Social class on campus

Left Brain, Right Brain, and Social Class

2012-01-20T07:01:00.000-08:00

Will Barratt, Ph.D.

I read some interesting work on left brain and right brain inter-communicationbefore lunch one day and after lunch I read some interesting work onsocioeconomic status. I could almosthear the “ping” in my brain as these two concepts collided and fit together ininteresting ways. It occurred to me thatsociology, being about people and interpersonal relationships in groups (amongother things of course), is primarily about right brain non-linear ways ofbeing in the world. Economics, beingabout the attempt to bring linear sequential rationality to the large scaleexchange and manufacture of goods and services (among other things of course),is primarily about left brain linear sequential ways of being in the world. Socioeconomic status is a view of socialclass combining right (socio) and left (economic) world views.

Seeing concepts like social class from multiple paradigmsenriches our understanding of social class. Exploring those multiple paradigms in different ways enriches both thoseparadigms and the concept we are trying to understand.

Left brain and right brain is another interesting way tounderstand social class. I am a littledominant in my right brain, my creative side, and I can do linear sequentialleft brain activity if I need to. Iwonder to what extent this hemisphere dominance has affected how I think andwrite about at social class. My preferenceis to see social class as personal, as social, as internal to the individual,and as messy and wholistic. I alsorealize that there are wonderful linear sequential models of social class. For me the linear sequential models helpilluminate the messy and wholistic vision that I have of social class.

Left brain and right brain is another interesting way toview how we create social class. Socialclass does not exist on its own; social class is wholly co-constructed andco-evolved among us all. If I am mildlyright brain dominant do I create a social interaction and personal emphasis onsocial class? Do I rely mostly on personaland interpersonal cues to read social class status? Do others rely mostly on economic andoccupational title cues to read social class status? What if my hemispheres are balancedprecisely; do I get a balanced wholistic and linear sequential experience ofsocial class?

Science is inherently linear sequential and rests on data thatare observable and that the observation is repeatable. If I conduct a certain experiment and youconduct a copy of that experiment, then we should get the same results. The scientific method has dominated the pastcentury. Conclusions, theories, andconcepts rest on observable and repeatable data. Is it any wonder that the primary paradigmsfor social class come out of this linear sequential tradition?

Pre-scientific views of social class relied on non-rationalnon-linear sequential views, for example the station of your birth determiningyour social class for life. Recall thatthe origins of the idea of the middle class came from the rising economic groupthat was in the middle between the proletariat workers and the hereditary elitenobility. Kings and Queens are hereditary;they attain their position based on parentage. This is a wholly different model for social class and social status thanhas come from the rational linear sequential scientific tradition.

Post-scientific non-linear-sequential right brain models of socialclass are emerging. My central thesisthat social class is personal comes from this right brain tradition andpossible from my right brain preference. However, to be useful I need to frame social class as personal within alinear sequential model. Identity ismessy, but we can tease out some of the essential elements and explore them ina more linear sequential way. I writeabout people’s social class of origin, current felt social class, andattributed social class in an attempt to provide some degree of left brainlinearity to what is essentially right brain messy creativity.

What about the limbic system? How does that affect to how we create, experience,and analyze social class? There areclearly emotional components in social class. Hierarchy, one essential element in social class, is in part emotionaland consequently regulated by the limbic system. In reality our brains are complicated, andparts of the brain all inter-communicate for most of us.

In reality, social class comes from our whole being. The left side, the right side, the limbicsystem, and all of the other delightful and mysterious things going on insideour skulls, our nervous, digestion, circulatory, and other systems. People are in reality a body-mindsystem. And we are a body-mind systemwith certain unique individual preferences. My right brain preference influences how I create, experience, andanalyzes social class. And on a largescale a collection of people with certain preferences create art, music,history, sociology, economics, psychology, neuroanatomy, and other disciplines thatprovide lenses on social class.

I want to thank Karen Buchholz for the original art.

On getting 5000 hits on the blog

2012-01-20T05:29:00.000-08:00

I use this blog as a way to force myself to think and writein bite sized chunks about social class. I have intentionally written about a wide variety of topics, from aninteraction model of social class to a list of movies that focus on socialclass issues. When I explore the sources of the hits on the blog I makesome inferences from the data. It is mybelief that nearly all of the hits come from people searching for material on socialclass. I am pleased to provide contentthat people find interesting and useful. The stats on the blog also let me know which blog entries get the mosthits, when these hits occur, where the IP address comes from, and the URL ofthe referring web site. The data analysis tells me that interest is widespread in time and place.

I must say that I am pleased.

In the academic promotion and tenure world we pay attentionto the citation index – how many times your peer-reviewed-publishedarticle was referenced by people in other peer-reviewed-published articles. The easy way to get this is to use Google scholar and search for a faculty member's name. In my post tenure review papers I include thehit count on my blog. Does this blog countas scholarship, or should each blog entry be reviewed by an editor and 3 of theeditor’s associates and then wait up to 2 years before appearing in print?

Whatever the answer about the nature of scholarship, I ampleased to have touched the lives of over 5000 people in some way. If I have provoked you to think a little moreor a little differently about social class, then I have used my powers forgood.

Thanks.

An interaction model of social class

2011-12-11T12:29:00.001-08:00

Will Barratt, Ph.D.

Social class defined

Social class is an interaction between a person, a person’s behavior, and a person’s environment.

Why propose another definition of social class?

Definitions of social class tend to be specific. From one perspective specificity is effectiveand useful and from another perspective it is not. When definitions of social class are specificthen seeing social class as both personal and social creates a clash ofdefinitions. It is efficient to exploresocial class from within a specific paradigm, but it is not effective inunderstanding the totality of social class to remain within a single paradigm. A definition of social class from aninteraction paradigm allows a broader understanding of social class.

The simple question “What is social class” leads tobroadly complex answers. Definitions ofsocial class abound and are often contradictory. Is social class a trait or a state, is itstatic or dynamic, is it internal or external to the person, is it contextualor eternal, is it objective or subjective? Often the marker of social class, for example occupational prestige, issubstituted as a definition for social class. This is similar to the mistake of using IQ test scores for a definitionof intelligence.

Different ideas of the nature of inquiry lead todifferent ideas about the definition of social class. Levels of accuracy are an ongoing question inthe sciences and any discipline that uses any sort of measurement. Discussions about the Standard Error ofMeasurement are common in interpreting research results. The quest for absolute accuracy, for 0.00Standard Error of Measurement, requires an absolute differential definitionthat is precise and universal and a measure that is unerringly accurate. Both the universal definition and the precisemeasure seem unlikely to emerge given the history of scholarship on socialclass. Social class is just too messyfor precision. A dynamic, contextual,and co-constructive definition of social class, or of anything else, is aproblem if you are seeking accuracy. However, if you are seeking to explore human interactions, which are bydefinition messy, then dynamic, contextual, and co-constructive definitions arerequired.

Context

“Do you have a gender if you are alone?”

“Do you have a social class if you are alone?”

For me, the answer to these questions is “Yes, and . . .“. For me gender and social class are personissues and behavior issues and occur within an environment. Even alone you are in some physicalenvironment.

Toward the end of understanding social class, and even tothe extent of measuring social class, I found myself increasingly drawn tocontextual and dynamic views of social class. Working on the idea of social class in mental health (Barratt,Burrow, Kendrick, Parrott, & Tippin, 2003) the contextual idea of anindividual’s social class became an issue in our discussions. Think of the supervisor of a hotel cleaningcrew and her work context with the women and men she supervises, her workcontext with her supervisor, and her home context. Her social status, one component of socialclass, changes in each context. Interrogating this idea, the members of my research group were confrontedwith the question of what exactly changes; her identity, her self-concept, herrelationships, or what?

This problem of the contextual and dynamic nature ofclass seemed intractable to us at the time. After completing a book on social class on campus (Barratt, 2011) thatused multiple lenses and multiple definitions of class the context problemre-emerged in the question of how and if to include all of the definitions ofsocial class into a single and useful model. Combining the ideas of social class as identity, social class as capital,social class as prestige, social class as educational attainment, etc. was noton my agenda when I wrote the book. Iwas satisfied helping readers to consider social class from multipleperspectives.

As a doctoral student I had studied Lewin’s (1951) lifespace equation B=f(P,E) (Behavior isa function of person – environment interaction). I had later read Bandura’s (1989) B-P-E model. I had always liked these interactionmodels that put people and behavior into context. It occurred to me that I could map socialclass onto these ideas of behavior, person, and environment to understand andmore accurately define social class in a dynamic and contextual way. After several trial sketches a pattern beganto emerge and things began to fall into place. I wrote three (person, environment, behavior) short list of dimensions that would bestreflect social class. There is apotentially huge list of dimensions under person, or environment, or behaviorand this model can be expanded or contracted to meet the analytical needs ofthe moment. I chose contraction as a wayto simplify the idea of social class as interaction here.

It is important to note that the lists of dimensionslisted under person, environment, and behavior are neither exhaustive, notmutually exclusive, and those listed here were included for efficacy andefficiency. Readers are welcome to expandeach list in order to highlight certain issues. For example I have often used academic capital and leadership capitalwhen writing about students. Strictadherence to Bourdieu’s (1986) three forms of capital, economic, cultural, andsocial, would require that academic capital and leadership capital is includedunder cultural capital. Utility wouldsuggest that academic capital and leadership capital may be featuredprominently, and alone, as dimensions under the person section. The list of dimensions in person,environment, and behavior should reflect the problem the interaction model isbeing used to address.

Person

In the person category social class identity is the firstdimension for many reasons. Bourdieu’s (1986)three forms of capital are very useful, and can fall under both person andenvironment and fill out the basic dimensions under person. There is a strong relationship between anindividual’s social class identity and their economic capital, their culturalcapital, and their social capital. Theseinteractions within the person categoryreflect the interactions between thethree categories of person, environment, and behavior. For example an individual’s social classidentity will be sensitive to their economic environment. Were I to be in a meeting with the elitewealthy, an unlikely event, my current felt social class identity would bequite different than if I were in a meeting with people in my church.

Social class identity is similar to other forms ofidentity, and includes our social class of origin identity, current felt socialclass identity, and attributed social class identity. Economic capital is income and wealth. Cultural capital is prestige knowledge andskill, certificates of attainment like college degrees or even occupationaltitles. Cultural capital can includeacademic knowledge and skills, leadership knowledge and skills, or evenspiritual knowledge and skills. Socialcapital is the network of people who can be called upon for mutual work andbenefit. These networks take skill tobuild. All forms of capital take time toaccumulate, and some people begin to accumulate these forms of capital at homeat a young age, and some begin to accumulate capital at an older age. Beginning to accumulate any form of capitalat a young age is obviously to anyone’s advantage.

Environment

Environments involve physical space, so the physicalenvironment has been included as the first dimension. Space also reflects the economic, cultural,and social context in which that space is found. Look around you now as you read this. How many social class messages are there inyour immediate physical space? Bourdieu’s(1986) three forms of capital map well to the disciplines of economics,sociology, and social psychology. Thismatch in the categories listed in person and environment has great utility whenexploring the interactions between a person and the world. My economic capital exists within a largereconomic environment. My economicenvironment changes when I travel and consequently my economic capital changes. The relative costs of a good meal in Rio deJaneiro and Terre Haute, and my reaction to those costs differences,illustrates how the economic environment and my perception of economic capitalinteract.

The environment axis should be seen as reflecting theimmediate physical, economic, cultural, and social environment as well as thelocal environment, the larger regional environment, and even the global physical,economic, cultural, and social environment. Where you choose to draw the boundaries between those ever increasinglysized environments will be a matter of the analysis you want. Bronfenbrenner (1979) developed a systemdescribing our layers of physical environments ranging from the immediatemicorsystem to the, meso, exo, and macrosystem. Bronfenbrenner also included the chronosystem to include the passage oftime as another way to understand the environment around us. This is an interesting analytical tool toexplore the layers of the social class world around us.

Behavior

Behavior is both conscious and unconscious, is bothpsychological and physical. Behaviorsmediates between the person and the environment. Actions are gross motor behaviors; actionsare our bodies in motion. Gross motor actionsare mostly conscious and mostly subject to voluntary control. Contemporary research indicates that manyfacial expressions are not easily subject to voluntary control except by welltrained actors. Awareness of one’s ownand other’s body postures is one aspect of actions. For some people body posture is unconscious,and for others, like actors, it is a matter of conscious control.

Adding the psychological dimensions of perception andmeaning making helps understand our interaction with the world more completely. How we perceive and how we make meaning isbased on our previous perceptions, on our social capital, on our culturalcapital, and on a myriad of other factors including what is in the environmentto be perceived. Objects, phenomenon,people, and actions in the environment around us are all perceived and meaningis made of these objects, phenomenon, people, and actions. This is largely unconscious; howevercontemporary research shows us how individuals can modify their perceptions andmeaning making through awareness and training.

