http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/11/what-pundits-really-mean-when-they-say.html
Sailer is always worth reading, but occasionally he turns up something really exceptional. Here's his summation:
In summary, your service workers used to be real people to you, and that was a major hassle. Now, they are just The Other, and you like it like that.
I am, I suppose, an upper middle class person, with a lot of friends ranging from upper middle class down to medium proletariat. What Sailer is saying is such a common sentiment that it is almost painful. But we almost never talk about it explicitly.
Most, by which I mean neurotypical white Americans have a lot of hangups about hiring things done. There's usually a nagging sense of guilt---as in---you should do this for yourself and not hire it done. This is especially true for things that aren't hard, just time consuming and unpleasant. And, as Sailer notes---hiring someone who could be a member of your social circle in theory is even worse.
And, oh my God---hiring someone who actually IS in your social circle is just beyond the pale if you're a typical neurotypical American.
Having several maids who are friends of ours through church circles, that sort of attitude is pretty pervasive. Amusingly, one who does maid service part time through her own business pretty much proves this rule through the exception. I'm probably her MOST neurotypical client. All of her other clients are significantly more non-neurotypical than I. It helps that her husband is pretty far on the scale, and that she has something of a passion for the creation of Order. How many maids do you know of that enjoy not just cleaning but reorganizing as well?
The other maid echos the standard position---she takes pains never to work for anyone that she actually knows from any social circle, although she does make good referral suggestions, as in when we needed a thorough post-moving cleaning. The reason why is of course the standard American awkwardness as regards 'the help'.
Personally I find the attitude somewhat absurd. When I've a job that I'd prefer to hire out than to spend the organizational capacity to do within the nuclear family, my first thought is ALWAYS, do we have any friends who make their living this way that we can offer our business? All of these are perfectly honorable vocations, and, if I actually like you, I prefer to give you my business at the normal market rate. But apparently my attitude is pretty rare, and these complexes are likely driving a lot of the support for open borders among the 'nice white lady' set.
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3 comments:
If they have bogus jobs and lives I think having "help" reminds them just how much bullshit their lives are even if the bullshit pays well. It reminds them that their lifestyle really is built on the back of the working man (whereas everything at the department store and the whole foods just appears out of magic).
ASDF,
I'd like to be able to say that it's just the SWPLs working internships and NGOs that feel this way, but unfortunately, I can't. Even a lot of aircraft mechanics, engineers in manufacturing companies, construction contractors, and the like feel this way too. Deformation of the old 'puritan work ethic'?
Ah, this explains why nobody I know, even in my church, will hire me for casual labor. Of course they are all Midwesterners, this being Southern Florida, and I have never understood those people. My own family solved the servant problem by hiring American Negroes (the maid we had when I was a kid in the fifties) but that was the South and that was then. Besides, it seems that all of the genuine American Negroes have government jobs now.
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