Four Writing Options
One. In a 4-page typed essay, support or refute the argument that your matriculation through college, and the major you have chosen (or not), is inextricably entwined with the class status anxieties analyzed in Paul Fussell’s Class. In other words, argue for or against the idea that fear of falling short of America’s status system—a code system that is much more complicated than income level alone—is a significant driving force in your college studies. What evidence is there, or not, that you are beholden to class status codes? What evidence is there, or not, that you have rejected America’s class status script and have carved your own path, so that you love learning for its own sake? Are you an aspiring bourgeois consumer? Are you an “X person”? Explain. Successful essays will show a clear and accurate reading comprehension of Paul Fussell's Class by integrating the book's major principles into your essay. You must have a Works Cited page referring to Class, and two other sources.
Alternative Option:
Two. In a 4-page essay, defend, refute, or complicate Fussell’s assertion that class is not as mobile as the American Dream purports it to be; rather, social class is more fixed like a caste system. Successful essays will show a clear and accurate reading comprehension of Paul Fussell's Class by integrating the book's major principles into your essay. You must have a Works Cited page referring to Class, and two other sources.
Alternative Option:
Three. Using bell hooks' essay "Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class" (Acting Out Culture, pages 287-295), develop a cause and effect analysis thesis that supports Fussell's contention that ascending the class ladder results in colossal psychological upheaval and speaks to the hyper-competition that defines the American Dream.
Alternative Option:
Four. Develop an analytical thesis about the way class plays in the African American community or another ethnic group. How do race, culture, and history contribute to the unique attitudes minorities attach to the codes of social class?
Introduction: Defining Class
When we talk about class, we're not really talking about earning power as a sign of upward class mobility. Earning power is part of class, but is actually only a small part of it.
Another idea of class in America is the idea of mobility and ascent. When we climb the ladder, we use the term arriviste or upstart to describe someone who has gone from "rags to riches."
Part of the American Dream of upward class mobility is going to college and getting a bachelor's degree. Americans see college as a ticket to moving from a lower class to a higher class. We find, though, that less than 14% community college students transfer to college and get a bachelor's. Therefore, this American Dream is not as "easy pickings" as we'd often like to believe. The American Dream is hardly the low hanging fruit that's free for the taking like it was post World War II through the late 1970s for privileged white people.
Getting to the Heart of Social Class: Perception and Identity
Aside from going up the economic ladder and defining class in sheer numbers, social class is more about identity and the way others perceive us in terms of our rank or status.
So what we are really talking about is a particular type of American class status, the ranking system that exists uniquely in America. How people perceive us in the American ranking system, and how we perceive ourselves, defines our class.
We are dependent on validation and often addicted to flattery, so we rely on status cues or status symbols to receive the validation and flattery we crave.
Material possessions often point to this flattery. For example, a "Platinum" or "Limited" edition car makes us feel special, better, and privileged. And we want others to see this special designation on our car's nameplate.
Social Class and the Shame Factor
Mythology feeds a lot of our ideas about social class. For example, the rich, according to mythology, are rich because of their superior character. They got rich because they were disciplined, hard-working, and willing to sacrifice.
Poor people are poor, the mythology goes, because of bad character such as laziness and bad choices.
In other words, we attribute virtue to the rich and exact shame on those who lack earning power. For example, some schools give "shame sandwiches" to students who are behind in their payments.
To be judged as poor is equivalent to being consigned to the hell of ostracism, shame, and stigmatization. Poverty is not just a monetary state but a psychological state as well.
Class Privilege, Whiteness, and the Uppity Factor
During times of slavery and Jim Crow, the United States was racially segregated. Therefore, for many years the idea of social class was based on "whiteness" or white privilege. Aspiring to "be white," that is molding oneself on stereotypes of "desirable white behaviors," for many decades was a sign of class. This thing we call whiteness has a certain pretentiousness, hauteur, grandiosity, superciliousness, privilege and entitlement in creating this aura of being "uppity" and "bourgie," a truncated version of the word bourgeoisie and pronounced boo-zhee.
To be uppity and pretentious was to study the body language and linguistic codes of white privilege.
