Class Consciousness

So, the New York Times is running a series about class in America. I'd link, but as usual, I don't trust Times links (they don't last). Anyway, you can't miss it. My big objection is that the people in the articles seem very much to be responding to a reporter who won't stop asking about class. Pretty soon everything starts to seem class-related, but when you abandon rigor, you cease to be a journalist! Sorry. The real problem is that it's hard to separate the anxieties that people have about class from their other anxieties. People in the series attribute their problems and their fears to class, but a lot of the feelings they talk about seem pretty universal. The things that are really poverty-related are told mostly in a matter-of-fact way, while the emotion comes through when the subjects talk about their social anxieties. I can't help thinking that class has a much bigger impact in other areas of life.

A more interesting question, I think, is the relationship between wealth and class. One article emphasizes that middle-class children tend to get lots of parental attention, particularly when it comes to educational activities. Certainly, though, this isn't an attribute that has a whole lot to do with income. Above a certain (not so high) income, parents have time to encourage their children's curiosity and imagination, if they are so inclined. It's that inclination that makes a big class difference, not wealth per se. I would guess that a lot of school teachers are "higher class" in this sense than a lot of very wealthy people.

Another interesting point is whether class is converging because of mass entertainment. To some extent we watch the same TV shows and movies, listen to the same music, play the same video games, etc. I wonder, then, if values and aesthetics are becoming less distinctively class-based. I wonder if race is a more meaningful line than class, and if so, whether the gap is growing or shrinking. I wonder whether churches bridge class more effectively than they bridge race. I wonder how effectively education can erase class differences. I guess what I'm saying is that the Times series raises a lot more questions than it answers, which maybe is as much as we can demand.