Class

Social class has been one of my main interests in life. It became an interest as soon as I realized it was a big deal in the USA, where it is said not to exist. Wrong! 

I think the fact that we ignore its existence makes it  all the more powerful in our culture, not less. In a country like England, where the existence of a class system is calmly accepted, Michael Apted can make a film like  7 Up (and 14 Up, 21 Up, 28 Up, and so on—I think the documentaries follow the original kids at seven- year intervals), where class is one of the ways in which people are divided. Such a film could not be made in America.  Folks would not get it.

   

Louis Latham and Paul Fussel have written of it with much understanding. One of the Mitford girls (I can’t remember which one) wrote about the British upper classes with a good deal of insight into their behavior. The hilarious fiction of P. G. Wodehouse, takes it for granted, and understands that is not necessarily about money. His Jeeves was clearly a lot smarter than the Bertie Wooster he served. Bertie is just stupid in an upper class sort of way. Jeeves is smarter than Bertie in the way only servants can be.  And it was truly funny to see the two classes interact, in the way Wodehouse demonstrated.

I think that one of the reasons that I was fascinated by class is that our region did not have a fully developed system. That was indeed a source of fascination. Most of the people who write on class divide it into three: upper class, middle class, and working class (Paul Fussel divided each of those further  into  three. I think he was onto something.). I am from the Central Valley of California. There is no upper class there. It’s all the working class, and the middle class. There, folks considered middle class “the Rich.” That’s just how it is. I am from Modesto, but I think that model works throughout the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys of California. 

Another reason is that the USA is thought to be a classless society, but this is not true. In fact class pretty much screams its existence when is said not exist.

Another reason is that I realize that class is not purely about money. It is instead about placement of the TV in the living room  (the working class gives it prominence; the middle class tries to hide it). Or of what you wear or call things. Whether those cloth things put on the windows are called curtains (upper class) or drapes (middle class). I remember going, as a teenager to the large home of woman of the Valley for Christmas. The size of her house indicated she had money, but her tastes were completely working class. There was no way to hide it.

Like I’ve said, America has a distinct class system. Because class is said not exist here. But it does exist here, and its invisibility makes it more related to rules than in any of the countries where its existence is acknowledged. It’s non existence can be traced to the 1940s, when a switch to a communist kind of society was a threat, and it was important for Roosevelt to show that Capitalism could take care of people as well as Communism could.

The classless society can be traced to there. Showing the Soviet Union that we could be as classless as they were and that in America we

Could just as easily take care of each other and at the same time, allow recipients of that care to start their own businesses. And that plenty of people were smart enough to be academics.

Back to the Central Valley. We of the Valley seldom went to college.  Hoping your kid would go to college was a bit like wanting him or her to be president. A good ambition but unrealistic. They planted some colleges in the Valley (like the University of California, Davis, and California State

University, Stanislaus) but they didn’t work. They mostly took students from elsewhere.

As a kid, I had been a secret autodidact for quite a while. So I had a decent background for higher education from the start. I am from that generation where if you wanted a higher education, a way could be found to do it. And when schools could be merit-based, unrelated to your family or the money they had. For me, I had the wonderful old GI bill, through which I received a monthly check.  

Paul Fussel notes that gays (like me) are a special case. Lesbians generally look down, wanting to be working class, wherever they started from. Whereas gay men always look up, aspiring to as high an upper class as they can pull off.

But when I finally got to college I realized I didn’t belong there. It was for the children of the rich. A place where they spent a few years. Where they learned a few things and didn’t get married too young. It definitely was not for me. The idea that college was merit-based was not the way it was supposed to be, and that merit- based system was only temporary anyway.  It was then that I noticed the intelligence my many Valley relatives (and some of them were somewhat dumb, too), and I realized that intelligence had nothing to do with college at all. At the same time, many of the people who had to go to college were quite stupid. I think I laughed when I found this out, and found out that it was still an issue. It didn’t just go away, which would have been nice. I also instantly knew that many of my uneducated Valley relatives were keenly intelligent and smarter than these people who were expected to go to college. My relatives just didn’t have the opportunity. I think it is now returning to the way things used to be; college for the  children of people who can afford it; the many who can’t afford it are just left out.

So why study class anyway? It is indeed funny, especially when you realize that it is not necessarily about money, but, more than that, it is one of the great forces behind what we do. And, the fact that it is thought not to exist in the USA, means that it should be known for that reason alone.