Learning how to perceive consciously and make meaning consciouslyare central to class consciousness.

Theory in action

Exploring the question of the social status of the hotelmaid supervisor helps to understand the usefulness of this model. Her social class is a function of theinteraction between her self (person), her perceptions and meaning making(behavior) within a specific context (environment). Change the environment and you change theinteraction. Meeting with people shesupervises in the basement and meeting with people who supervise her in anupstairs meeting room are different environments with different effects on herperception and meaning making which in turn affect her current felt socialclass. The environment determines howshe acts and feels and thinks in each setting. Her current felt social class (what she thinksabout hers self) and her attributed social class (what others think about her) bothvary according to her environment. Inthis interaction view social class is dynamic.

To assert that social class is occupational prestige oreducational attainment is to assert that social class is based solely oncultural capital. To assert that socialclass is world view, that it is solely about perception and meaning making, isto assert that social class is only about psychological behavior. To assert that social class is about groupsof people classified together is to assert that social class is solely aboutthe environment.

Acquiring a college degree, part of cultural capital,changes your social class, and changes social class in the context of yourbehaviors and your environment. Yourenvironment affects your social class identity. Your self-concept is one thing if you have a degree from The Universityof Iowa in a room of Harvard graduates. Your self-concept is something else if you have a degree from TheUniversity of Iowa in a room of Northwest Missouri State Universitygraduates. Prestige is relative andsocial class is dynamic.

What’s your social class? Your social class is an interaction between you, your environment, andyour behavior. As you change personally,your social class changes. As yourbehavior changes, your social class changes. As your environment changes your social class changes. You affect your environment through yourbehavior and your environment affects you through your perceptions and meaningmakings in a constant state of dynamic interaction.

Static single variable definitions of social class are effectivewithin a single paradigm. Static single variable definitions of social class inadequatewhen working with multiple paradigms of social class. The real world is complex and messy andrequires definitions that capture an appropriate amount of that mess as a wayto help make sense of social class and the world.

References

Bandura, A.(1989). Human agency in social cognitive theory. American Psychologist, 44,1175-1184.

Barratt, W.,Burrow, H., Kendrick, C., Parrott, J., & Tippin, K. (2003, March). Client and Counselor SES: Issues andApplications. Paper presented at American Counseling Association, Anaheim,CA.

Barratt, W.(2011). Social class on campus: Theories and manifestations. Sterling, VA:Stylus

Bronfenbrenner,U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. InJ. R. (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education(pp. 241-258). New York: Greenwood Press.

Lewin, K.(1951). Field theory in social science: Selected theoretical papers. D.Cartwright (Ed.). New York: Harper & Row.

I want thank to Karen Buchholzfor creating the graphic based on my vague directions and ugly sketch.

Social Class Consciousness on Campus

2011-11-11T11:42:00.001-08:00

Will Barratt, Ph.D.

I often feel that I grew along with the variousconsciousness movements; women’s consciousness, black consciousness, politicalconsciousness, men’s consciousness, and the many other consciousness movementsthat have emerged in the past 60 years. I have always appreciated these movements because they add importantdimensions to our lives. With the riseof each movement, and with its maturing, discussions become more and moreinteresting, the body politic gets more complicated, and the world gets alittle more inclusive as each group claims more consciousness. Defining ourselves through increasedconsciousness has become part of every movement. Class consciousness, like other forms ofconsciousness, is individual. It isabout you and it is about me.

Twice in my life I have lived in countries that werenominally Communist; Budapest, Hungary in 1987-1988 and Beijing, People’sRepublic of China in 1995-1996. Communistrhetoric, especially about social class, was a background hum for both of theseexperiences. Class consciousness surfacedmost often when I was discussing education with campus colleagues. Class consciousness was part of their worldview, part of their ideology, part of their practice, and part of theirlives. A Hungarian colleague was given aplace in his university class because of his proletariat background –affirmative action for the proletariat. Because of this class based advantage in his early life his class consciousness got a huge jump start. AChinese colleague was sent into the country side with his family forre-education because his father had a photograph of a Swedish missionary whohad taught him English as a child. ThisChinese colleague’s first school experience was when he stepped onto a collegecampus as a first year student in his 30s. Attributed social class kept this colleague out of the educational system until he was in his 30s, making class consciousness a foreground feature during his life. Attributed social class played alarge part in the lives of these people. Communist rhetoric, education, andmedia pushed for a certain sort of class consciousness.

Students going to college in the US don't have these experiences. Class consciousness and class awareness are well in the background. At most the typical US college first year student is aware that social class has something to do with money. If they have been paying attention to the current news they are aware of income disparity between the 1% and the 99%, but this is a different level of class consciousness than being sent to the country side for re-education.

In the US, and certainly on US college campuses, we don’thave any sort of push for class consciousness. While “First Generation Students” are the shiny new minority on campus therecognition of this new social class minority has not led to any emphasis onexploring social class on campus. Thisis a similar pattern to the recognition of ethnic minority students that doesnot lead to any exploration of ethnic majority students. Consciousness in the US is for members ofminorities, not for members of majorities.

I would argue that most of the class consciousness thatoccurs on campus comes can be seen in the members of campus social class minorities and comes from their contrast with the social class majority on campus. That contrast initiated social classconsciousness is a start. There are typesand levels of class consciousness. Morecomplexly, where you start determines your path to consciousness. Working Class / Poverty Class students on campus willbegin the journey to class consciousness from their social class world view andfrom the consciousness that comes from experiencing social class contrast oncampus. The majority class student on campus,child of college educated parents, has no contrast on campus to push thebeginning of the journey to class consciousness. The reality is that the majority class studenton campus has been set up to be isolated from social class contrast, to live ina bubble that prevents social class consciousness. This isolation may be intentional, but theforces of evil inhibiting class consciousness are more probably grounded in ignorancethan in maliciousness.

So, how do we initiate discussions about classconsciousness among the majority class student? How do we challenge their assumptions of their social class normality? How do we help them to realize that they aremembers of a minority social class group in the US and are in the majority oncampus?

The answer is simple – start a discussion. Getting social class out into the open is thefirst step. Social class consciousnessis a long journey with many steps, like all other forms of consciousness.

A level of social class consciousness is an interestingidea and is one way to think about developing increasing consciousness. Below are two endpoints on a scale of socialclass consciousness from 0 to 10. For aninteresting exercise, fill in descriptions for the levels in the middle. What are the waypoints along thejourney? What marks a step forward inconsciousness for you?

Level 0	Denial – “We really don’t have social class in the US.”
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
Level 5
Level 6
Level 7
Level 8
Level 9
Level 10	Full Social Class Consciousness - I know that social class is about cultural, social, and economic capital, identity, culture, and is also about many other factors. I know that social class is personal, social, and economic. I recognize the privilege I have based on my social class of origin, current felt social class, and attributed social class. I recognize the social class market and population segmenting in the US. I recognize how social class is reproduced by social, political, media, and economic institutions. I advocate for minimizing the disadvantaging and advantaging of people based on social class groups. I understand different national and cultural contexts for social class. I recognize that my consciousness requires action.

Your notion of class consciousness may go all the way to11. Great. For me Level 10 requires constant work tomaintain as the new things you learn are integrated with what you already know.

Whatever you do, start a conversation about social class.

Social class in English language movies

2011-10-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

I was asked recently to help identify a few movies in which social class plays a significant part. While there are many, here is a short list (with dates) of some movies that I know. Some go back a ways, like My Man Godfrey (1936), and some are more contemporary, like Crash (2004).

Feel free to add movies to this list by sending in a comment. I am sure there are many more films from around the world that contain social class as a significant theme, so with your help we can create a more global list.

An Officer and a Gentleman 1982

Breakfast Club 1985

Breaking Away 1979

Clueless 1995

Crash 2004

Down and Out in BeverlyHills 1986

Driving Miss Daisy 1989

Educating Rita 1983

Erin Brockovich 2000

Five Easy Pieces 1970

Good Will Hunting 1997

Gosford Park 2001

Great Gatsby 1974

Hoop Dreams 1994
In Time 2011 (Courtesy of Emma Mentley)

Love Story1970

My Fair Lady 1964

My Man Godfrey 1936

Mystic Pizza 1988

Norma Rae 1979

Ordinary People 1980

Pretty in Pink 1986

Pretty Woman 1990

Rocky I 1976

School Daze 1988

Sense and Sensibility 1995

Six Degrees of Separation 1993

Slums of Beverly Hills 1998

Swept Away 2002, 1974

The Graduate 1967

The Talented Mr. Ripley 1999

Titanic 1997

Trading Places 1983

Wall Street 1987

Working Girl 1988

I want to thank David Seiler who helped get the dates for many of these.

Multiple Social Class Lenses and Concepts

2011-10-13T08:21:00.001-07:00

Will Barratt

As I move forward in my thinking about social class oncampus I have occasion to revisit some past thoughts and writings. This makes me realize that some people willbe starting to read about class now, and that I need to reprise some basicnotions. Toward that end, here is aprimer on multiple ways to think about social class and a few key concepts touse when working with social class on campus.

Abstract and personal paradigms for class

There are two primary waysthat social class appears in the literature: First that social class isabstract. Second that social class ispersonal. The idea that social class ispersonal doesn’t yet have much literature, but that area is growing. These are two very different approaches tosocial class, and both are very useful. As a professor I appreciate the abstract, the generalization, thesimplification of combining the many into the one. On the other hand, none of my students and noneof my colleagues are an abstract, they are people. I appreciate the personal view of socialclass also. Obviously a combination ofpersonal and abstract views of class will give us a richer and more completeview.

Two abstract views of social class

There are two primaryschools of thought dealing with the abstract idea of social class: First is sociological. Second is economic. Again, both of these have contributions tomake and insights into social class. Looking at aggregations of people, at societies, leads to certain typesof abstractions. Looking at aggregationsof people, at economies, leads to other types of abstractions. I am sure there are more lenses also.

Even within the economicmodels of social class there are all manner of ways to examine it. Macroeconomic and microeconomic models ofsocial class come to mind. Even withinsociology multiple models of social class come to mind, systemic, structural,and interpersonal models. There are moreeconomic and sociological lenses also.

Six personal views of social class

There is no definitivelist of personal views of class. Ipropose six views of social class as personal: Class as capital, class as identity, class as culture, class as enactedrole, class as educational attainment, and finally class as occupation. While I am sure there are more, this is agood and mostly inclusive list. One advantageof this list is that most of us can remember six things.

Social class as capital. Bourdieu’s (1986)enumerates three forms of capital as he expanded on the traditional Marxistview of economic capital by adding cultural capital and social capital. His article is short and well worth readingso I will not repeat his words here. Amoment’s reflection comes up with some of the limits of his list of three formsof capital. This is akin to recognizingthe limitations of six ways to think about social class as personal. Other forms of capital are context specific,like academic capital, or leadership capital, or even spiritual capital. All forms of capital are important.

One issue that I have withBourdieu’s ideas of cultural and social capital is that there is prestigecultural capital and prestige social capital, as well as non-prestige culturalcapital, and non-prestige social capital. Prestige cultural capital reflects the knowledge, skills, and trappingsof the prestige class, and non-prestige cultural capital reflects theknowledge, skills, and trappings of the underclass. Similarly, social capital is class bound. Knowing people who can help you with your financialportfolio is different than knowing people who can help you fix your car. Both your financial portfolio, if you haveone, and your car, if you have one, are important. It is just that a financial portfolio hashigher prestige.

Social class as identity. We each havea social class of origin, a current felt social class, and an attributed socialclass. Where we came from, what we thinkof ourselves, and what others think about us. As with gender identity and ethnic identity our social class of originidentity formed early at home and in the social settings we were in aschildren. Our current felt social classreflects the experience we have had with social class and in our ability tocompare ourselves to others. While most collegestudents will identify as middle class, this is probably not the appropriate socialclass identity for those who, if they graduate, will be among the 30% most welleducated people in the US. If they havea graduate degree they are then among the 10% most well educated in the US, andare nowhere near the middle of the educational attainment distribution. One of the challenges for members of the majoritysocial class on campus is creating a realistic current felt social class basedon awareness and knowledge of the other social classes in the US.

Social class as culture. Cultures, andsubcultures, share norms, expectations, values, and many more things. Social class can be seen as a collection ofsub-cultures arranged in a hierarchy of prestige. Recent research has indicated clear culturaldifferences between social class groups. A trip to the three tiers of grocery stores or restaurants in a midsizedcity will illustrate this point better than 1000 words. Kraus, Piff, and Keltner recently (2011) publisheda piece titled Social class as culture:The convergence of resources and rank in the social realm which includes agreat array of material from a social-psychological perspective on social classas culture.

