Social Resources
Class
Overview
In addition to skin color, socio-economic class is another ladder that has been used to rank and oppress people. In White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg documents that the United States has always been highly stratified in its drive to accumulate wealth, power, and/or status and has taught everyone to look down on those “below.” In the British colonies, John Winthrop, a seventeenth-century leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, declared a basic principle for his newly forming community, “God Almightie in his most holy and wise providence hath soe disposed the Condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignitie; others mean and in subjection.”
John Adams, second President of the United States, reinforced this point when he affirmed “passion for distinction in the ranks and the order of society" and declared, "There must be one, indeed, who is the last and lowest of the human species." Envy of those above, competition with peers, and contempt for the lower has been a guiding principle for this nation.
The Founding Fathers structured the government to guard against too much popular power. They established just enough democracy to gain sufficient support for the hierarchical social order, while preventing egalitarian rebellions against elite landowners.
The rise of industrialization in the 19th century led to more stratification and abject poverty. The emergence of total institutions for civilians like prisons, reform schools, and nursing homes reflected this regimentation. Workers fought back and formed some unions, but it wasn’t until 1933 that the goovernment legalized the right to organize (a right that has been undermined recently).
As advertising became a prominent and powerful force shaping attitudes and values in the mid-19th century, buying ever more consumer goods gained greater importance. As Wesley Yang reports in his review of Barbara Ehrenreich’s work, the result was “the emergence of a “meaner, more selfish outlook, hostile to the aspirations of those less fortunate” among the professional-managerial classes…. The corporate world is nowadays subject to ‘a perpetual winnowing,’... expelling, with a terrifying indiscriminateness, even the most efficient workers, in good economic times and bad....” Corporations lay off people to protect their stock prices by meeting quarterly profit goals, with little regard for the impact on people, long term corporate goals, the environment, or their local communities.
In America, the System has promoted the most selfish culture in the history of the world. The worship of money, fame, status, and power-over-others is pervasive. The American way has been: “I’m willing to sacrifice you and the environment for my gratification.”
Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On Getting By in America (2001) reported on her own experience in working-class jobs. According to Yang, the book “fed an almost prurient fascination with the bodily pain inflicted on the middle-class’s underlings. Watching the respected author sweat-soaked in stifling heat, forbidden to take a drink of water, on her hands and knees while scrubbing a linoleum floor, made visible something that is always right in the open but invisible to middle-class eyes....”
Ehrenreich’s Bait and Switch: The Pursuit of the American Dream reports on her job-search efforts and “focuses on the subtler psychological exactions made on the dignity of the middle class. We watch as Ehrenreich posts her resume at Monster.com and HotJobs...and receives a business-professional image makeover.” Ehrenreich “skewers the florid inanity of much that she encounters with her characteristic wit, painting a picture of a corporate world ‘paralyzed by conformity, and shot through with magical thinking.’ The world she describes demands absolute obedience…. Workers are urged never to blame their employers or the economy for their straitened condition, lest bitterness infect the ‘winning attitude’ they must at all times exude…. The white-collar job-seeker faces, she notes, ‘far more intrusive psychological demands than a laborer or clerk.’ Browbeaten from all sides to display ‘cheerfulness, upbeatness, and compliance,’ submissive employees turn out to be the easiest to fire.... Ehrenreich [reports on] her fellow job seekers’ often heart-rending predicaments….”
Class Resources
Articles/Essays/Op-eds
Status Anxiety Is Blowing Wind Into Trump’s Sails (behind paywall), The New York Times, February 9, 2022,
Thomas B. Edsall. “…It is hardly a secret that the white working class has struggled in recent decades — and clearly many factors play a role — but what happens to those without the skills and abilities needed to move up the education ladder to a position of prestige in an increasingly competitive world?
Petersen’s answer: They have become populism’s frontline troops.
Over the past six decades, according to Petersen, there has been a realignment of the parties in respect to their position as pro-establishment or anti-establishment… ‘Economic insecurity translates into support for the far-right’”. [read more; behind paywall]
Trump True Believers Have Their Reasons (behind paywall), Thomas B. Edsall.
“Epistemic hubris — the expression of unwarranted factual certitude — is prevalent, bipartisan and associated with both intellectualism (an identity marked by ruminative habits and learning for its own sake) and anti-intellectualism (negative affect toward intellectuals and the intellectual establishment). The division between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, they write, is ‘distinctly partisan: intellectuals are disproportionately Democratic, whereas anti-intellectuals are disproportionately Republican. By implication, we suggest that both the intellectualism of blue America and the anti-intellectualism of red America contribute to the intemperance and intransigence that characterize civil society in the United States.’ In addition, according to Barker, Marietta and DeTamble, ‘The growing intellectualism of blue America and anti-intellectualism of red America, respectively, may partially explain the tendency by both to view the other as some blend of dense, duped and dishonest.’” [read more; behind paywall]
Intellectualism, Anti-Intellectualism, and Epistemic Hubris in Red and Blue America, David C. Barker, Ryan Detamble, Morgan Marietta.
“Epistemic hubris—the expression of unwarranted factual certitude—is a conspicuous yet understudied democratic hazard. Here, in two nationally representative studies, we examine its features and analyze its variance. We hypothesize, and find, that epistemic hubris is (a) prevalent, (b) bipartisan, and (c) associated with both intellectualism (an identity marked by ruminative habits and learning for its own sake) and anti-intellectualism (negative affect toward intellectuals and the intellectual establishment). Moreover, these correlates of epistemic hubris are distinctly partisan: intellectuals are disproportionately Democratic, whereas anti-intellectuals are disproportionately Republican. By implication, we suggest that both the intellectualism of Blue America and the anti-intellectualism of Red America contribute to the intemperance and intransigence that characterize civil society in the United States.”
Toyin Ojih Odutola’s Visions of Power, Zadie Smith.
“In their depictions of domination, the artist’s works, full of world-building and philosophy, do more than flip the script.... It speaks of two beings who hoped to start a revolution by genuinely recognizing each other, in their full selves, and thus momentarily challenged a system expressly constructed to keep them apart.”
The white-collar blues, Wesley Yang.
"Back in 1989, Barbara Ehrenreich’s magisterial Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class charted the emergence of a “meaner, more selfish outlook, hostile to the aspirations of those less fortunate” among the professional-managerial classes.”
Barbara Ehrenreich on the Middle Class, Ezta Klein Show.
Why the New Research on Mobility Matters: An Economist’s View, Justin Wolfers.
The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility, Raj Chetty and others.
Books
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016), Nancy Isenberg.
On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope, DeRay Mckesson (see DeRay Mckesson and the Domination-Submission System).
The Perils of “Privilege,” Why Injustice Can’t Be Solved by Accusing Others of Advantage, Phoebe Maltz Bovy (see “Your Privilege is Showing”).
Podcasts
We Build Civilizations on Status. But We Barely Understand It, Ezra Klein Show with Cecilia Ridgeway.
You can listen to the podcast on your favorite platform. The transcript is here.