The Last Shame in America
(Page 4 of 4)
July / August 2003
By Perry Glasser, North American Review
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As long as we collaborate in the shame of money, we’ll be mutts burying bones in yards demarcated by invisible forces. But we are not helpless. In America the major social movements of the second half of the 20th century demonstrate that the elimination of shame—for good or ill—is possible. Public attitudes about women, civil rights, and alternative sexuality were willfully changed in a generation and are changing still. We are a nation of people, not a nation of companies, but as long as we allow ourselves to think like corporate apparatchiks, we will never engage in any free dialogue.
First, acknowledge that Corporate America flourishes through fear, ignorance, and the self-imposed financial isolation that is our defense against shame. Second, demand personal finance classes in public schools so that never again will anyone agree to a mountain of college debt but not once in 16 years in classrooms ever learn to balance a checkbook or know that 20 percent annual interest on a credit card invites eternal economic servitude. Third, talk money up. Often. Show your paycheck around. Abandon your shame.
Perry Glasser is coordinator of the professional writing program at Salem State College in Massachusetts. Reprinted from The North American Review (Jan./Feb. 2003). Subscriptions: $22/yr. (6 issues) from University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA 50614.
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