Social class as enacted role. This comesfrom Irving Goffman (1959) and the idea that any social role has dialog, blocking,costumes, and stage dressing. Socialclasses each have distinct features, and fashion, or costumes, is an easy wayto see the differences in enacted role. International Suit Up Day, October 13, is appropriate costuming holiday fora small range of social classes. Similarly big box discount stores havecostumes, or uniforms, appropriate for their clientele, as well as stagedressings, or rather home furnishings. Similarlythere are more prestigious varieties of English and less prestigious varietiesof English that guide our dialogs and monologs.

Social class as educational attainment. Members of themajority social class in the US do not have a college degree. While half of US citizens over 25 have someexperience in college, and about 10% have an Associate’s Degree, the collegeeducated minority who have a degree have the prestige. Add on graduate and professional degrees andyou have a hierarchy of social class. Inreality the minority who is college educated normalizes that world view. What is not normal must be abnormal, deviant,bad, or negative in some way.

Social class as occupation. Some of thefirst work I found on measuring social class was from August Hollingshead(1975) and involved educational attainment and occupational prestige. I updated his work with some more modernresearch on occupational prestige, but the central point remains: Occupationsare prestige ranked. Ganzeboom andTreiman (1996) have a list that provides an international perspective onoccupational prestige rankings.

Four Key Concepts

Measuring social class.

Some models of class, likeincome, educational attainment, and occupational prestige are easy to measure,and others like identity and culture are not. Because income, education, and occupation are easy to measure, they getmeasured. In some ways this biasesdefinitions of social class toward those measurable views of social class,ignoring identity, culture, role, and even ignoring other forms of capital.

The idea of prestige,while it can be measured and is often measured inadvertently in collegerankings, is often omitted when taking the measure of social class. Prestige is in some ways a synonym for socialclass. Prestige goods like handbags withdesigner labels known to be expensive and therefore prestigious are a goodexample. Occupations are ranked bysocial scientists into a hierarchy of prestige. Asking “How prestigious is this?” is the same as asking “What socialclass is this?”

Below are three ways toquantify social class with easily counted and measured concepts related tosocial class. You can use this to calculateyour social class of origin by ranking your parents, or you can use this tocalculate your attributed social class by using your own data. There are five social class groups numbered 1through 5, so feel free to assign whatever names you want. You may not, in good conscience, refer to thetop group using any term like middle or upper-middle.

This material below is notthat different that the material from the New York Times that is availableat: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/20050515_CLASS_GRAPHIC/index_01.html

Use the three tables below to calculate the social statusfor your family of origin or your own attributed social class. The data below are based on a US population.

Annual FamilyIncome Groups. Estimated combinedparental income. People in single parenthouseholds are at an obvious disadvantage. US Census 2009, Table F-1

Lowest 20% 1	2	Middle 20% 3	4	Highest 20% 5
Under $26,934	$26,934 to $47,913	$47,914 to 73,338	$73,339 to $112,540	Over $112,540

EducationalAttainment Groups. Calculate for themost well educated parent. US Census2010, Educational Attainment in the United States: 2010 – Detailed Tables,population over 25

1	2	3		4	5
13% No High School Diploma	31% High School Diploma	17% Some college, no degree	9% AA, AS	19% BA, BS	8% MA, MS	3% PhD, MD, or JD

OccupationalPrestige Groups. Calculate for thehighest prestige parental occupation. If you do not find your parent(s)occupation then please select something similar.

Physician, attorney, professor, chemical and aerospace engineer, judge, CEO, senior manager, public official, psychologist, pharmacist, accountant.	5 - Top
Mechanical, nuclear, and electrical engineer, educational administrator, veterinarian, military officer, elementary, high school and special education teacher,	4.5
Nurse, skilled technician, medical technician, counselor, manager, police and fire personnel, financial manager, physical, occupational, speech therapist.	4
Supervisor, librarian, aircraft mechanic, artist and artisan, electrician, administrator, military enlisted personnel, buyer.	3.5
Machinist, musician, bookkeeper, secretary, insurance sales, cabinet maker, personnel specialist, welder.	3 - Middle
Automobile mechanic, typist, locksmith, farmer, carpenter, receptionist, construction laborer, hairdresser.	2.5
Painter, skilled construction trade, sales clerk, truck driver, cook, sales counter or general office clerk.	2
Garbage collector, short-order cook, cab driver, shoe sales, assembly line workers, masons, baggage porter.	1.5
Day laborer, janitor, house cleaner, farm worker, food counter sales, food preparation worker, busboy.	1 - Bottom

(Income + Education + Occupation) divided by 3 ______

Social class contrast

The fish that livesentirely in water may have no knowledge of that water. A fish that spends any time at all in the airunderstands the existence of water based on the contrast with the air. Similarly students who have lived in a socialclass bubble all of their lives will not have experienced social classcontrast. Consequently, they may thinkthemselves middle class when in fact they would rank in the 5 category on thescales above.

Students whose parents havelittle or no experience in higher education are at risk because of thediscomfort they feel on campus based on social class contrast. Research tells us that these studentsgraduate at half the rate of students with college educated parents.

Students whose parentshave experience in higher education come to campus with all manner of advantageand privilege. The risk for them is thatthey are the majority social class and experience little in the way of socialclass contrast. Further complicatingthis is first generation students seeking to class pass or blend in orassimilate in order to appear to be like majority social class students. This further normalizes the majority socialclass on campus. The risk for thesestudents is that the lack of contrast will warp their world view so that itdoes not include the majority of US citizens with no experience in college andno college education.

Multiple ways to be in the same social class

There are multiple ways tobe in the same social class. Astin’s(1993) college student typologies, or any of the other college studenttypologies, are ways to describe different students in the same group. Using my favorite example of Misty and Markeyfrom the majority class on campus there is fashionable Misty, athletic Misty,academic Misty, and so on. In yoursocial class subculture athletic Misty may be more prestigious, and in mine academicMisty may be more prestigious. I valueculture capital, so I value academic Misty.

Class is inherently a hierarchy, gender, ethnicity,and GLBT are not

A classic way to pursuemulticultural education is to have students realize that there is not ahierarchy among genders, between heterosexual students and GLBT students,between men and women, etc. Unfortunately the nature of social class is a hierarchy, so traditionalmethods of multicultural education will not work. While students learn that all cultures areequivalent, and social class is a culture, the culture of scarcity and theculture of plenty are different in important and hierarchical ways.

What can you do?

You can spread awareness of social class on your campus,in your life, and at your work. Themulticultural industry is mostly fixated on gender, on ethnicity, on sexualorientation, and sometimes on religion. Whenstudents come to campus they have been exposed to many hours of multiculturalprogramming. When students leave campusthey have, we hope, been exposed to many hours of multiculturalprogramming. Understanding and workingpositively with our differences is a good thing, it is the heart of democracyand the meaning of “E Pluribus Unum”.

As awareness of gender issues, of ethnic issues, of sexualityissues is key, so is awareness of social class. While we may keenly feel the injuries of gender, ethnic, and sexualitydiscrimination, the injuries of class are deep and lasting and happen like theunfelt cuts from a sharp blade.

References

Astin, A. W. (1993). An empirical typology of collegestudents. Journal of College StudentDevelopment, 34, 36-46

Bourdieu, P. (1986).The forms of capital. In J. R. (Ed.), Handbookof theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-258). NewYork: Greenwood Press.

Goffman, E (1959)The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life New York: Doubleday

Anchor

Ganzebook, H. B. G., & Treiman, D. J. (1996).Internationally comparable measures of occupational status for the 1988International Standard Classifications of Occupations. Social Science Research, 25, 201-239.

Hollingshead, A. B.(1975). Four factor index of social status. New Haven, CT: Unpublishedmanuscript. Department of Sociology, Yale University.

Kraus, M. W., Piff,P. K., & Kelter, D. (2011). Social class as culture: The convergence ofresources and rank in the social realm. CurrentDirections in Psychological Science, 20(4), DOI: 10.1177/0963721411414654

Why is social class important?

2011-10-02T13:03:00.000-07:00

Will Barratt

"Why is social class important?" is a great question. In a podcast interview with Stu Brown (http://studentaffairs.com/podcasts/) he started with that question and I wasnot ready for it. It took me a while tocome up with a good answer.

Why this question gets asked, and why this question doesn’tget asked are two interlocking pieces of the puzzle.

I will not ask why social class is important if I am unaware of the day-to-day issues ofsocial class in my life and in the lives of people around me. Awareness is the key here.

Ask yourself these three questions:
1) Why is gender important?
2) Why is ethnicity important?
3) Why is GLBT important?

Now ask yourself why social class is important. The answers to these four questions should besimilar. Gender, ethnicity, GLBT, and socialclass are important in our lives and in the lives of people around us.

Now ask yourself why so many people are asking, talking,and writing about gender, ethnicity, and GLBT, and so few people are asking, talking,and writing about social class.

Research shows us that social class, as defined byparental income and education, is the best predictor of whether or not highschool students go to college, where they go to college, and if they graduatefrom college. This social classpredictor works for men, for women, and for every tracked ethnic minoritystatus. The US Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/) has great collectionsof data on college attendance by ethnicity and gender (http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/2010/tables.html)that can be compared with income and ethnicity tables (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/index.html).

Social class is a better predictor of college attendanceand success than is gender. Women attendcollege and graduate from college at higher rates than do men. Even accounting for small numbers of women inSTEM professions, gender is a weak, but positive predictor of collegeattendance and success in the US.

Ethnicity and social class are linked in some interestingways in the US. Not all poor anduncolleged people are ethnic minorities and not all ethnic minorities are poorand uncolleged. The truth is that eachidentifiable ethnic minority group in the US can be arranged in a hierarchy ofcollege attendance and graduation rates that are closely tied to parentalincome and educational attainment. Lookat the US Census Bureau data links above. This is sociological and economic dataon groups of people. Every day I teachand talk with individual exceptions to this rule, but I do not talk with thepeople not on my campus, who would confirm this rule. Based on abstract sociological and economic models,ethnicity is a real, but weak predictor of college attendance and success. We can statistically subtract the effect ofparental income and education from ethnicity, and the effectof ethnicity remains important, though not huge.

The reasons above for the importance of social class focus on us on the challenges faced byfirst generation students on campus. What about the challenges faced by the second generation student oncampus?

75% of students on campus come from 30% of the USpopulation. 30% of the US adults have acollege degree, or higher. I cannot finddata on how many mothers and fathers in dual parent households both have adegree, so I will be make the mistake of overestimating the percent of UShouseholds with either parent having a college degree. 75% of our students on our campus come fromhomes in which there was probably an expectation to attend college andgraduate. Again, the “probably” comes in because thereis very little national data on family expectations of college attendance andparental education.

Social class is critical for the first generation studentand their experiences on campus. I wouldventure to suggest, without data, that social class contrast is one of the mainreasons that first generation students do not persist on campus to graduation.

Social class is also critical for the majority student,the 75% coming from homes with at least one college graduate. The reason for the importance of social class is not college success, buthumanity. If students don’t become awareof social class and confront it in the same way they confront gender, ethnicity, and GLBT issues their ignorance of social class will lead them to be less effectivein the workplace and as citizens. Thelevel of publicized ignorance about income, insurance, and education duringthis political season is one effect of failing to learn about socialclass.

Democracy is about both the majority and theminority. In the case of the US themajority of citizens do not have a college education and have had a decliningincome recently (look at the US Census Bureau income data). The minority, the college or graduateeducated individual who makes and enforces the rules remain ignorant of class in theUS. If you are not interested in democracy,then ignore social class.

Social Class Book Publishing

2011-09-23T08:17:00.001-07:00

Will Barratt

I am new to the book writing world and business, so everypart of the process of writing, editing, and selling my new book has beenfascinating to me. While I believe thatmy topic is important and that the book should required reading in everydiversity class, I also recognize that others don’t agree. I suspect that people avoid the book the sameway they avoid talking about social class.

I get the occasional positive email from colleagues andothers who have read it and like it, but overall the response has beenunderwhelming. Perhaps the book is like The Princess Bride. The movie did not do well at the box office,but over 25 years has become a classic. Perhapsnot.

I have become very interested in the Amazon page for mybook because it shows me my rank. InJuly I ranked in the top 1,000,000, in late August I ranked in the top 200,000,and seem to have settled at around 400,000 to 500,000. The August boom was for the fall semester ofbook orders.

For me, the interesting part of the Amazon data is thesection “Customers who bought this item also bought” I can recognize many books required by mycolleagues like Identity Development ofDiverse Populations, and Multiculturalismon Campus. It is the odd ones, thebooks I don’t recognize, that puzzle me. Moral Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture puzzles me. My response is to add another book to myreading list.

