Comment 50994

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted November 01, 2010 at 09:39:17

Voter turnouts aren't going to improve as long as the under-representation of those communities continues to be blatantly obvious to those who live there.

Ask people why they don't vote, and you'll get one overwhelming answer, "they're all full of it anyway". Not terribly articulate, but also not very different from what many of us say all the time. The question is, why is it so hard for poor people to be taken seriously when they talk about these things, based on their own life experiences? Why can only privileged people talk publicly about the plight of the under-privileged?

Class affects language just like it affects cars, houses and clothing. When we construct debates around big impressive-sounding words and obscure references, we exclude a lot of people. RTH is a very middle-class forum in terms of the way we talk (I'm guessing most of us have at least some University, but everyone picks it up in their own way). It's not necessarily a bad thing - but we have to recognize that someone is not necessarily stupid because they haven't been professionally trained to talk this way.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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