To be uppity, a person of white privilege did not only disdain people of different ethnicities and races. The white uppity snob also scorned uneducated white people, who were deemed "peasants" or docile sheep or "trailer trash."
Class Continues to Flourish Even in the Aftermath of Jim Crow
Thankfully, there are huge swaths in America today where racism and Jim Crow are correctly deemed low class, ignorant and morally abominable. However, even in these forward thinking educated areas of America, class status not only persists but flourishes.
Americans of all races are obsessed with the codes that make up social class, the hierarchy or ranking system by which we judge our fellow Americans. Knowingly or not, we use a set of codes to ascribe class rank on others and ourselves.
The 6 Class Codes
The six major class codes that rank us in America's hierarchy system are the following:
One. Your zip code:
According to Fussell, the higher the concentration of bowling alleys in a zip code, the lower the class ranking. Another sign of low social ranking is a zip code in which daycare centers are ten feet away from "gentleman's clubs."
Two. Your education rank:
Your education is evidenced by not only your diploma but your body language, speech cadence and inflection, vocabulary, your sphere of travel, and your grasp of irony.
Education is also evidenced by speaking many languages, being well traveled, and showing exceptional talent in the arts such as music, painting, and writing.
Three. Your professional designation:
Terms such as blue-collar ascribe working or lower class. White-collar ascribes upper or middle class. One of the highest classes is the creative class, a term popularized by writer Richard Florida. Creating software and computer apps or being a professor at a prestigious university are examples of the creative class. Working in the arts, media, and design are other examples.
Four. Your tastes in art, music, entertainment, fashion, transportation, and leisure:
Class is more than earning power. It is revealed in our tastes. Are our tastes cultivated, current, and educated, and nuanced? Or are they tacky? Tacky is a word associated with low class. Other similar words to describe low class taste are crass, gauche, gaudy, uncouth, unctuous, vulgar, tawdry, and if you want to show off your education, you can use the Russian word poshlost, which means vulgar banality or something that is produced with huge effort to show off but is grotesque and without imagination or humanity. Some people have used the word poshlost to describe vulgar people who define themselves only by their material possessions. Such people are also called philistines.
Five. Your use of language:
Your vocabulary, cadence, inflection, intonation, lilt, and accent (not necessarily dependent on going to college; you could be autodidactic) are all part of linguistic code you use that determines your social class. Casually using words like interstitial, hauteur, verisimilitude, sycophantic, and synecdoche evidences someone of an educated and therefore higher class.
Six. Your grasp of irony:
Irony is the wry, sly, and sometimes sarcastic orientation of the educated cosmopolitan, the person who is a connoisseur of life's absurdities, contradictions, and ironic reversals. As a connoisseur of irony, the high-class cosmopolitan is not shocked by life's absurdities, but greets them with an expected sly grin.
Connoisseurs of irony are also experts at subtle self-deprecation, which gives the implicit message that they are too intelligent to take vanity and self-aggrandizement seriously even though their constant self-deprecation can often be an earnest attempt at being morally superior to those who don't efface themselves with equal rigor.
Conclusion
Where you live, what degree of education you have, what kind of job you have, how you dress, and entertain yourself, and how you speak all are part of the class code by which our fellow Americans judge and rank us according to the hierarchy system.
Study Questions from Paul Fussell's Class
One. Why is the subject of economic-social class so sensitive for Americans?
We too often lack other ways to define ourselves. Our social class, a mix of income and tastes (personal interests, hobbies, and consumer goods), defines us more than anything.
We define ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, by our money, job, trophies, and other consumer goods that cumulatively create our image of class to others in society.
How others perceive our social class affects how validated or esteemed we are, or not. It is human nature to seek validation, and we find this through social class.
Class Insecurity in a Hyper-Competitive America
In the 1980s, America, it is agreed by all economists, became hyper-competitive. Real wages fell, and both parents had to work, creating "latchkey kids." Money started siphoning to the 1% and today the problem is worse than ever.
The idea of class is made worse in an age where the number-one issue perhaps in politics and cultural life is class warfare between the 1 Percent and the Rest of Us.