I started writing with a specific audience in mind. John von Knorring , my publisher at Stylus whounderstands books, text, information, and media on a very deep level, suggestedthat I write the book for a larger audience. He was right. I had been readingon a wide level so why not write to a larger audience. I had been consuming blogs like Social Class& Quakers by N. Jeanne Burns (http://quakerclass.blogspot.com/),and Education and Class by Jane Van Galen (http://educationandclass.com/), so whynot write to a larger audience. I hadbeen reading books like Tearing Down theGates (Peter Sacks), Higher Educationand Social Class (Louise Archer, Merryn Hutchings and Alistair Ross), and The Psychology of Social Class (MichaelArgyle), so why not write to a larger audience.

The question of course is how large the audience is. Is there no audience for topics on socialclass or is it that people don’t want to confront social class in the US? Those writing on social class comprise asmall group, especially exploring social class as a personal characteristicrather than an economic or sociological trend. Those reading about social class also seem to comprise a small group. Apathy, satisfaction, and intentionaldisinterest all have the same behavioral consequence. Is it that people read about ethnicity andgender because they don’t want to read about social class?

My publisher tells me that if you are a faculty memberthat you can get an exam copy if you are thinking about adding the book to yourreading list for a class.

http://www.styluspub.com/orders/examrequest.aspx?ProductID=278156

If you want to buy a copy after reading some of my blogs,then you can get a 20% discount using the code WBBLOG at the checkout:

http://stylus.styluspub.com/books/bookdetail.aspx?productid=278156

Stars, winners, special people, losers, and hierarchy: How social class is different from gender, ethnicity, GLBTQ, and other forms of difference.

2011-09-16T11:43:00.001-07:00

Will Barratt

When Kurt Vonnegut received the Eugene V. Debs award in1981 he spoke about how people divided the world into stars and bitplayers.

Sheldon Kopp, writing in If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him notes that when youmake someone special you diminish yourself, and conversely when you makeyourself special you diminish others.

The single index finger pointing upward meaning “We’renumber one” may be the most obscene gesture in the world because it means thateveryone else is a loser, second place, an also ran. It overtly states a hierarchy with thegesticulator in a superior position.

The L for Loser gesture with the thumb and forefingerplaced on the forehead is used by adolescents of all ages to indicate that youare a loser, and therefore I am a winner.

Social class is about hierarchy, about being a star,winning, and being special. Gender,ethnicity, GLBTQ, and other forms of diversity are about difference, aboutbelonging to some category.

The seemingly ubiquitous nature of stars and bit players,special and not so special people, and winners and losers are part of whatcreates social hierarchy or social class. I would hazard a guess that the nature of hierarchy is part of thenature of the human experience. Yes,hierarchy is evil, wretched, and creates an overclass and an underclass. Yes, hierarchy is all around us and is co-createdand re-created every day by every one of us.

I am suggesting that social class is different fromgender, ethnicity, GLBTQ, and other forms of human difference because theinherent hierarchical nature of social class is fundamentally different from theinherent non-hierarchical nature of gender, ethnicity, GLBTQ, and other formsof human difference. Most diversity is about categories like male and female,European-American and African-American, and so on. Of course a close look at these categoriesreveals the truth that the boundaries between categories are not always clear,and that the categories are not always mutually exclusive. In spite of these problems with categories,they remain categories. Categories donot constitute a hierarchy. Mymeasurement colleagues will notice that this is the distinction between categoricalor nominal variables, like gender, and ordinal variables, like how much money youhave.

Winning, Losing,and Hierarchies

How do we determine star status, number one status,special status, and winner status? Thereinis an interesting question. Among aleague of ten college football teams playing against each other on a FallSaturday, five of the teams will win and five will lose, not counting potentialties. The team with the most season winsis number one. Professional sports teamshave regular and post season play, eventually one team emerges as the winnerand all others sink into the media abyss of losers. This winner and loser status is based ondirect data. Determining the superiorteam when teams don’t play is not based on direct data. “Well the players in the xxx conference are tougher,meaner, taller, faster, . . . so theyare superior”. Once there is no directdata, then arguments based on unexamined assumptions break out.

There are data-based hierarchies, for example standingsof college teams within a league, and non-data-based hierarchies, for example standingsof college teams between leagues. But,you say, between-league comparisons are based on data too. No, I say. Comparisons between leagues may use quantitative metrics, for example yardsper play, completed passes, and whatnot for US Football, all of that data wascreated within a specific league context and cannot be used for comparisonbetween leagues. I suggest that sportspundits use the data in a way designed to confound and confuse the comparisons,to act as a distraction, to act as the illusion of quantitative certainty, whenin fact between-league predictions in sports is a matter of unsubstantiatedbelief. Within-league team comparisonsare a matter of head to head competition – literally. Between-league team comparisons are mattersbereft of fact and are consequently matters of belief.

Winning, Losing,and Social Class

What has this all got to do with social class? “Everything” to quote Yoda.

Data views of social class, that class is personalincome, use the direct evidence of income hierarchies to equate with socialclass hierarchies. Personal Incomehierarchy= Social Class hierarchy. Thatis; PI_h=SC_h. Thatsounds scientific doesn’t it? Income isa nice metric, a nice way to measure something. I make $20 and you make $18. Iwin, you lose. I am a star, you are abit part player. I am number one, youare a loser. It would be nice if socialclass was that simple. The metrics ofincome and wealth alone are not enough to capture the reality of personal socialclass.

Bourdieu, in Formsof Capital, notes that the idea of economiccapital, income and wealth, can be supplemented with the ideas of social capital and cultural capital. Forms ofcapital all have the advantage of being, more or less, quantified. That is, I have more than you, or you havemore than me. This capital-based idea isa more nuanced view of social class than money alone, but is not a full andcomplete view of social class. Capitalcan create a nice hierarchy, but that hierarchy misses many elements of personalsocial class reality. On first glancethe quantity of economic capital, social capital, and cultural capital keepeveryone in the same league, so all of the comparisons are within-league. In reality not everyone plays in the sameleague. You can have high prestigecultural capital, for example knowing a pinot noir from a pinotage, and / oryou can have low prestige cultural capital, for example knowing the standingsfor NASCAR. You can have high prestige social capital, being able to formallegiances with people who have power and money and / or you can have lowprestige social capital, being able to form allegiances with people who havetools to work on your house or car.

Another direct evidence view of social class is educationalattainment. Educational Attainmenthierarchy=Social Class hierarcy, or EA_h=SC_h. I have a Ph.D. and you have a M.S.. I win,you lose, etc. This gets complicated whenyou add the non-data-based prestige values of various undergraduate or graduateschools, and factor in the prestige hierarchy of disciplines. Is a Math degree from Door Prairie StateUniversity equivalent to an English degree from an Ivy League / Seven Sisters college? Prestige is largely data free when it comesto educational institutions and disciplines. The research on college rankings tells us that rankings are either aboutperceived prestige of the faculty or about student and institutional income. Neither source of rankings has to do with howwell the faculty members teach the students.

Values Hierarchiesand Social Class

Income, capital of many sorts, and educational attainmentare the primary data based comparisons that can be made about personal socialclass. The assumption is that more isbetter. The idea that more is better isa value judgment. Money, capital, andeducational attainment are a won/lost record in personal social class, andwinning in these metrics of social class is generally thought to be better thanlosing in these metrics or social class. Other ways to talk about social class have no data that can be arrangedin a hierarchy of more and less.

While income, educational attainment, and capital arequantifiable ways to explore personal social class, social class as identity inno way lends itself to quantitative or qualitative differences that allowranking in a hierarchy. Suggesting thatone identity is better than another is a bold statement of values based on nodata whatsoever. The lack of data doesnot curtail irrational assertions that people who have a higher class identityare better than people who have a lower class identity. Irrational beliefs about gender, aboutethnicity, and about GLBTQ are all too common and are too often clouded with questionableand misapplied quantitative data. These data-freebeliefs are probably held as a consequence of identity and ego expressions.

Viewing personal social class as culture, as sharedvalues and norms, in no way leads to a data-based hierarchy. No culture is better or worse than yours inany countable that does not rely on unsubstantiated values. Suggesting a hierarchy of cultures, of valuesand norms shared by groups of people, is bereft of common sense. It is not uncommon to hear value-based data-freestatements asserting that higher class culture is better than lower classculture.

Social class as prestige is interesting because prestigeis collective belief and not quantifiable. While collective belief is quantifiable, we can survey 1000 people ontheir beliefs about the prestige ratings and rankings of various name brands,the actual prestige itself is not quantifiable. Things are prestige only because people believe they are prestige. While it is often believed that Expensive object= Quality object = Prestige object, E_O=Q_O=P_O,this tautology is not confirmed by research even though the formula does lookscientific. Please note that formulaswith subscripts are more prestigious than formulas without subscripts. Cost and quality are related and quality andprestige are related, and cost and prestige are related, but the relationshipsare weak. Prestige is usually a matterof marketing. Do $100 sunglasses protectmy eyes better than $10 dollar sunglasses? Or is my metric of protecting my eyes the wrong metric? Do $100 sunglasses have more “cool” than $10sunglasses?

Working withSocial Class as a Hierarchy

Gender, ethnicity, GLBTQ, and other forms of diversityare about difference, about belonging to some category. Social class is about hierarchy. While some of the hierarchy behind socialclass is quantitative, like money, most of the social class hierarchy isirrational and data free.

Working with gender, ethnicity, GLBTQ, and other forms ofdifference is often about reducing and removing the ideas of hierarchy thatpeople have generated about these differences. Working with social class requires a wholly different approach, becausehierarchy is part of the nature of social class. Exploring the nature of our irrational creationsof hierarchy is the beginning of a way to reduce the injustice of social class.

Social Class Hierarchy and Inequity - How social class is different than gender and ethnicity

2011-08-26T07:53:00.000-07:00

Will Barratt

I have been reading DeMethra LaSha Bradley’s Chapter in How to talk about hot topics on campus: From polarization to conversation in which she explores the idea of victims and victimization in the context of social class. While that is not the main topic of the chapter it is an idea that has troubled me for some time. Oppression and oppressors is a central theme in much of the literature and teaching that occurs in and around the ideas of gender and ethnicity. However as Bradley points out the victim/victimizer dichotomy does not recognize the nuances of social class reality.

Zweig, in What’s class got to do with it notes that often in multicultural training on ethnicity and nationality students are taught that all cultures are equivalent. In that context this idea of equality reflects my colleague Cseresnesy Lazlo’s comment “Not better, not worse. Only different”. This reduction of hierarchy between ethnicities and nationalities is a good thing. All cultures are equal, there is no hierarchy among ethnicities and cultures.

Freire in Pedagogy of the oppressed explores the idea of oppression quite extensively. In the Brazilian context in which he was writing the oppression came on multiple fronts; from economic to social to political to language, to many others. His idea that the oppressed becoming the oppressor when power shifts is useful on the macro / social and micro / individual scale. Oppressed / victims and oppressor / victimizer are an effective dichotomy at first glance. However, when a nuanced look at gender, ethnicity, and social class takes over, this dichotomy becomes troubling. This is particularly true when dealing with social class.

One proposed remedy for gender and ethnic oppression is the equalization of peoples. People of all genders should be equal, people of all ethnicities should be equal, people of all religions, along with people who are non-religious, should be equal. This is a laudable and achievable goal. When we are all judged by the content of our character and by our behaviors it will be a more just world. Achieving gender equity, ethnic equity, and other forms of equity is a long process and we are moving forward. Many of the egregious inequities found in the US between genders have been slowly and effectively removed. Many more remain, and the price of equity is constant vigilance. Worldwide, things are moving forward toward equity, albeit slowly. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlines the path to equity by preventing discrimination and encouraging equal opportunity. President Truman changed the behaviors of everyone in the US armed services by integrating the military, formally establishing ethnic equity. Behaviors changed and attitudes followed, albeit slowly. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 forbade certain behaviors related to gender and encouraged others. This was a good thing, and there is still work to be done on gender equity.

Solutions to gender, ethnic, religious, and many other forms of inequity are possible because there is no inherent difference between the members of these groups. Men and women, are for all intents and purposes, are physiologically and psychologically the same, with the exception of their reproductive physiology. There is no measureable physiological or psychological difference between members of any religious or non-religious group. And so on. Equality between genders and between other groups is possible because of the inherent physiological and psychological equity among members of those groups. A solution strategy is to promote equity and disassemble hierarchy. There are behavioral differences between groups, and these are learned. One group may pray on their knees and another may pray standing up. Behaviors are what distinguish between members of groups, cultures, and religions.

Members of different social classes, however defined, are the same physically and psychologically. So should we move toward social class equity? This inherent equity of all peoples is one of the underlying principles the Communist Manifesto. It is also one of the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is also one of the founding principles of the United States of America.

The people in the diversity movement are correct when they assert that everyone is equal, that there is no hierarchy among the genders, among people of various or no religions, among people of various ethnicities, etc. Applying this same concept of equality to social class is a different thing altogether.

