
<p>Fat-shaming, wealth-shaming, Conservative/Republican-shaming…have those been banished yet? Hillbilly-shaming is probably not the <em>last</em> acceptable prejudice.</p>
<p>I think fat-shaming has been on the way out for a while.
I am not sure what the “class-based” overlay is since of the 78M obese people, 50M are white and 2/3rds of Americans are either overweight or obese.</p>
<p>I agree that wealth-shaming is still in vogue.</p>
<p>Although it’s changing somewhat now that everybody is getting fat in America, obesity rates, especially among women, have a strong inverse relationship to income and education. That holds true for both U.S. and E.U., so the overlay can be seen as more closely aligned to class (income and education) than ethnicity.</p>
<p>I don’t know if it’s the “last acceptable prejudice” but I know it exists. I grew up in a “poor, largely white, rural community in Appalachia,” even though my own family was middle-class. In college (a well-respected small research university) I heard every hillbilly joke you can imagine - usually from students but occasionally from professors. “When did you start wearing shoes?” “Did your family have indoor plumbing?” And don’t get me started on the marrying-your-cousin comments…</p>
<p>None of it was particularly funny (or original), but mostly I just shrugged it off. The jokes and comments escalated when I moved to the Midwest for grad school, and I still hear it occasionally when people hear my accent. It’s not just professors who are biased - many people seem to think that Southern = stupid (or Southern = hillbilly = stupid).</p>
<p>There was an interesting study by two psychologists at University of Chicago that found that kids as young as five in their sample associated northern accents with “smart” and southern accents with “nice”. Since it was done in Chicago and TN, I’m assuming that by “northern” they meant a Chicago accent. (Of course, dose of us who live in Chicawga know we don’t have accents, but, for some incomprehensible reason, people elsewhere seem to dink we do.) </p>
<p>scout,
My father’s family were real “rednecks,” (dirt-poor farmers from Kentucky), but they lived long and their progeny prospered, so like you, I don’t let it get to me. </p>
<p>In a college freshman psyc, class, I was asked by the prof. to said a rhyme in front of the class so they could hear my very distinct accent. Even now, as an adult, some co-workers still ask me to say certain words that I pronounce differently than they do. They seem to think it’s funny but to me it feels somewhat condescending. </p>
<p>The idea of “wealth shaming” seems a bit off. Inappropriate prejudice is unjustified prejudice against the weak and vulnerable that is a form of bullying that limits life choices. Those who are critical of wealth are attacking the powerful, not the weak, and trying to be consistent with the notion of the journalist Finley Peter Dunne, and social reformers generally, who claimed that the job of the journalist is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”</p>
<p>No you don’t get a pass for bullying someone just because they are not weak. </p>
<p>Recently there was a student who got into all the eight ivies. Clearly, he is very strong and talented. That doesn’t mean it is okay to bully him. </p>
<p>Dunne’s quote is divisive and wrong for our society. The only person whose job it is to afflict the comfortable are crooks and thieves. </p>
<p>The quote is directed at journalists. It means critically question those in power, which is not happening much these days btw.</p>