The sensitivity is further reinforced by the manner in which class status speaks to America's hyper-competitive nature. Already, preschoolers are trying to get an edge for kindergarten. Elementary school students are cramming for SATs. High school students are already volunteering for outstanding citizen projects to put on their resume.
Many parents micromanage their every child's movement in time to insure maximum productivity toward the goal of competing in the Darwinian marketplace.
Millennials and Hyper-Competition
Millennials may provide a turning point in this hyper-competition. Unable to buy a house or even pay off their student loans, they may be creating new ways to define themselves based on empathy and cooperation. From this point of view, Fussell's book may be in part outdated.
With a shrinking middle class and a war—both explicit and implicit—on the poor, the idea of class has never been more volatile.
Need for Human Belonging and Being a Member of the Club
Our class standing is also sensitive because Americans use class standing as a primary way of judging others and deciding to accept people into "their pack."
Social Class and American Myth of Equality
And yet another problem of discussing class is that the very idea of class clashes with the American mythology that we are all equal in a democracy that gives everyone "an even playing field."
Looking at stagnant wages, unaffordable housing, a shrinking middle class, the health care crisis, the education crisis in the inner cities, mass incarceration of the poor, the cost of higher education, and the shrinking of desirable jobs and we have a very sensitive issue on our hands when it comes to talking about class.
Social Class and Materialism
A very unsophisticated and low-class way of perceiving class is by judging other people based on their material possessions.
Imagine how people judge us in our cars, which are like a reliable ranking system in class-obsessed America. Notice how Mercedes is the apotheosis (ultimate) in perceived success. Notice how Rolex means “you’ve made it to the top, baby.”
Notice the humility required to drive a Corolla as one works in the pizza delivery service.
Imagine the embarrassment some might feel pulling up to the valet at Cheesecake Factory in their Corolla while they notice all the other cars are of a Teutonic origin and smack of unapologetic opulence and luxury.
The Fearful Middle Class
According to Fussell, the class most inclined to get anxious, "testy or irascible" in the presence of a social class discussion is the middle class or the bourgeois. They feel most vulnerable because they are in a class that is most fluid: They can move up or down.
In contrast, the upper class, often fueled by old money, feels secure in their class status and the proletariat or working class “know they can do little to alter their class identity" because we can infer from Fussell that being low class often results in learned helplessness and a sense of futility.
The two class extremes are more fatalistic while the middle class feels they have a choice in the matter.
Further, we read that proletariats or lower classes have contempt for class aspirations. As Fussell writes, “Thus the whole class matter is likely to seem like a joke to them—the upper classes fatuous in their empty aristocratic pretentiousness, the middles loathsome in their anxious gentility. "The hell with the rich and the suburbanites. I'm happy with my low-class station in life."
Two. How do the different classes define class differently?
Proletariats, the working class, define class by how much money you make. Sheer materialism is the basis of their class ranking system. They could care less about your vocabulary, manner of speech, education level, taste in clothes and music. It's all about the money.
The middle class says class is a combination of money, education, job type, and manners. The middle class wants to be part of "polite society."
The upper class says class is a matter of refined tastes, aesthetics, insouciant style, and adhering to the rich’s secret codes of conduct (which Fussell will elaborate on later). But for now let us be content to say a truly rich person would never refer to a limousine as a “limo” or even a limousine. Rather, he would say, “The car is here.”
Three. What forces in the digital age bridge the gap between the classes and made some of Fussell's points outdated?
Anyone can have an opinion posted on a blog.
Anyone can post videos on a YouTube channel.
Anyone can engage in self-promotion with the various social media vehicles.
Anyone can “go viral,” which has become a universal metric in judging our relevance.
People of various economic stratums have top-tier smartphones.
In the digital age, job outsourcing has become so great that politicians and media people rarely use the term “middle class” anymore. Now they speak about “average Americans,” suggesting class divisions have changed to Us and The 1%.
Four. Why is social class as an implicit ranking force so prevalent in America?
Fussell writes that in America “we lack a convenient system of inherited titles, ranks, and honors, and each generation has to define the hierarchies all over again.”
How many hits and likes your social media platforms receive could be today’s defined hierarchy of relevance and social esteem.
We create these hierarchical systems, Fussell points out, because it is in our human nature to seek the esteem and admiration of others.