The problem is hierarchy. Gender is a social construct based on biological dimorphism. There is no inherent hierarchy in gender. Ethnicity is a social construct based on geography of origin. There is no inherent hierarchy in ethnicity. GLBTQ, seen as either a biological or social construct or some combination, is not a hierarchy. Social class is based on a common collection of beliefs about a hierarchy.

Behind social class is hierarchy. No amount of asserting that there is equity among the classes can change this. The social class hierarchy is complicated. Seeing the hierarchy as resources, then equalizing resources can remove the hierarchy. However paying a physician the same as an administrative assistant is just not going to happen. Seeing the hierarchy as education, then equalizing education, and access to education, can remove the hierarchy. However, even among colleges there are hierarchies of perceived prestige, so a college degree from one college is not perceived as the equivalent of a college degree from some other school. Seeing social class as cultural, the asserting the equality of cultures should ameliorate this hierarchy. However, the billions of dollars spent on marketing products to population segments (read different social classes) may pose an impediment to changing the perceived prestige of social class cultures.

The social class hierarchy is something that we all co-create and that is manifest in multiple ways. The injustices of social class can be ameliorated, but as long as social class exists, there will be hierarchy and there will be social class based injustice. This is because the idea of social class is at its core about hierarchy.

Social networks, social capital, and social class

2011-08-09T06:04:00.001-07:00

Will Barratt

How are social networks related to social class? In the simplest question form, do social networks promote social class movement or do they promote the reproduction of social class. Bourdieu, in Forms of Capital (1986) outlines social capital . "Social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition – or in other words, to membership in a group." Social networks are a formalized and structuralized way to create and maintain social capital. A second distinction must be added here, that of prestige social capital. Social capital among one group, for example among membership and leadership in a union, does not have the same utility and prestige as social capital among investment bankers. Both forms of capital serve a purpose, and both groups, the union and the bankers, have access to resources that can be used for mutual advantage. However, the aggregate perceived prestige of the social capital of the bankers is higher than the aggregate perceived prestige of the union members and leaders. Further, the types and amount of resources that each social group has is different in important ways.

To reframe the question: Do people use social networking to create more prestige social capital, enhancing their social capital and consequently their social class. Do people use social netowrking to reinforce their existing social capital, reproducing social class? I believe that the answser to both of these questions is yes. Social networking is a Yes, and . . . activity. I am sure that a close and nuanced look at different types of social networking sights will reveal some important differences. After all, Facebook is different than LinkedIn in many ways.

For me Facebook, and now Google+, are ways to keep in touch with my friends and students. I am friends with most of my former students, and have slowly been adding people from my past with whom I had lost touch, and it is a regular part of establishing new relationships. After a trip to campuses in Thailand I added six new friends on facebook.

For me LinkedIn is odd. My social capital needs are met through FB or email. It is interesting to be in LinkedIn but for me does not increase my social capital. However, I continue to get random requests to be added by people who I don't already know. Perhaps this is the point of LinkedIn, and it is lost on me. I am hardly the international man of mystery, and can hardly enhance someone's social capital, so what advantage is there to others in linking up with me. I can only assume that linking with me enhances their social capital.

Seen from this perspective, email has the advantage as a social network tool. I regularly get notes from people I don't yet know. People are often curious, or occasionally contentious, about what I have written, or what they think I have written, and send me an email. I write back, building a relationship, enhancing both of our social connections and potential capital. I will too will occasionally write to someone who I don't yet know asking a question on their writing and if a relationship emerges, this has enhanced both of our social capital.

I cannot help but have a vision of people intentionally using social networks to build their social capital for personal advantage. I know that this reflects my perception of the function of that social networking software, and reflects my lack of desire to be 'collected' for social capital reasons.

Bourdieu, P. (1986) The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York, Greenwood), 241-258.

Photos

2010-03-17T15:29:00.001-07:00

After listening to really smart people and old friends I recalled the power of image. When you search for images of social class you don't get much that is enlightening.

This is a colleague at a committee meeting at a national conference. The jeans and jacket makes a social class statement. It is a really nice jacket, well tailored and nice fabric.

Blue jeans with a formal shirt, tie and vest. In another era this might have been yuppie-ish, but this is a clear social class message.

Also at a national committee meeting. The jacket was across the chair back. The fabric is some manner of jean material, and the wear is visible on the lapels. Note the Harvard lapel pin that provides interesting social class contrast with the jacket. The personal identity advertisement here is clear. Is this "Harvard Casual"?

In contrast to the jeans and jacket. This three button suit with the top two buttons done, and the tight Seville Row tailoring makes a social class statement. This is a "trust me" suit.

Misty is the fictional majority class female student. In this photo she has a smart phone in her hand, an upscale and attractive backback on her back, flip flops on her feet, is wearing a stylish top and is going to class. This woman represents many of the stereotypes of the mainstream majority woman student on my campus.

Misty and Marky Majority Student. This was posted to a Facebook site about a football game. I read all of this as upscale casual with nice haircuts.

This is another representation of the majority campus social class woman on my campus. I was first taken by her backpack, and the branded water bottle, just barely viable. I asked her to pose so we could see her and the backpack. This is one of my wonderful graduate students.

Another student representing the majority mainstream fashion sense for women on my campus. African American Misty on my campus has her own style that is a little different than European American Misty. This is also one of my wonderful graduate students.

I have updated this on 11/11/11 to add the photos here.

These images are also at:
https://picasaweb.google.com/114191390355712924920/SocialClassImages

If you have photos that you would like to send along and have posted, that would be great.

“People talk about class because they don’t want to talk about race.”

2010-02-07T10:18:00.000-08:00

Will Barratt

I hear this regularly from people. It is partially true from one perspective. It is certainly true from another perspective. If you believe that the discussion should be totally about race, then this is an appropriate criticism of discussions of class. It should not pass the readers notice that if you believe that the discussion should be totally about gender, then replace “race” with “gender”, and it is certainly true. It is also true that for many people a discussion about class is easier than a discussion about race or a discussion about gender. Discussions about race and gender come with lots of baggage, accusations, recriminations, and otherwise negative experiences. No wonder some people don’t want to go there. I find that a discussion about class is a good place to start a discussion about race and gender. This is what brings me to my current response to this attitude.

“People talk about race and gender because they don’t want to talk about diversity.”

A conversation about diversity is a very different conversation than one about race. A conversation about diversity is very different than a conversation about gender. A conversation about diversity is very different than a conversation about class. While it is important to know something about gender, about ethnicity, and about class, it is really important to know something about diversity.

“Not mine, not yours, ours.”

Designer label colleges.

2009-10-31T06:20:00.000-07:00

Will Barratt

While I was writing this morning on the chapter on prestige and class I realized that college rankings, all about money, are the same simple system that consumers get from designer labels. More expensive is better, more well recognized is better. Who needs to know more? The cultural capital necessary to evaluate product quality, from suits to shoes to colleges, is not an easy thing to acquire. It is far easier to rely on a simple ranking and a list. So, should we recognize this reality and brand our colleges using the designer label approach. Haven't highly prestigious colleges already done that with licensing for the myriad of products that use their logo? Decrying the college ranking system is like decrying designer labels. While I do both, it is like the voice in the desert. No one is listening above the hubbub of designer label shoes and colleges rolling around in the media flux.

The Unmarked

2009-02-13T04:48:00.000-08:00

Will Barrratt

I love conceptual propinquity, when two important concepts appear near each other. I was listening to NPR this morning about Iran and the report featured Islamic fundamentalism and the hatred of "America". Those two ideas of Islam and hatred of the US presented in conjunction, in conceptual propinquity, are misleading. I am reading a wonderful article by Peter Kaufman (Middle-class social reproduction: The activation and negotiation of structural advantages) which is great. I put his article down last night as I was reading about the notion of unmarked phenomenon which Kaufman attributes to Brekhus (A sociology of the unmarked: Redirecting our focus),

Kaufman's point is that the experience of the majority class student is unmarked on campus. Listening to NPR I realized that mainstream Islam is unmarked in the media. Most of Islam is about as moderate as is most of Christianity. Most four-year college students (75%) are second generation students which makes them the majority class on most campuses. Why are the majority unmarked and therefore uninteresting? Why do we 'background' (Jane VanGalen's concept) both the minority class and the majority class student?

VanGalen rightfully argues that we need to foreground the minority class student. Yes, and we need also to foreground the majority class student.

Contrast is an excellent way to highlight something, and social class contrast is high for the minority class student on the majority class campus. Social class contrast for the majority class student on the majority class campus is just not there, perhaps because the structure of the campus and the agency of the people reproduce the majority class. Explaining water to a fish is hard, and explaining majority class to a majority class student is hard. It is important to mark all of class on a campus, as it is important to mark all forms of religion, not just the minority or extreme forms.

Classism and the 10% rule in Texas.

2009-01-12T04:50:00.000-08:00

“We’ve lost control of our entering class because we don’t have any discretion on the admissions" William Powers, President at UT Austin as quoted the daily email alerts.

This was said in response to the 10% rule in Texas that guarantees a spot at a selective university if you are in the top 10% of your class at any school. Management of the Texas system is trying to get rid of an admissions rule that has been a resounding success for everyone except the wealthy. It seems that some Texans want to do away with the rule through their proxies in the management of the Universities.

I do wonder who the "we" is that Powers refers to. Is it the management of the universities or is it the people of Texas who the universities serve?

There is no pedagogical reason to remove the rule.
There is no social reason to remove the rule.
More students are graduating under the rule.
More students are performing at a higher academic level under the rule.
More minority students (gender, ethnicity, and class) are going to college, doing better, and graduating at a higher rate than ever before, and than they would do if they went to less 'selective' schools.

So who is being harmed by the rule? My guess is that the sons and daughters of the rich, the students who did not graduate in the top 10% of their class are not getting what their parents think they are entitled to.

2008-05-02T11:50:00.001-07:00

The April 24 Chronicle of Higher Education had an excellent article about class on campus, except they didn't call it that.

"Elite colleges have made headlines in recent years with financial-aid plans aimed at enrolling more low-income students. But despite those efforts, the proportion of financially needy undergraduates at the nation's wealthiest colleges and universities actually dropped between the 2004-5 and 2006-7 academic years, according to a Chronicle analysis of federal Pell Grant data."

Using my magic social class decoder ring this really says that class has become central to the distribution of financial aid in our elite colleges. This supports my idea that campuses are market segmented into luxury goods (highly selective elite colleges), mass market goods (state colleges, even those that think of themselves as selective and prestige), and discount goods (community colleges).

On January 19 the Chronicle ran an article "When Legacies Are a College's Lifeblood" that examined the recruiting efforts to attract the children of alumni to a campus. While the article did not look closely at the high prestige highly selective universities, it takes no stretch of the imagination to realize the practice of recruiting legacies is widespread. Whether or not President Bush met the admissions requirements for Yale, or was admitted because he was a legacy remains an open question.

This is not a conspiracy, this is just the way things are playing out to the disadvantage of the lower classes. Less financial aid for the poor, and more help for legacies is one way to understand how the college system works.

On the other hand, many colleges do an excellent job in recruiting and providing financial support (economic capital) for first generation students, and it should be noted that the increases in the cost of college go toward financial id and operations rather than faculty salaries.

Social Class and Education: Reproduction, Replication or Resistance, Robert Longwell-Grice, Ed.D.

2008-04-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

Social Class and Education: Reproduction, Replication or Resistance

Rob Longwell-Grice, EdD

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

First-generation college students undergo enormous transformations as they negotiate the difficult transition into the culture of academia. First-generation college students confront all the anxieties, dislocations, and difficulties of any other college students and their experiences often involve cultural as well as social and academic transitions (Rendon, 1996; Pascarella, Wolniak, Pierson & Terenzini, 2003). First-generation college students are more likely than their peers to come from low-income and working-class households, they receive less assistance in preparing for college, feel less supported for attending college, and lack a sense of belonging to the college they attend (Choy, 2001), all of which play a role in the recruitment and retention of students from these working-class backgrounds. The transition to college for first-generation college students is particularly challenging as a result of these numerous at-risk factors (Lohfink, & Paulsen, 2005; Longwell-Grice, 2008).

According to the United States Department of Education, 10 years ago 43 percent of students attending post-secondary institutions in the United States are first-generation students (Nunez & Cuccaro-Alamin, 1998), and there is a consensus that these numbers will continue to grow as a college degree becomes necessary for more entry-level jobs (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Ntiri, 2001). At the same time, however, the proportion of first-time, full-time first-generation college students attending four-year institutions has steadily declined since 1971 (Higher Education Research Institute, 2007). Because first-generation college students have different characteristics and experiences than the students higher education has traditionally served, they are a group at risk and are clearly in need of greater research and administrative attention if they are to succeed in college (Terenzini, Springer, Yaeger, Pascarella & Nora, 1996).

