When I was really little (birth until kindergarten) we lived in Riverdale in the Bronx, which was very weird, class-wise. My sister went to kindergarten and first grade at a private school, but my parents switched her to public school for second grade. One of the big problems at the private school was that the other kids were teasing her for things like not having a live-in nanny, not having a river view apartment, not having a father who made international business trips, and so on.

I was either young enough or oblivious enough that I didn't notice most of that stuff. I noticed that some kids had more toys that I did, or had toys that I'd asked for and been told that they were too expensive, but it didn't really matter to me.

In college, I was very aware that a lot of my friends thought of me as "rich" because I didn't have any students loans, I didn't have to work during the summers, my parents paid for my clothes and books and stuff, and I could fly home a few times a semester. I hated being thought of that way, and became really super-conscious of not acting in any stereotypical "rich" way. But on the other hand, there were a lot of other kids on campus who came from way more money than I did -- the ones whose parents would pay for them to to go Cancun on spring break, and stuff like that.

I've definitely learned the hard way about etiquette niceties that just wasn't part of my world growing up.

I guess that regardless of how one is brought up, there will always be differences between, well, anybody and somebody somewhere (does this sentence make any sense? Or English?).

In Israel, the whole notion of class is almost entirely attached to the where-you-immigrated-from issue.

Ashkenazi immigrants (from the various European and Eastern European areas) were always (and by "always" I mean, of course, the last 100-and-a-bit years, because there was hardly anybody here before that) considered a higher class than the Sepharadi immigrants (mostly from the North-African areas).

Ashkenazi immigrants (from the various European and Eastern European areas) were always (and by "always" I mean, of course, the last 100-and-a-bit years, because there was hardly anybody here before that) considered a higher class than the Sepharadi immigrants (mostly from the North-African areas).

In the US, most of the Sephardi immigrants, until very recently, were Spanish and Portuguese Jews who'd come over a few hundred years ago and were generally very upper-class. Lots of universities and museums and hospitals and stuff with Sephardic names. Then the next "rank" would be the German Jews, who tended to be middle to upper-middle class, lots of them came over in the mid to late 1800s and opened stores -- lots of the American department stores (until they all got bought out by Macy's) had German Jewish names. And then the Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Eastern Europe, who mostly came over escaping pogroms, came here with nothing, lived in the crowded tenements, were toward the bottom of the bunch. For the first several decades, they mostly worked in sweatshops or as street peddlers and things like that. One of the Yiddish newspapers in the early 1900s would frequently run notices like, "Mrs. Rose Katz's husband has left her. She has six children, and the youngest two aren't in school yet. She doesn't have anyone she can leave them with when she goes to work, so she can't get a job. She is willing to give the two youngest children to a good home with people who can take care of them."

My mom's family spoke Yiddish. My dad's family spoke German. When they got married, there were several comments from both sides of the family along the lines of, "Well, at least s/he's Jewish." My mom was always very insistent that my sister and I use our absolute best manner when we visited my dad's parents.

The guy showed up at 9:15, which wasn't bad. Of course, it was 10:30 before I got to work, but at least another thing is done.

Whenever my family comes to visit me in Chicago, I have to remember that and take them to the appropriate restaurants. Places that aren't too fancy or expensive, or have what they would consider "weird food" on the menu, or anyplace where I'd have to translate the menu for them.

This is my family. The problem is that I don't normally eat at any restaurants that fit that bill.

My mother has always been very defensive about class and education issues. Her mother left school in the fifth grade in order to take care of her siblings after her mother died of tuberculosis. Her father quit school to work on the railroad, partly because he didn't like school. He had no use for higher education, so my mother didn't go to college even though she had a scholarship.

My father's father was a self-made son of immigrants who valued education, and my dad went to college and his friends from college were from higher classes. Mother has always been convinced that anyone with a college degree is looking down on her. This is a woman who was the salutatorian of her class, editor of the yearbook and a champion debater. When I got to college, a lot of my fellow students were from worlds I couldn't imagine. Hell, Bunker Hunt's daughter was on my freshman hall.

You people should send your families to visit me! Once my parents came to visit, and we basically only went to diners all weekend. Some more upscale diners, but still. I did not plan it -- those are just the places I like and that were convenient!

NB: My parents like "weird" food.

I've mentioned this before, but there was very little class issues where I grew up. Both my parents came from farming families. My mom had two years of college, and my dad had none.

ION, the neighborhood that shrift and I live in was determined to be the most diverse in Chicago.

How diverse is your ’hood?

Uptown was No. 1 in a DePaul University study released this month that ranked Chicago's community areas based on their ethnic, income and age diversity.

Uptown and other traditionally diverse neighborhoods, including Rogers Park, Hyde Park and Edgewater, are remarkable because they've managed to thrive as diverse communities for decades, becoming neither slums nor totally gentrified as others have, said Mike Maly, chair of the Sociology Department at Roosevelt University.

From the print version of the article, Uptown is 39% white, 23% Hispanic, 22% black, 14% Asian and 16% other. 52% are low income, 37% are middle income and 16% high income.

I grew up pretty solidly middle class, although my father grew up poor and my mother came from a fairly genteel once-wealthy family. I hit college and ran into some really rich kids, many of whom could be unconsciously obnoxious about finances (i.e., YOU might be able to afford a special charge for something, but for the kids on scholarship who have to work at campus jobs, that's two weeks' pay). I've held jobs since I was 16, except for the summer after I turned 19 and was recovering from a dislocated kneecap.

Allyson, may I join the group in advising you to start looking for another job. It sounds like your boss has decided that you're not competent enough for the job, based on very little evidence. In situations like that (and I've been in them), it's just about impossible to change someone's mind. It's sad, given your history together, but do you need the emotional pain it's causing you?

And then the Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Eastern Europe, who mostly came over escaping pogroms

These were the first big waves of immigration to Israel (around the last 25 years or so of the 19th century), and they indeed came here due to those difficult conditions in their home lands. Basically, immigrating here or to the USA was, in a way, a flip of a coin.

Do you know the stories of Shalom Aleichem? His last book (he actually didn't complete it) was about immigrants like you described, from the little Eastern-European village to the land-of-all-dreams America.

My mom's family spoke Yiddish. My dad's family spoke German. When they got married, there were several comments from both sides of the family along the lines of, "Well, at least s/he's Jewish."

The grandmother of a very dear friend, whose family immigrated from Poland, doesn't speak to me (as in, outright ignoring me, for example, in the brit of my friend's son), because I'm Sepharadi, and, apparently, dragging down her family by befriending her grand-daughter.