Further, Fussell observes that hell is being neglected or held in contempt. Being seen as irrelevant, not being validated, these are the punishments for being at the bottom of the ranking system. These are the hells to be avoided at all costs.
In a society that sees itself as democratic, we disappear. And by disappearing, we long to reappear by finding distinction.
Distinction is the tool for ascending the class hierarchy.
But a lot of attempts at distinction come across as misguided, needy, even desperate.
Too many selfies, too many Facebook posts, too much self-promotion, and we look desperate to use others to fill up our empty vessels.
Five. What is the dark side of social class in America?
As we see those laughing and gloating above us in their higher classes, those of us looking upward from our lower position, are afflicted with the curse of envy, the rancor and resentment that comes from perceiving others as enjoying life more than we do. They’ve had more than their fair share, and we’ve been short-changed.
Bitterness and rancor ensue.
This bitterness is intensified when we’ve been told that the American Dream affords us social mobility when in fact social mobility is too often the exception and not the rule.
We now know that economics is the number-one factor in determining one’s body weight. Skinny people are conspicuously rich. The obese are conspicuously lower on the economic rung.
The visible divide reinforces class envy.
Another conspicuous class divide is the legal system. People with money go to rehab for drug crimes while the poor go straight to federal prison, and now degraded to felon status, they lose their privileges as American citizens.
America likes to paint the myth of democracy and a “Classless” America, but we very much indeed tied up in the divisions of economic and social class.
Six. How does Fussell define “class”?
Class is a status system based on money, social prestige, and political power.
The class lines are “rigid” and suggest a caste system, Fussell argues.
There are different ways Fussell would divide the classes: “rich and poor; employer and employed, landlord and tenant, bourgeois and proletariat.”
There are gentlemen and there are cads, he writes.
You are either couth or uncouth (uncivilized, uncultured).
There are homeowners and renters.
Fussell explores the possibility of 3 classes: upper, middle, lower.
However, he resolves that there are in fact 9 in the United States of America:
- Top out-of-sight
- Upper
- Upper middle
- Middle
- High proletarian
- Mid-proletarian
- Low proletarian
- Destitute
- Bottom out-of-sight
These nine address the social differences more than the economic ones.
Seven. For Fussell, being rich is no guarantee of being high class. Explain.
Fussell shows more than implicit contempt for the rich when they engage in the following:
People engage in vulgar displays of self-aggrandizement through their accumulation of things.
People with no self-awareness conform to all the clichés of “having made it.”
People rub your nose into their conspicuous consumption.
People define themselves solely by their material wealth and possessions. Such people are called philistines, a very disparaging term.
People rely on their wealth to define their “greatness” while they allow themselves to become humorless, mediocre, and complacent.
Because of their wealth, some people feel entitled to control and bully others who are “less” than they are.
Such people in Fussell’s view (and I agree) are petty, vulgar, narcissistic, small-souled, low-class philistines.
Eight. Why do we know so little of the top class, the out-of-sight rich?
They are literally out-of-sight. They live in stealth. They don’t want to be seen since their privileges are best maintained without rousing the lower classes.
Because we rarely see them, we are unaware of their codes, language, clothing, travel, and even spending habits. Yes, we can generalize that their spending habits are extravagant, but we don’t know how specifically extravagant they are.
Nine. What do the super rich and the super poor have in common?
Both exist in invisible mode. We don’t see them.
Both receive money without working. The rich get rich from stock dividends, interest, and inheritance. The poor get handouts.
Since neither extreme works for their money, they are both rather unemployable.
Ten. What are the distinguishing characteristics of the middle class?
They are inclined to pay each other compliments as a way of reinforcing middle-class standards, values, and aesthetics.
They are the most insecure of all the classes because they constantly fear they may fail in their middle-class performance and go down the social class elevator.
They are obsessed with manners, modesty, and etiquette so as to be perceived as “classy” and “good role models for the community.” For example, a domestic argument wouldn’t hit high decibels; in contrast, a working-class or proletarian argument can escalate into an ear-piercing maelstrom or ruckus.
They are eager to conform to society’s scripts for what constitutes a “decent family” and “achieving the American Dream.”
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