This micro-chapter presents results of a multiple case study involving four first-generation working-class, white male college freshmen during their first semester at an urban research university in the South, who discuss issues related to their preparation for college, the support they felt while attending college, and the sense of belonging they developed while attending college. These perceptions were analyzed through a social-class lens. The study found that these first-generation working-class students were dealing with the phenomena of status incongruity which created confusion and discontentment for them. The study also found that these students felt the need to develop ‘back up plans’ in case they did not succeed in college, and the students were constantly concerned with keeping out of debt. The study makes recommendations for colleges who are interested in helping working-class students deal with these issues and help ensure their success in college.

Liu (2001), Jackma and Jackma (1983) maintain that because class stratification is multi-dimensional (having aspects of income, education, and occupation) and because there is no one single criterion for determining social class, many researchers have abandoned the concept that it is an issue around which people form their identity. This is especially true, Liu, Jackma and Jackma argue, as race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion become more significant as identity issues. However, social class determines the type of education one receives (Anyon, 1980) and the type of college one attends (McDonough, 1997), and these two factors play a crucial role in defining one’s class.

Vander Putten (2001) argues that educators and multiculturalists have a narrow view of diversity, and define it solely in terms of race and gender. The problem of using these two lenses exclusively, Vander Putten maintains, is that, “Bill Gates and a white male Appalachian coal miner will be seen as equal” (p.15). Further, Vander Putten asserts, this limited view of only using race and gender can be attributed to the widely held myth in the United States that everyone belongs to the middle class.

This study intentionally included students who considered themselves to be members of the working class in order to assess how the nexus of their first generation and social class status affected these students’ collegiate experience. The issue of social class was deeply imbedded in the experiences of these students. Social class was woven into these students’ lives as they lived through issues related to preparation for college, support for college, and belonging to college.

While many campuses have drawn attention to the interplay of ethnicity and gender in shaping the educational experiences of college students, colleges have paid limited attention to the complex issues of social class itself (Faulkner, 1995; Odair, 1993; Van Galen, 2000). While educators continue to stress the importance of a college degree for achieving success and class mobility, for low income and working class students, obtaining a college degree is becoming increasingly difficult and their numbers on college campuses have decreased accordingly (Soliday, 1999). Meanwhile, working class students are uncomfortable questioning a system that they are trying so hard to learn. Liu (2001) maintains that social class is a pervasive and important dimension in one’s life, yet it seems to be one of the least understood constructs in psychology. He argues, “often social class is treated as a singular variable, used to infer a person’s social class ‘thinking’” (p. 127), rather than as just one part of a person’s lived experience. Social class, Liu claims, is linked to almost every part of a person’s life, affecting occupational attainment, job satisfaction and educational achievement, among other areas of ones’ life. Along with first gen status, social class is one of the key components of this study.

In this study, issues of social class were reflected in the estrangement the students felt towards the college they attended. Their social class also hindered their preparation for college, and the support that they felt for enrolling in college. This is reflected in the following passage from Patrick, one of the participants in the study:

A typical college student to me is just what I’ve seen. To me, they all dress alike in those fancy clothes, and they go out and party all the time. And they drive those fancy cars, and listen to rap music really, really loud. And some of them are weird. And I don’t do any of those things. Being well off is one thing about them. I find a lot of them drive nicer cars than I do. And I don’t think that I am the smartest person in the world but I know for a fact that I am a lot more intelligent than some of them. And I see a lot of stupid things going on. Typically, they are spoiled, rich kids to me but a lot of them aren’t so that is a very bad thing for me to say. A lot of them worked their way up here just as much as I did, if not more. So, I am saying that the ones that irk me the most, are the ones I refer to, which are the majority, I believe. Of course I might be wrong.

As this statement indicates, Patrick did not see himself as a “typical” college student. To Patrick, “typical” college students are rich, spoiled, dress alike, party, and behave stupidly. He tried to correct himself when he said that some of them had to work their way into college, but then he went on to clarify that he felt the majority did not. Patrick was a college student now, which was something no previous generation in his family had ever achieved. However, now he was in danger of being seen as one of “them” and he wanted to make it clear that he was not like those “other” students. He did not fit the stereotype that he and his friends and his family had of college students. They were like Bill Gates. He was like the Appalachian coal miner. Van Putten (2001) is correct when he argues that when colleges ignore social class, white students from working class backgrounds become largely invisible on the college campus, which further adds to the feelings of working class students that they do not belong on the campus.

References

Anyon, J. (1980). Social class and the hidden curriculum of work. Journal of Work, 162, 67-92.

Choy, S. (2001). The condition of education, 2001. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics (Publication No. 2001072), [on-line], available: www.nces.ed.gov.

Faulkner, C. (1995). My beautiful mother. In J. Zandy (Ed.). Liberating memory: Our work and our working class consciousness. New Bruswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press.

Higher Education Research Institute (2007). First in My Family: A profile of first-generation college students at four-year institutions since 1971. Available: www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri

Jackma, M.. R. & Jackma, R. W. (1983). Class awareness in the United States. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Liu, W. M. (2001). Expanding our understanding of multiculturalism: Developing a social class world view model. In D. P. Pope-Davis and H. L. K. Coleman (Eds.), The intersection of race, class and gender in multi-cultural counseling. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Lohfink, M. & Paulsen, M. (2005). Comparing the determinants of persistence for first-generation and continuing-generation students. Journal of College Student Development, 46, 409-428.

Longwell-Grice, R. & Longwell-Grice, H. (2008). Testing Tinto: How Do Retention Theories Work For First-Generation, Working-Class Students? Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 9 (4) 2008 (In Press).

McDonough, P. (1997). Choosing colleges: How social class and schools structure opportunity. New York: State University of New York Press.

Ntiri, D. W. (2001). Access to higher education for nontraditional students and minorities in a technology focused society. Urban Education,1, 129-144.

Nunez, A.-M. & Cuccaro-Alamin, S. (1998). First generation students: Undergraduates whose parents have never enrolled in postsecondary education. (NCES 98-082). U. S. Department of Education, NCES. Washington, DC. [on-line], available: www.nces.ed.gov/

O’dair, S. (1993). Vestments and vested interests: Academia, the working class, and affirmative action. In M. M. Tokarczyk & E. A. Fay (Eds.), Working class women in the academy: Laborers in the knowledge factory. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Pascarrella, E. T. & Terenzini, P. T. (1991). How college affects students: Findings from twenty years of research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Pascarella, E. T., Wolniak, G., Pierson, C. & Terenzini, P. T. (2003). Experiences and outcomes of first-generation students in community colleges. Journal of College Student Development,44, 420-429.

Rendon, L. I. (1996). Life on the border. About Campus 1, 14-20.

Soliday, M. (1999). Class dismissed. College English 61, 731-741.

Terenzini, P. T., Springer, L., Yaeger, P. Pascarella,E. T., & Nora, A. (1996). First generation college students: characteristics, experiences, and cognitive development. Research in Higher Education,37, 1-22.

Vander Putten, J. (2001). Bringing social class to the diversity challenge. About campus 6, 14-19.

Van Galen, J. A. (2000). Education and class. Multicultural Education 7, 2-11.

Class key words and secret language

2008-04-14T11:44:00.000-07:00

Revealing the hidden or disguised dialog about class requires knowing some of the ways that class is disguised. Terms often heard on campus, like first generation students, access, legacy students, community colleges, selective colleges, need based, and merit based are all class based terms.

First generation students are defined in two ways. First, a restrictive definition are students whose parents did not attend college and represents about half of all 18 year olds. Second, a less restrictive definition are students whose parents did not complete college and represents about 75% of all 18 year olds. This difference is not trivial. Parents who had even one semester in college have experience based advice and counsel for their children. While one semester in college may seem like a small difference, there is a clear income difference between US workers with no experience in college and one semester in college.

Access is used to describe the ability to enroll in and pay for college. Calls for increased access can be found coming from the political left, right, and center. After all, who is not in favor of more US citizens getting more education, having a ‘better life’, making more income, and paying more taxes? Access reflects an attitude that everyone should want to improve their life through education, because uneducated (poor) people have lives less worth living than do educated (rich) people. Colleges are regularly exhorted to expand enrollments and those doing the exhorting ignore the reality that nearly anyone who wants to go to a four year college can get accepted somewhere in their state system, albeit with a heavy burden of remedial courses that don’t count toward graduation.

Legacy student is a keyword meaning the children of college graduates, probably from that university. Legacy students are the opposite of first generation students. Legacy students come from families with education and income, and who know the norms of the campus life. Deconstructing this idea we find that legacy students come to campus knowing the secret handshakes, dress, and behavior codes, and may well come to campus knowing select faculty and administrators.

Community college is often used in the context of a campus for the lower classes, for those not destined for management jobs or one of the traditional professions. Granted that the community college system does provide access and upward mobility, and is a great national triumph, it is important to recognize that only a small percentage of students who enroll at community colleges ever transfer to, much less graduate from, four year colleges. A quick examination of the programs at community colleges reveals their core vocational curriculum. In some ways the community college system maintains social class structure in the US. The community colleges provide valuable commodity skills for students to enable them to become the skilled working class, having low work autonomy and little supervisory authority. In spite of this cynical class based view of the community college it is vital to recognize their important and long lasting contribution to economic, personal, and income growth in the US economy, US workforce, and among US families.

Selective college is the keyword for upper-middle and upper class colleges. As community colleges are for the underclass, selective, and especially highly selective colleges, are for the overclass.

Need based and merit based financial aid are class loaded terms. Need based financial aid refers to family income and is used to provide financial assistance to qualified students who don’t have money. Merit based financial aid is given to students with high grades, high test scores, and high class standing. These students are widely sought by selective colleges, and merit based financial aid is one way to purchase, or rent, these students. Grades, test scores, and class standing are closely tied to matters of social class. Merit based aid is the code word for higher class students and need based aid is a code word for lower class students. Many selective campuses are proud of their “need blind” aid it is prominently advertised. This can be deconstructed as a declaration that lower class students need not apply.

Where you start matters.

2008-04-14T11:41:00.000-07:00

If you start to understand class based on your personal experiences, as most of us do, it will limit your understanding of class until you learn more about the class experiences of others. If you come to understand class in a journey to understand ethnicity, then you will have a view of class heavily influenced by ethnicity. While class and ethnicity are closely related, starting at ethnicity and coming to class will result in very different views of class than if you start at class. Which is more important, class or ethnicity? The answer to that depends on the context of the question. Which is more important in predicting if a large number of students go to college, where they will go, and if they will graduate is a different question than asking about the daily oppression experienced by ethnic and class minorities.

Something new

2008-04-14T11:36:00.000-07:00

I started this blog a while ago and then added nothing. Well, as I was working on a manuscript for a book on social class on campus, I posted the chapters as they were finished. In part this was to get feedback, and in part to motivate me. I took most of that material down because it seemed to be clutter here. I left some up because it is good stuff.

Now, I think I am ready to blog on social class on campus, regularly contributing material.

Why now? Well, I was emailing with a colleague - Drew Lurker - who has a wonderful visual sense of the world and has been collecting photos that have social class cues, and well, this is a visual medium, so I offered Drew a forum here. In a few days that new material will be up.

Where does class fit in the diversity circle?

2008-03-30T12:20:00.000-07:00

I just had a wonderful conversation with colleagues who were adamant that I combine ethnicity and class in this work. One of their concerns was the idea that people talk about class as a way to avoid talking about ethnicity. Given the small amount of talk and writing about class this does not seem to be borne out by the abundant literature on ethnicity and the thin literature on class. While class may be easier to talk about than ethnicity for some people, 'easy alternatives' is no excuse not to deal with hard topics. It may also be easier for some people to talk about class because they really don't know much about class beyond the simple model of income as class.

Similarly, my colleagues asserted that talking about class is a way to avoid talking about whiteness. Similarly, the literature does not bear out their argument. The discussion of ethnicity leads to a discussion of class because of the relation between ethnicity and class. The relationship between class and ethnicity is a different perspective than the relationship between ethnicity and class. A discussion of class, as such, can be a discussion of class. Describing men as men, and not in relation to women, is a similar task. The discussion of class is both related to and separate from the discussion of ethnicity and gender and other forms of diversity. What I set out to do here is to approach social class as something separate from , though related to, other forms of identity.

There are wonderful pieces or writing on ethnicity and on whiteness and on gender and on being an ally and on the international perspectives on class and privilege. Few of them dwell at all on the idea of class.

In the dialog on diversity, where does class fit in the circle?

Part 0 - Your experience of social class

2008-03-07T05:36:00.000-08:00

Your experience of social class is important for you and relevant in your life, and it is not generalizable to the social class experiences of others, even to those in the same social class. Not only are our experiences different, our definitions of class are different. In some ways social class is like photons. I am not a physicist but I know there are at least four different ways to describe a photon: wave, particle, Feynman’s model, and string theory. While I enjoy photons on a daily basis, I cannot say there is a single clear definition for them.

