s/o racial/ethnic diversity--how many of you

[Deleted]

regularly interact with people from radically different income brackets.  i'm not talking about nest poor.  i'm talking you're obama tax bracket rich, say, and you regularly deal with people who live at or near the poverty line (say).  or you're average middle class income and you know richie riches (not just obama rich.  like, um, dubai rich or something).

me:  no.  while my workplace and where i live are ethnically/racially diverse, generally speaking my colleages and friends are all upper middle class and above.  where i live does have a lot of income mix in the sense that there are multi-million dollar homes, apartments, section 8 all within i'd say about a square mile or half-mile, but my street and the immediately surrounding streets are all pretty much the same upper middle class.

[Deleted]

Newp. We are all pretty middle class, even if lower middle class in some instances.

Quite a few think they are Obama tax bracket rich though. That's fun to hear about.

[snipsnsnails]

Yeah, I'm really intentional about it b/c I live in a place where there is such a wide swing of economic diversity. I have friends on all ends of the spectrum. And beyond friendships, my social commitments and volunteerism allow me to interact with people from radically different income brackets, too.

[underwaterrhymes]

H and I are firmly middle class. Most of the people we know and hang out with fall into this category.

But his mom and stepdad fall into the lower income category, as do many of the people in the area in which he grew up.

And I interact with some seriously wealthy people (coworkers) pretty much every day.

[Deleted]

Okay, wait, that's not true. I used to teach yoga to inner-city kids and there was a huge income gap.

So not in about a year but before that, I would interact regularly.

It's different though b/c it's kids and they don't get it. Or few did.

[VillainV]

Unfortunately I work with a lot of people who are below the poverty line. Most of my immediate coworkers make pretty much what I do (solidly middle class), but there are a lot of people in our organization who make significantly less. The difference between officer and enlisted pay in the military is crazy, and it's really sad how little some soldiers/sailors/airmen get paid....

[Deleted]

yeah, i "regularly interact" with people from all sorts of income brackets, but when i think about voluntary social interaction (who i hang out with as friends, where i chose to live, etc.), it's pretty homogeneous.

ETA:  as per the usual, i phrased my initial question poorly.

[hopecounts]

Not really.
Most of our friends are roughly in the same money bracket as us (middle class) some might have a bit more or less than others but no significant differences.

i will say DH's parents and grandparents are more well off probably cross over into upper class financially but not remotely Obama rich.

[VillainV]

Jan 23, 2013 13:33:25 GMT -5 @cse1960 said:

We're middle class (under 175k/year); many of my clients are what I would call rich (5-10 mill/year). A lot of the parents at our kid's school are filthy rich (10-15 mill/year). A family member of mine is uber filthy rich, as in 20-40 mill/year.

Shit, if $175K/year is middle class, then I'm not as middle class as I thought I was...

[pittsmcgee]

We're lower middle class (feel worse off than even that!) and we regularly deal with poverty (SD's mom) and we know some rich people, too. Not like super billionaire rich, but extremely comfortable. Lucky.
It's not super ethnically/racially diverse around here, but there is a lot of diversity about 5 minutes south in towns in MA. We're on the MA/NH border pretty much.

[mrssavy42112]

I interact with a broad spectrum.

[papie]

Radically different: no

Different as in we are upper middle class and I often deal with rich (but not Dubai rich) or lower middle class, yes.

[luckyval]

I'd say every day through work - it runs the gamut from upper to very low income. As far as our friends go, we're all middle class, but there's still some variation there

[Deleted]

LOL seriously.

I have a rich friend (like, family independently wealthy at 26) but we're drifting. Her mindset is just so, so drastically different from mine. That isn't the only reason we are drifting, but it's irritating to hear "It's *only* $200" with some stuff when that is huge to us.

[textbookcase]

I interact with people from all income brackets. We are nest-poor, probably even real-life poor, but in a LCOL area so it's not so bad. We have friends that are poverty-level poor and we have millionaire friends. H and I both come from upper middle class families.

[papie]

Jan 23, 2013 13:35:25 GMT -5 papie said:

Radically different: no

Different as in we are upper middle class and I often deal with rich (but not Dubai rich) or lower middle class, yes.

