Class & race privilege

Yesterday, in addition to gardening in my "comfy clothes," I threw on my boyfriend's paint-stained jacket because it was comfortable and a ridiculous hat my boyfriend ordered off a cereal box to keep myself from sunburning.

Then, we ran errands and I wore these clothes out w/o brushing my bedhead.

I looked ready to WORK, and there was no part of my class showing through my clothes or grooming.



And people treated me like they had done in the suburbs when I was growing up.

People did the dance of, "Who was first?" when a cashier asked us who was first in line rather than nodding a, "Go ahead," to me.



I'd thought maybe it was local culture of my new state's city versus my childhood state's suburbs, all this deference.

But maybe it's been race+class all along.

Maybe it's been me, raised upper-middle-class in the suburbs, looking like it, while shopping in working-class parts of the city instead.



(Also, I have a bad tendency to sort of kind of stare when I am around other people, but it didn't throw people's body language off this time. Now I kind of want to dress like I'm ready to tear up a garden all the time to compensate for my bad habits, rather than fix my bad habits!)