The primacy of the personal point of view about class became very clear to me when the “privilege meme” hit the Internet. A group of students and I had designed several staff development experiences to increase participants’ awareness of social class on campus. It is important to note that the group members represented a wide range of social class of origin. One of the experiences was a list of privileges associated with higher social class and the items on the list were drawn from published research literature. This experience was designed to be used on campus at US universities with students. N. Jeanne Burns at http://quakerclass.blogspot.com/ transformed this experience, with our permission, into an Internet experience where participants were invited to copy the list and highlight the privileges that they had. Quite quickly this became called the “privilege meme” and “What privilege to do you have” and was copied and commented on widely.

Most of the postings were on individual blogs, and the commentary became interesting. While most of the comments were positive, some were quite negative. The negative comments typically centered on specific privilege items noting that those items were not valid markers of class in the writer’s experience. This is akin to assuming that you know something about public K-12 education because you went to public school. This is also akin to asserting that an entire test is invalid because you don’t think one question is fair. The personal perspective on class is important, but it is not representative of any larger population. One clear response to the privilege meme in other English speaking nations was that the items reflected a US model of class for contemporary students. This was quite true. Just as class is an individual experience, that experience is embedded in a culture and a time.

Our goal in developing these experiences was to have participants increase their awareness of social class on campus and we had hoped that the discussion after the experience would help participants to learn a wider view of social class and learn from other students’ experiences.

Kathleen Mullins - The Experiences of First Generation, Working Class Graduate Students

2008-03-04T11:38:00.000-08:00

The Experiences of First Generation, Working Class Graduate Students

Kathleen Mullins

Front Range Community College

March, 2008

The literature abounds with statistics and stories about the challenges college students face when they are the first person in their family to access higher education. Researchers have called attention to the multiple identities inherent in first generation status and to the significant cultural transitions and resulting marginality that first generation undergraduate students often experience (London, 1992; Orbe, 2004; Terenzini et al., 1994). Student affairs professionals have responded by creating high school-to-college bridge programs, academic interventions, and mentoring projects designed to support first generation undergraduate students and to ameliorate their disadvantages. In spite of these efforts, and even when controlling for other persistence and attainment factors, first generation undergraduate students are more likely than legacy students, those whose parents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, to leave college without a degree; 45 percent of first generation undergraduate students drop out compared to 29 percent of legacy students (U. S. Department of Education, 2001). Even though a significant number of first generation undergraduate students do persevere and obtain postsecondary degrees, they are again underrepresented at the graduate level (only 25% of first generation students will begin a graduate program) where fewer resources exist to help them with the continuing challenge of navigating cultural transitions and addressing issues of marginalization based on socioeconomic class.

In spite of the abundance of information on the experiences of first generation college students during their undergraduate years, very little research has been done on the experiences of these students when they enroll in graduate programs. However, a wealth of first-person narratives provides a look into the personal and professional lives of academics, both graduate students and professors, who are first generation college students. Much of this work focuses on issues of socioeconomic status, particularly working class status, (Dews & Law, 1995; Linkon, 1999; Rose, 1989; Ryan & Sackrey, 1984) and incorporates the voices of people of a wide variety of races, ethnicities, genders, abilities, sexual orientations, political beliefs, and religious practices. Present in many of these narratives are stories of cultural transitions and marginality that increase in complexity as the student’s level of academic study becomes further removed from his or her family’s educational experiences. By supplementing the research about first generation undergraduates with these poignant narratives of working class, first generation graduate students and academics, the importance of providing ongoing student affairs support for these students becomes clear.

In 2005, I conducted an applied research project as a requirement for my graduate program in Student Affairs Administration in Higher Education at Western Washington University (WWU). My qualitative study examined the experiences of nine students in Master’s programs at WWU who were the first person in their families to go to college. (The student narrators were between the ages of 24 and 42; five were men, four were women; seven identified as White or Caucasian, one as American Indian, and one as biracial.) My interest in this topic was grounded in my own experience as a first generation college students and my first graduate school experience in the mid-1990s when I was completing a Masters degree in English Studies. At the time, I had no name for the phenomenon, but I was consciously struggling to cross an ever-increasing cultural chasm between myself and my family and friends, and I sometimes felt out-of-place in the rarified academic environment where my fellow students seemed so comfortable. I found many of my personal experiences validated and reflected in the research and first-person narratives about first generation college students.

After reviewing the literature and conducting one-on-one, in depth interviews with my student narrators, I came to believe that the issues of cultural transitions and marginality do not disappear when students finish their undergraduate programs. It seemed logical to me that the dissonance and challenge may, in fact, increase with each progressive foray into higher education. I do, however, agree with Orbe (2004) that some first generation students have enough familial “cultural capital” (Bourdieu, 1977) to lessen the impact of transitions and marginalization. For example, first generation students who have the cultural capital of being white, male, traditionally aged, and/or middle- and upper-class may have more advantages than other first generation students.

As student affairs professionals, we know that first generation college students are underrepresented in graduate programs. We also know from our experiences with first generation undergraduates that college requires students to navigate cultural transitions and address marginalization. If student affairs professionals want to encourage the persistence and nurture the resilience of first generation graduate students, particularly first generation, working class graduate students, we will need to listen and respond effectively to their stories. Borrego (2003) reminds student affairs professionals that we have the ability and responsibility to “help students tap their unique class position as a source of power” (p. 7). This power is not only a source of strength for students in their individual educational pursuits, but it is also an important contribution to the academic learning community.

Resiliency Factors

Student affairs professionals who are interested in supporting the success of first generation undergraduate students can learn a great deal from students in Masters degree programs who are the first person in their family to graduate from college. These students are higher education success stories in many ways. They have defied the statistical odds not only to persevere to earn a bachelor’s degree, but also to join the ranks of the academic elite: scholars in pursuit of graduate degrees. The students I spoke with shared several factors that contributed to their educational resiliency: attending schools that offered Advanced Placement (AP) classes, challenging curriculums, an affluent parent population, and teachers who expected all students to go to college. One narrator in my study attributed his decision to go to college to a family relocation. He said,

“We moved into a rich area… we were a lower, maybe lower middle-class, blue collar family, and we’re surrounded by white collar upper-class people, and I think I really was influenced, maybe not right away, but by junior high definitely I would have said college was in the picture and then in high school it is was sort of assumed. You have to go. If you want to make something of your life, you have to go to college.”

In addition to the resiliency factors that came from quality K-12 education, the majority of the first generation graduate students I interviewed benefitted from a tremendous amount of emotional support from at least one parent. However, this support is general, not specific. These are not the highly pressured offspring of the middle- and upper-middle class. For the most part, parents of these students are proud of their accomplishments and pleased with their abilities, but they do not push their children to succeed academically. The support these students described is more akin to encouragement than coaching. Parents of first generation students who successfully navigate the narrowing pathway to the highest levels of higher education are fans in the bleachers rather than coaches signaling from third base. While the narrators often desired what parent-coaches have to offer, they were grateful for the encouragement and emotional support their parents provided. As one student said,

“They left it all on me. Everything was on me. I was in charge of my own destiny, and they pretty much said, ‘Do what you can do…and we’ll support you as we can’.” Another narrator put it this way: “I didn’t know how to play the game. My parents didn’t know how to play the game. So it wasn’t that they weren’t supportive, but they just had no real practical support to offer.”

Having a strong work ethic was a third resiliency factor that my research participants shared. One student said,

“I don’t know if that has to do with class… but I think it’s just a result of your upbringing. That’s kind of how I was trained. I transferred how my father works into how I work in class…”

Other resiliency factors included: aptitude for academic work/love of learning, desire to serve others, ability to balance passion and practicality (over and over, I heard, “You have to have a plan!”), interest in upward mobility, and financial resources above and beyond their family’s regular income. Additionally, many students started at community colleges, and one was able to participate in the federal McNair Scholars program as an undergraduate.

What I find noteworthy about these first generation, working class graduate students is their willingness to “go it alone.” Strong familial support and academic preparedness is central to many of their stories, but what their narratives ultimately reveal is an intense desire to persevere in their studies in spite of a lack of understanding from their loved ones and the potential loneliness that can come from being the “first in line.” Being the first person to do something implies privilege and opportunity. Being first often is related to being exceptional. Standing at the front of the line involves the responsibility of being an example and role model. It also evokes the excitement—and anxiety—of being first.

A-Ha Moment

As I have shared this research with others, I hear a constant refrain of “This is my story!” accompanied by gratitude, hugs, tears, or a plea to share our story with others. When I asked my narrators what they would take away from our conversation, many of them indicated that this was the first time they had ever consciously examined the issues of first generation status and social class. One narrator said,

“I think just talking about it makes me realize just how much this has influenced my life. Whereas before, it was just sort of ‘this is who I am.’ I didn’t think that there was anything special about it. …And to think that there are other people out there like me, going through what I’m going through, is a whole new perspective.”

A future counselor compared it to presenting a client with a diagnosis. She said,

“I think you just making the comment that there are people out that have shared this experience is really different. And, I mean, working in mental health, it’s incredible when you give… when you present a diagnosis to somebody and they go, ‘Oh, my gosh. That’s why I’ve been this way? My life makes so much more sense now.’ That’s kind of how it feels. This really has had an influence on my life.” In the course of an hour and a half conversation, these students came away saying “…it’s not just me.”

One student said,

“Wow. It is surprising. I guess I’ve always felt like that was just my life. That’s just how it is. I never really thought that there were other people that were going through that ever. That’s really interesting.”

Cultural Transitions

Like most graduate students, the narrators for my study shared a passion for learning and a great enthusiasm for their subjects. They enjoyed discussing big ideas and theoretical concepts. Ironically, what they loved resulted in an often unwanted distance from the family members who have encouraged them to attend college. The biggest cultural transition facing many of the narrators in this study was bringing their graduate student identity home. For some, bringing their graduate student identity home simply didn’t happen. However, several of the narrators—who made it clear that they valued the support and respected the intelligence of their family members—expressed disappointment about no longer being able to talk with their parents or other family members about issues or ideas that are important to them.

Not being able to talk with family members about their academic studies or intellectual ideas was both a disappointment and a relief for students. Some viewed being with family members as a “vacation” from academia; others experienced it as a loss to, as one student described, “eclipse” their family members. Another narrator explained it this way:

“…you go to school, you love learning, you go home, and there’s only…certain people that you can talk to about your learning… My mom would listen and she would be like, ‘Oh, that’s great,’ but she wouldn’t really care to the same degree that you [interviewer] care. …Yeah. We [narrator & a hypothetical classmate] both care so much about teaching or your content area that you’re going to talk about WWII and you’re both excited about it. And you can talk about all the different concepts… You wouldn’t even think to mention that to certain people in your family.”

Marginality

It is probably safe to say that graduate students, in general, are fairly comfortable with their academic abilities after having highly successful academic experiences as undergraduates. The narrators in this study did not express anxiety about competency or competitiveness; they seemed secure in their academic performance. Yet several narrators described a discomfort with academic discourse and the culture of academia that they struggled to overcome, and other narrators shared stories of marginalization based on socioeconomic class. One future teacher said,

“For me to be articulate, and for me to sound like I know what I’m talking about, I have to think about things a lot. Get in that mind set.” Later, he went on to say, “Sometimes I think I am quiet because, maybe especially during some conversations, I feel like kind of an alien in academia.”

This sense that academia is an “alien” culture is not unique to this student. Chaffee (1992), Rendón (1992), and Rose (1989) have also used this same descriptor to explain what higher education feels like to students from lower socioeconomic classes. Some students, while keenly aware of these differences, enjoy their marginal status and choose to keep academia at arms length. For example, a student studying history said,

“A part of me doesn’t want to become like one of those intellectuals that sits around in a black shirt and condescends to everybody and sees negativity in everything because it’s all worthless, be pervaded by cynicism because you know so much…I’d like to be able to learn about it and be in control rather than becoming part of the intellectual system, I suppose. Does that make any sense?... I want to get inside, but I don’t want to be consumed by them.”

Still, in spite of the occasional rebellious attitude, most students still experienced the marginalization that results from the invisibility of class on college campuses. A male student described a classroom interaction with a professor by saying,

“This little voice in the back of my head said, ‘You just described the vast majority of my entire family, and you just described them as beer-swilling, Republican-voting hicks.’ I didn’t say anything. I just kind of sat there. I mean, what was I going to say to that? And… that, I mean, that bothered me. I mean, it still does.”