Oh and the rich are some of DH's friends, and the ILs.  The lower middle class are my old friends who work at my parents' restaurant and have been working there for the last 15 years, haven't graduated HS. 

[fuckyourcouch]

hmm.
we are probably between middle class and upper middle class.

i have friends anywhere from richy rich to pretty poor.

[Kristinmo]

I really don't interact much with lower class. But we are middle class and I work with upper class people on a regular basis (partners in the firm and at clients)

[statlerwaldorf]

I mostly interact with middle class or lower. I don't think we know anyone significantly wealthy. There aren't a lot of upper middle class around here, but I have some in my family. There are a lot of families DH works with who are living under the poverty level. We have some broke ass college student friends. I also do a lot of volunteer work with families in poverty.

[karmasabiotch]

The city I work in is financially diverse. I have clients that are homeless and clients living in multi million dollar homes.

Other than my ex bff, I would say that most of my family and friends are pretty similar with a middle or upper middle background.

[KKD]

Yeah, uh, my socioeconomic interactions are about as diverse as my racial/ethnic interactions. We do often socialize with some Richie Riches and some regular ol' middle class, but really most of our friends are upper middle class.

[eddy]

We are in a bit of a bubble.

BUUUT we did choose a school district that was pretty diverse socio economically to give our kids perspective. Does that count lol.

Otherwise we spend most of our time with people similar to us income wise.

[janegold]

I'm not sure if if counts as interacting, but we live in a very economically and racially diverse area of our neighborhood. $1 million+ condos down the street (we don't live in those, lol) and projects literally behind our apartment. So maybe daily "encounters" with the very poor is a better term.

A lot of my H's friends and colleagues are for-real rich, and most of mine are middle- to upper-middle class.

[litebright]

There are definitely kids in DD1's preschool who come from families at or near the poverty line. The school has some stats on that, I forget exactly what they are. The elementary has about a 30% turnover rate each year, according to the principal, b/c their home-school area includes a fairly large number of rentals and lower-middle-class income neighborhoods (where DH and I rented before buying a house, actually).  

Our immediate neighborhood is solidly upper-middle class, as are most of our friends (at least now; many of them, including DH's family, were quite poor growing up). 

I regularly talk with 1-percenters (CEOs & other major corporation C-levelers) for work. That's probably more like Obama-rich than Dubai-rich, but still pretty far up the totem pole from where we are. Socializing? Yeahno.  

My family on both sides runs the gamut from barely scraping by to comfortable, to my parents, who are quite well-off. 

[LeggsBenedict]

I do. We are at the poorer end of the spectrum, but we know/work with/spend time with people with less. The same goes for the other end of the spectrum. I admit I can be jealous and get down on our situation.

[eddy]

This thread is going to turn into a "I HAVE RICH FRIENDS!!!" thread, yes?

[sailorgray]

We are middle class, own a home in a HerCOL area, have a nice savings, etc. My BFF rents a 3 BR home in a resort town that is a mile from the beach and receives Medicaid, food stamps and maybe other things I don't know about. My other BFF makes well into the six figures and has a beautiful apt in NYC which she just totally re-did. We are all over the place, but are all happy and you'd never know we are from different backgrounds.

My aunt is rich as in she flies one of her planes to her brand new multimillion dollar beach house that is only a 1.5 hours away to beat shore traffic.

[Deleted]

Not regularly, but occassionally,.

[Deleted]

Jan 23, 2013 13:52:55 GMT -5 eddy said:

This thread is going to turn into a "I HAVE RICH FRIENDS!!!" thread, yes?

lol.  i didn't mean for it to.  and i didn't word my question well ("regularly interact with" can mean so many different things).

after miso's post, i was all whitegirl smug like "look at my united colors of bennetton friends and city!"  and then i remembered that nearly everyone in my social circle is a lawyer/doctor/consultant/accountant/junior executive/professor.  like, whoa.  we're all so diverse.  some of us work 50-60 hours a week in offices on the 14th floor of a building, and some of us on the 26th.  crazy town!

[circa1978]

My husband has several dubai wealthy friends. I have a few that I think probably live near the poverty level. We're solidly upper middle class, along with our parents. Most of the people I deal with day to day are the same.