Arwa Mint Meiloud and Habib Ould Meiloud live in East Calais across the road from the post office where their mother works. Their father is from Mauritania and lives out of the country, but both Arwa and Habib were born in the US and their mom grew up in Vermont. Arwa is 17, Habib is 18.
In this latest installment of "What Class Are You?", reporter Erica Heilman talks with Habib and Arwa about the roles that race and class have played in their lives.
This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Arwa Mint Meiloud: I would probably consider us lower middle class, for the most part. We are still able to get food and transportation, mostly. I do believe that, because we live paycheck to paycheck — I know that we definitely have to stretch things out to the next paycheck — that I could not call us middle, middle class. That's probably what I would count as middle class, is relative safety in knowing that you don't need to wait until that next paycheck.
We do have family here, and so we do have a fallback for financial support. There are definitely times where we get fiscal support from our family. Our grandparents, very often, will transport us, for example.
But there is just a lot of people who, in general, I would consider to be wealthier. But I think it's kind of hard, because I use us as a baseline. So to me, a lot of people seem wealthy, but honestly, most of them are probably middle class, or high middle class. And just to me, that seems so crazy. I'm like, "Oh, wow! You have your heater on all the time! Woah!"
Erica Heilman: Are you thinking about things that your friends at school are not thinking about? Or how do you compare notes with friends from school about these things?’
Arwa Mint Meiloud: Most of the time I think it's one of those, you know, "you don't appreciate what you have until you don't have it" type of situations. A lot of people just truly cannot comprehend the idea of not having what they have because it's their normal, right? And that makes sense.
Erica Heilman: In this category of class, race, school — what is the most frustrating thing?
Habib Ould Meiloud: When it comes to people being like, "Oh, must have been so hard being brown," and things like that. In Vermont, that has very rarely been an issue. If it has been an issue, it's never been a big one. It's always come down to the fact that we're poor, and I think us and our mother share the same struggle. Even if she's white, she's not isolated from it.
Arwa Mint Meiloud: I think I would agree with Habib, and I would say that the overall and the overarching thing is always going to be class. That's always going to be the most frustrating thing. I think class is a huge issue in America that people oftentimes overlook to talk about other topics, which are important, but oftentimes are still rooted in class.
Habib Ould Meiloud: I remember in high school, if you were to look at demographics — especially in Vermont — kids of a lower socioeconomic status are more likely to be conservative. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. I think it's just a natural reaction to when you see all these wealthy kids being like, "What about black people, or LGBTQ rights?" and things like that.
None of those things are bad. None of those things are bad things to advocate for. But when you’ve had lives and experiences similar to me and Arwa, those things seem to be like, "OK, what about the people who are struggling to feed their kids?" because that seems inherently more important.
Erica Heilman: Are there ways in which you can identify with people who you don't identify with in most ways? And how does that work?
Habib Ould Meiloud: It's hard because, as Arwa said, with the conservatism — especially in our schools — a lot of those people are lower socioeconomic class. And of course, that part I can relate with, but especially because we're teenagers, there's lots of nuances. You're either very liberal or very conservative. And there’s inherent parts of, at least a current very conservative movement, that are xenophobic and racist. There's also parts of the far left movement, or liberalism movement, that are racist in their own ways. Usually, liberalism is more patronizing than it is outright aggressive.
But I will say I've experienced a little more xenophobia, racism and Islamophobia than her, mainly on the premise that I am a man. And a lot of xenophobia, especially for people who are Middle Eastern — or would pass as Middle Eastern — comes down to like, "I am oppressive. I'm oppressing my sister." Things like that. So it's harder to associate with people of our poor socioeconomic class when they so often are politically, and in other senses, different.
When it comes to basic needs, my biggest issue is class. When it comes to being spoken out politically, my biggest issue has always been the color of my skin or my very Islamic sounding name.
Arwa Mint Meiloud: There's this thing my mom always says. She says, "Morality is for the wealthy. Oh, we're gonna buy an electric car. We're going to switch to completely electric heating," things like that. This all costs a lot of money, right? And so that morality is kind of tied to wealth. We don't really have the privilege to be doing that. And yet it seems like it's those same people with the money who enforce it on everyone else, you know?
Erica Heilman: Now, do you have any memories of something in your school life when issues of race and class sort of bumped up against each other?
Habib Ould Meiloud: Yeah, we had this thing where we're talking about privilege in English class, for some reason, and it was like the "privilege wheel." Different sections were devoted to different parts of intersectionality, and you fill it out. If you're closer to the circle, you're more privileged. If you're further away, you're less privileged. It covered things like property, economic status, race, gender, sexuality.
And then everybody had to fill it out. And they're like, "You don't have to show it to anyone," but then everybody showed it to everyone. Everybody scrambled to find something that would make it so they're not a part of the oppressive them. So as long as you're not a white, heterosexual man, you're good. It became this weird, semicompetitive thing where it's like, "Who's the least privileged?"
Erica Heilman: What happened to all the pieces of paper, all the privilege wheels? Where did they all go?
Habib Ould Meiloud: You get to choose where they went, but people would show them off. I didn't want to show it off because of the reality that the thing that makes me the most less privileged is class. And that's not something I want to advertise.
