"Over 40% of Americans consider hard work, ambition, and drive to be among the most important factors for economic advancement"What strikes me is that while there is a belief that upward economic mobility is possible, those who move up the socioeconomic ladder want to maintain their middle class identities. (This isn’t strictly an American phenomenon, though; being in the middle class is seen as the most desirable class to international democracies.) People in the middle class want to keep up with the Joneses and give their children more than they had. But while they want to have upward economic mobility, they also want to stay static in their economic class. This was a paradox to me- it seems as though families who experienced financial gains did not understand them.
There is more despair about economic decline than hope for economic rise. While 56% of Americans strive for upward mobility, an overwhelming super majority express fears that they will fall into a lower class. Many Americans are so concerned with not doing worse that they neglect that they are actually doing better. Especially given the current economic woes, the pressure to stay above water is so intense that any gains are seen as temporary and fleeting.
There is also a problem with acknowledging upward mobility because of the stigma surrounding the upper class. Being in the middle class is more than just having money. It
is about all of the cultural capital
that is gained. It is about the way you speak, the way you dress, where your
children attend school, your way of life. Americans seem to want
the privileges associated with upward mobility but still sit comfortably in a group that they know well. On top of that, the stigma around the rich has made being in the upper class a bad thing. Being wealthy has become something to be mocked; the rich cannot possibly understand the middle class, and they are lacking because of it. The paradox of the middle class- where there is a desire for upward economic mobility paired with an aversion to being in the upper class- is a complicated phenomenon. It seems that middle class Americans have trouble recognizing their own economic gains and reject the culture of the wealthy. They want to fit in with their neighbors and the people they grew up with while being able to enjoy luxuries. They fear the future but believe it can be brighter. In essence, they do not take upward economic mobility to necessarily translate into upward class mobility.
Noelle – I experienced this exact phenomenon growing up! My parents had always taught me that we weren't rich...almost as if being rich were a bad thing that signaled laziness or luck. I distinctly remember being in elementary school, and a friend asked where I was going for spring break. I responded Disney World, saying that my family travels to Disney World every year at that time. He looked at me wide-eyed and declared, “Wow, Josh! Your family must be rich!” As my parents had conditioned me, I began hastily denying the claim on the spot.
ReplyDeleteDespite my family sitting comfortably in the upper-middle class...there has always been a mentality that ‘being rich’ minimizes the hard work you put in and negates the challenges you encounter. I think it stems from the fact that my parents’ generation grew up in a working-class environment. They worked very hard for all they achieved, and now they’re reluctant to fully acknowledge their socioeconomic status.
My parents are the same way- both of them grew up in the lower middle class on the border of the lower class. Now they have moved up but fail to recognize it. I was talking with a few people in class as well as some of my peers and it seems to be a common phenomenon.
DeleteI’m glad you made the distinction between economic status and social-cultural-class status, and that you highlighted how mobility within each category is different. I especially liked the article that you linked to about cultural capital. In that post it said something along the lines of “social class is about both how much money you have and also how you use it and present yourself;” also, it said that people who are born into money are taught from the beginning how to “be” a person in that class, but people who want to raise their status have to observe and learn the subtleties of upper class social life, action, vocabulary, etc. This is something that I’ve found interesting at Michigan. Regardless of a person’s background, if a student attends a higher tier university such as Michigan, they automatically learn (cover?) the sensibilities of middle-to-upper class people; I think this also is true for race as well. If students do not do this, they do not gain the full benefits of being a student at Michigan, whether they be social, networking opportunities, connections with professors, etc. Again, as you said, Noelle, “it is about all of the cultural capital that is gained.”
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