Hm, interesting post from nihlistic_kid (but the link needs fixing). His comment about Southern whites being paid less than Northern blacks is interesting, but I suspect it was precisely the differential, even more than the average amount, that is psychologically rewarding for whites.
I have been spending quite a lot of time with some very poor white people lately and I think this attitude towards knowledge - shared vs. hoarded - is just a special case of a very broad kind of privilege, which is the privilege of "not having to care". Upper class people can afford to be generous because they are not accustomed to having to fight tooth and nail for every last advantage just to squeak by. Hoarding and competitive behavior also seems associated with having a lot of siblings, and people who grew up having to compete for food at the dinner table seem permanently imprinted by that experience. (Perhaps that's why recipes are such a good example.)
Generosity is seen as a virtue, so of course those who cannot or don't believe they can afford it are seen as less virtuous by those who can. I can't call recipe-hoarding a vice but it probably is much less necessary than it seems.
It's sort of unbelievable how much energy goes into different kinds of psychological game-playing among people who can afford it the least. I find some lower class whites to be almost pathologically defensive of their honor, and this is the source of all kinds of woo-woo ranging from secret recipes to outright occult manipulation.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2012-05-17 08:35 pm (UTC)I have been spending quite a lot of time with some very poor white people lately and I think this attitude towards knowledge - shared vs. hoarded - is just a special case of a very broad kind of privilege, which is the privilege of "not having to care". Upper class people can afford to be generous because they are not accustomed to having to fight tooth and nail for every last advantage just to squeak by. Hoarding and competitive behavior also seems associated with having a lot of siblings, and people who grew up having to compete for food at the dinner table seem permanently imprinted by that experience. (Perhaps that's why recipes are such a good example.)
Generosity is seen as a virtue, so of course those who cannot or don't believe they can afford it are seen as less virtuous by those who can. I can't call recipe-hoarding a vice but it probably is much less necessary than it seems.
It's sort of unbelievable how much energy goes into different kinds of psychological game-playing among people who can afford it the least. I find some lower class whites to be almost pathologically defensive of their honor, and this is the source of all kinds of woo-woo ranging from secret recipes to outright occult manipulation.