Week Seven Blog Entry: Social Class

Social class matters greatly in the U.S. today. In a society consisting of strata, where the more privileged are at the top, and the less privileged nearer the bottom, most people are in a constant struggle to reach the top, or at least, keep themselves from landing on the bottom. The lower strata tend to be insecure about the future, but as you move up towards the top, you are more likely to enjoy a comfortable, secure, and even luxurious lifestyle.

Most parents want to give their children the maximum number of life chances, i.e. the best odds of achieving economic prosperity. And the best chance an individual has of achieving wealth is to start off as wealthy in the first place. I’ve seen this first hand with my Cousin Steve’s family in Maryland. Cousin Steve and his wife have two young boys, ages one and three. Cousin Steve, an engineer, and his wife a public school teacher, belong to the middle to upper middle class and live in a nice community. They began looking at pre-schools this year and were deciding between enrolling in the public pre-school nearby, or a private pre-school a little further away. They have decided to put their eldest boy on the waitlist for a private pre-school and will be paying steep private school tuition when that time comes. As a lifelong public school student, I couldn’t wrap my head around this. I couldn’t understand why my cousin and his wife would want to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a private pre-school! It seemed so silly! And this would be just the beginning of their private school education. Next will be private tuitions for elementary school, middle school, high school and college, I don’t want to imagine what the final bill will look like! But then Cousin Steve explained to me how these private schools will open the doors to friends with wealthy parents in high positions, therefore, opening up countless opportunities to influence their son’s social and economic status and boost them towards the top. After hearing his reasoning, it’s still not something I would choose, but I can see the line of thinking and I can imagine his sons likely will have a better shot at achieving economic prosperity with this leg up in the game so early on.

By viewing the People Like Us website, I saw how expressing my individual identity through decorating my living room, etc, can reveal my class and my class tastes. My chosen living room items - frames of recent family photos, hardwood floors, and a Labrador dog - revealed my position as middle middle class. This matters because expressing our class, whether intentional or not, can make the difference between closing and opening the doors to opportunities. For example, if I show up to a job interview for a position as a News Anchor in grungy street clothes and smelling of foul body odor, my appearance may scream “lower class”, and I will likely not get the job/opportunity. If I show up to the same interview polished, with my hair neatly done and my suit cleaned and pressed, my neat appearance will increase the probability of getting the job.