Payne’s journey into class consciousness began more than 30 years ago, when she met Frank, the man who would become her husband. Ruby was raised in a middle-class Mennonite family in Ohio, while Frank grew up in extreme poverty in Goshen, Ind. As Ruby began to spend time in Frank’s impoverished neighborhood, she realized that she didn’t understand the first thing about the lives of the people who lived there — and they didn’t get her, either. Frank’s friends were appalled that Ruby didn’t know how to defend herself in a fight; Ruby was stunned that her neighbors would regularly get paid on Friday and, after a weekend of carousing, be broke by Monday.

As Payne studied her new surroundings, she came to appreciate more subtle nuances of class division. She realized that her husband’s family’s poverty was what she would later come to call “situational”: they had been middle class until Frank’s father died when Frank was 6, and only then had they slipped down to the economy’s bottom rung. Most of their neighbors, by contrast, were in “generational poverty,” meaning their families had been poor for as long as anyone could remember. Each group, she discovered, had its own distinct set of beliefs and customs.

Payne’s next lesson came when her husband took a job on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. He wasn’t rich, but he was now spending his work life with men who were, which meant that Ruby was expected to socialize with their wives. She didn’t fit in with the rich any better than she had fit in with the poor. More miscommunications and social awkwardness ensued, generating more fodder for Payne’s growing understanding of class difference.

Payne wasn’t quite sure what to do with this new knowledge. As her career in education developed, from teacher to principal to administrator, she found that her understanding of class came in handy. Because of her exposure to her husband’s family and neighbors, it seemed, she was better able to communicate with poor students than most other middle-class teachers. Her colleagues began to ask her for help and advice on dealing with their most troubling students, and Payne worked up an informal set of strategies and tips that she would pass along.

Then in 1993, after moving to Texas, Payne read a book that had a profound effect on her: “Creating Money,” a New Age-infused guide to “the spiritual laws of money.” It’s an odd book, ostensibly dictated to the authors by two “spirit guides” named Orin and DaBen. But Payne was inspired. “The book said, Make a list of what you want in your life and ask the universe to bring it to you,” she told me. “So I did. I wrote: ‘I want a life without financial constraints. I want a life without institutional constraints. And I want to make a difference with children.’ And it happened!”

Payne began to give talks on class for small groups of teachers, and they were a hit. Word spread. Soon she was addressing audiences all across the Texas school district where she worked. Over spring break in 1995, she banged out a manuscript based on her ideas and quickly published it herself. This was “A Framework for Understanding Poverty,” which, she says, has gone on to sell more than a million copies. As Payne’s following grew, she quit her job and became a full-time speaker, author and trainer.

Image Credit... Photo illustration by Geof Kern

She now owns and runs her own business, called aha! Process, Inc.; it has more than 50 trainers on contract and accrues millions of dollars in annual revenues. Ruby Payne has become a small industry: her company offers training sessions, workshops, DVDs, audiotapes, T-shirts, autographed Ruby Payne coffee mugs and lots and lots of books: a book about the hidden rules of class in the workplace, a workbook to help people in poverty learn the rules to pull themselves out, a Spanish translation of “A Framework for Understanding Poverty.” In “What Every Church Member Should Know About Poverty,” which Payne wrote with Bill Ehlig, a minister in Baytown, Tex., she not only urges middle-class and wealthy churches to welcome poor parishioners in the door but she also lays out the extra steps they need to take to make the newcomers feel at home. In “Crossing the Tracks for Love,” Payne takes on romance, offering advice for those who enter into a relationship with a person from another class. It’s not easy, Payne cautions: everything from disciplining children to interior decoration is a potential flashpoint for a class-based quarrel. So she provides tips:

“If you’re from middle class and marry or otherwise move into poverty, understand the need of your spouse/partner to protect you,” she writes. “You are his/her possession. Try to see the positives in this.”