"It is a common confusion – or intellectual dodge – to conflate social class with economic class. But what what differentiates, say, the middle class from the working class is not mere wealth or earning power; as we all know, a plumber (presumed working class) may make much more money than a professor (presumed professional).
To use myself as an illustration: I make very little money, so I am heir to the misfortunes that disproportionately impact the impecunious – the almost-certain forthcoming hike in T fares looms large in my anxieties right now – but I am a professional with an advanced degree and possession of the shibboleths of the professional class. I didn't stop being in the social class I had been in when I dropped to a much lower economic class. The privileges I lost were only those attendant to economic might; I retained the privileges of social position...
It has long been commented (e.g. Fussell, Class) that discussing class is basically taboo in American culture: but, specifically, the class which it is taboo to discuss is social class. This presents a problem for Americans because social class is a real phenomenon, an important phenomenon around which huge amounts of American policy, politics, and culture organizes. It's the elephant in the American living room.
Social class is taboo to discuss, but economic class is not, and that presents an obvious "solution": Americans conflate social and economic class so they can talk about social class under the guise of talking about economic class...
The social classes of the US are cultural groups: people who largely share values in what is good in dress, speech, occupation, food, recreation, family relations, personal style, worship, power relations, music, manners, morals, and so on and so forth.
Social classes function like ethnicities or nationalities. They have entitativity. They command loyalty. They have customs. They have territories. They have insiders and outsiders; they Other others. They have rivalries. They are performative...
The ban on smoking in restaurants – which, let me be clear, I am wildly in favor of, being someone who can't patronize a business with cigarette smoking in it – was instituted largely by middle-class people to coerce lower-class people from engaging in a behavior that violated middle-class norms. It was not done to that purpose, but it was de facto classist.
The ruthless suppression of discussion of social class as culture means we cannot perceive, much less consider, reason, and debate about situations such as these...
Because people gravitate to people of their own class, and their daily lives tend to bring them into social contact predominantly with people who are members of the social classes one degree above and below, most people are very ignorant of the norms and values of the social classes more than one degree above or below their own...
The limiting factor is not money, it is this: it is impossible to join a culture the ways of which you know nothing. You may come by money, but the ignorance of how to use it to perform that higher class will keep you out as adamantly as if there were a wall built around it...
The one great instrument of social mobility in the US is college. But it's not the degree. It's the socialization. College – residential college – is most people's one great shot (or not so great shot) at being socialized into a higher social class."
http://siderea.livejournal.com/1260265.html?format=light
Really useful
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