It is because of incidents like this that some students may feel uncomfortable continuing on to the doctoral programs that lead to work inside academia. (This was not as true for the students who were pursuing professional, terminal degrees in teaching or counseling.) The student who described the classroom experience above went on to pose this question:

“It’s like, is this [Masters program] the final weed out? Obviously on some levels it is, but why… it just struck me, why don’t a number of us go the extra step? … It’s not that we aren’t capable. It’s just there’s something there that we don’t want to go farther…. It’s something that I’m starting to wrestle with, too. ‘Why don’t you want to do this? Are you afraid of doing this? Or you just don’t want to be like those people’?”

It is interesting to note that this marginalization was, according to the narrators, unique to their graduate school experience. Graduate school is designed to provide students with a taste of scholarly life and an introduction to the academic community. Faculty who see clear distinctions between themselves and undergraduates may have less rigid boundaries with graduate students. Indeed, they may perceive graduate students, even those in Masters programs, as future colleagues. Some may expect that all graduate students are—or should be—comfortable with academic discourse, academic culture, and the habits of a particular socioeconomic class. Often, however, these expectations do not match the experiences of first generation students. This clearly has implications for diversifying our faculty ranks and the academy as a whole.

Limitations

Since this was a pilot study conducted by a graduate student, serious limitations exist that influence the impact of my findings. Chief among them are the small sample size, the geographic and institutional specificity, and the relative lack of diversity (particularly students in different degree programs and students with multiple racial, cultural, and socioeconomic identities).

Conclusion

While the student affairs profession ostensibly focuses on the growth and development of all students, it is often the undergraduate experience that garners most of its attention. Colleges and universities that want to encourage the persistence of first generation, working class students in graduate programs will need to do more than usher undergraduates in the front door. Student affairs professionals will need to understand the experiences of these students, provide appropriate and effective services, and work with faculty to help them provide support at the departmental and graduate school levels. These interventions need to focus on enhancing the strengths of first generation, working class graduate students and acknowledging and celebrating the cultural and socioeconomic class richness that they bring to the university.

References

Borrego, S. (2003). Class matters: Beyond access to inclusion. Washington, DC: National Association of Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In J. Karabel & G. H. Halsey (Eds.), Power and ideology in education (pp. 487-511). New York: Oxford Press.

Chaffee, J. (1992). Transforming educational dreams into educational reality. In L. S. Zwerling & H. B. London (Eds.), First-generation students: Confronting the cultural issues, New Directions for Community Colleges, no. 80 (pp. 81-88). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Dews, C. L. B., & Law, C. L. (Eds.). (1995). This fine place so far from home: Voices of academics from the working class. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Linkon, S. L. (Ed.). (1999). Teaching working class. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

London, H. B. (1992). Transformations: Cultural challenges faced by first-generation students. In L. S. Zwerling & H. B. London (Eds.), First-generation students: Confronting the cultural issues, New Directions for Community Colleges, no. 80 (pp. 5-11). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Orbe, M. P. (2004). Negotiating multiple identities within multiple frames: An analysis of first-generation college students. Communication Education, 53(2), 131-149.

Rendón, L. I. (1992). From the barrio to the academy: Revelations of a Mexican American “scholarship girl.” In L. S. Zwerling & H. B. London (Eds.), First-generation students: Confronting the cultural issues, New Directions for Community Colleges, no. 80 (pp. 55-64). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Rendón, L. (1996, November-December). Life on the border. About Campus, 14-20.

Rose, M. (1989). Lives on the boundary: A moving account of the struggles and achievements of America’s educational underclass. New York: Penguin Books.

Ryan, J., & Sackrey, C. (Eds.). (1984). Strangers in paradise: Academics from the working class. Boston: South End Press.

Terenzini, P. T., Rendón, L. I., Upcraft, M. L., Millar, S. B., Allison, K. W., Gregg, P. L, et al. (1994). The transition to college: Diverse students, diverse stories. Research in Higher Education, 35(1), 57-73.

U. S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2001). Students whose parents did not go to college: Postsecondary access, persistence, and attainment (NCES 2001-126, by Susan Choy). Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office.

Part 2 - Class Myths

2008-02-20T18:50:00.000-08:00

Class myths

People are regularly challenged on their personal points of view about gender and ethnicity and challenges about class are quite rare. Peggy McIntosh’s (1988) White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack list is a classic personal point of view challenge for ethnicity and gender. The recent movie Crash (Haggis, 2004) is typically seen as a movie about ethnicity and when seen through a class lens takes on an entirely new dimension. Personal challenges about class happen rarely, and can be quite powerful.

Barratt, Lurker, Cahill, Carlen, Huck, Lurker and Ploskonka (2006) developed an experience called Take a step forward designed to increase college students’ awareness of privilege as a way to stimulate discussion about class. The experience was a list of 36 statements indicative of privilege within the US majority culture and based on published research. N. Jeanne Burns (2007) posted a web based version of this experience on her blog with the authors’ permission. Burns’ blog posting asked people to highlight the statements that were true of them. Within two months this experience was being called the privilege meme as people sent it to their friends and the number of people posting it in the blogsphere expanded dramatically. The original authors were prompted to create an updated version (Barratt W. , Cahill, Carlen, Huck, Lurker, & Plosknoka, 2008).

Reactions to this experience on blogs ranged from dismissive (Scalzi, 2008) (McArdle, 2008) to reflective (Van Galen, 2008). Some bloggers hated the meme and the idea of privilege, like Scalzi, and most people who participated in the privilege meme experience and subsequent discussion found it useful. After reading numerous blogs and comments the theme appeared that this experience was the first time many people had confronted their own points of view on privilege and class.

Cheryl Cline (N.D.) lists 25 things you hear when you try to talk about class on her web site. Seven of these statements are included here because they reflect some common myths about class, common attitudes toward class, and personal points of view that can be seen as individual or political.

Class doesn’t exist in the USA.

This myth is the classic denial of class. No matter what model anyone uses for class there are dramatic differences between US Americans in income, education, occupational prestige, cultural capital, social capital, speech, dress, accessories, beverage preference, and even comedy preferences. Constant effort and a sheltered life are required not to see class in the US. Denying class allows individuals avoid dealing with class, class based issues, and their role in a classed society.

Ignorance of class can come from a lack of exposure to differences. People in sheltered lives who only go to school, go to work, shop, and play with people like them may find it easy to deny class. Their encounter with class may be minimal if they only read magazines and see media that reflect people like them. Cross (1995) is clear in expressing that encounter is the first stage on the road to awareness and change.

Ignorance of class can come from continued exposure to the denial of class, much like the racist and sexist statements that perpetuate racism and sexism. Challenging this myth and making class a foreground issue (Van Galen, 2000) is an important part of social justice work and celebrating diversity.

We are all middle class anyway.

This point of view recognizes the existence of class while simultaneously denying differences. Even the media perpetuates this myth by referring to the growing middle class. Zweig (2000) and Van Galen (2000) define working class in terms of work autonomy, making the point that the vast majority of the working public have very little work autonomy, which makes them working class. On the other end, the upper 20% in income are typically labeled as upper-middle class. By naming the upper class, the upper 20% in family income, as the upper middle class the upper class conveniently disappears, becoming some variety of middle class, but somehow slightly better.

By embracing the notion that everyone is the same we get to deny important differences. “Why can’t we all get along?” and “Doesn’t all this talk about diversity lead to divisiveness?” are both corollaries to this myth. This class unifying point of view minimizes the very real differences in US Americans and creates a fictional giant middle class that can become a political, social, or religious force because of the manufactured homogeneity of the group.

The working class is disappearing.

This recognizes class, and recognizes the differences between classes, but hopes for the world where we are all becoming one class, at least in the US. This myth reflects an out of date world view when work and physical labor were the same. Traditional working class jobs have disappeared in the US as manufacturing labor has moved to where the wages are low. The reality is that laboring class in the US is disappearing as a function of the global labor economy. The actual work of the working class has moved from labor to service jobs. These jobs have traditional working class characteristics such as low wages, minimal work autonomy, and little or no supervision over others. Members of the modern working class now dress in more prestigious clothing that reflects a different kind of work.

This disappearing working class belief reflects the idea that President Johnson’s War on Poverty was victorious, asserting that welfare, education, and other social programs were successful and we are consequently all middle class leaving poverty behind as a problem. Suggesting that the 20% of US American families who make under $20,035 are no longer working class is patently absurd.

Once you get a degree you are no longer working class.

There is a wonderful image of a Madame Alexander doll in a graduation cap and gown. She is still a Madame Alexander. This myth of class recognizes the existence and even the ubiquitous nature of class while believing that class mobility is as simple as graduation. Her change in clothing, and the implied change in her status, does not change her identity.

This myth casts class as something external to the individual and does not recognize the very real changes that class shift engenders in personal identity and relationships. Classic views of class taught in school rooms come from a sociological perspective which uses class to classify groups of people. The idea of someone having an internal and individual social class that is part of their identity and culture gets ignored when class is seen as a group classification or class is seen as something changeable on getting a diploma. When class is seen as a group classification then the group and not the individual becomes the focus.

Education is the key to upward mobility.

The best propaganda campaign is misinformation, which is providing information that appears to be true and is something that people want to believe. Education is certainly the key to upward mobility, sort of. This is a pernicious myth because it is partly true. The recent U.S. Department of Education Report A test of leadership: Changing the future of U.S. higher education (U.S. Department of Education, 2006) that was orchestrated by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and Charles Miller (Zemsky, 2007) repeats the idea that education is the key to upward mobility. One of the cornerstones of the report is the idea of access to post-secondary education, rising college costs, and shrinking financial aid are seen as one impediment to increased access. The report ignores the fact that even with rising college costs enrollments continue to rise. However this may only reflect US American’s willingness to assume debt to attend college.

Legions of individuals can be counted on to provide evidence for this myth. Education is the key to upward mobility for many. It’s just not that simple however. The lower prestige occupations like teaching and nursing are filled with people who were first generation students, whose parents did not have a college degree or even go to college. While first generation students become physicians, attorneys, and college professors the reality is that education helps people up the ladder of occupational prestige one rung at a time.

Education is not working for many people. It is not their key to upward mobility. These people didn’t go to college, they weren’t a success, and they didn’t a get newspaper feature on overcoming hardship. US American’s have a high school graduation rate between 75% and 85% depending on which study you read. The reality is that public high schools are failing to educate students to the level of graduation. As you might imagine the students who do not graduate are typically among the poor, so it would appear on the face that public schools are in the business of preventing the upward mobility of poor students. There is a strong relationship between school level poverty and graduation rates.

Viewing education as a commodity creates a more disturbing reality. Like any product education can be divided into luxury goods, mass market goods, and discount goods. Selective high prestige colleges are the college luxury goods. The competition for admission to these colleges is fierce among the upper 20% of US Americans who are accustomed to purchasing the luxury goods they can afford. Parents get upset when their average child cannot meet the high academic criteria for admission to highly selective colleges, even though the parent can afford the high cost of tuition. Mass market colleges are where most students go and where the cost is moderate. While the preponderance of mass market colleges are public institutions there are many private schools in this category. A cursory examination of college web sites and printed material will reveal which market segment the admissions material targets. Discount goods provide great value for price but are low prestige. In the US today our community college system seems to be marketing itself on the basis of cost for value.

College is open to anyone who wants to work hard.

Access to college and the transition from high school to college are significant social issue but are rarely tied to issues of class. While 50% of US adults over 25 have no college experience and only 25% of the college population has parents with no college experience. Children of college graduates are far more likely to do well in schools, go to college, and graduate (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2005) than children from families with no parental college experience.

Assuming that intelligence is distributed randomly in a population leads to an interesting question. If the children from wealthy families are no more intelligent than the children from poor families why is it that children from poor families do worse in school, in general, than children from wealthy families? We can attribute their lack of success to individual effort – that the children from poor families don’t work as hard, have bad parents, and have home environments that don’t support learning – or should we be asking about the interaction between the children from poor families and teachers.

Myth and reality

The truth of class is much more complex than the myths about class. It is easier to blame poor people for their lot in life, lack of education, money, resources, and manners than it is to understand the underlying systems of class that perpetuate this situation. Children in schools rise to the level of their parents’ education, which means that the playing field is not level, that some children have a head start and get help along the way and others get barriers put up to their academic and financial success.

References

Barratt, W., Cahill, M., Carlen, A., Huck, M., Lurker, D., & Plosknoka, S. (2008). Step into social class 2.0. Retrieved Feburary 19, 2008, from http://wbarratt.indstate.edu/socialclass/step_into_social_class_2.htm

Barratt, W., Cahill, M., Carlen, A., Huck, M., Lurker, D., & Ploskonka, S. (2006). Take a step forward. Terre Haute, IN: Authors.

Burns, N. J. (2007, November 2). What privilege do you have. Retrieved February 19, 2008, from Social class & Quakers: http://quakerclass.blogspot.com/2007/11/what-privilege-do-you-have.html

Cline, C. (N.D.). Payday. Retrieved February 18, 2008, from 25 things you will hear if you try to talk about class: http://steamiron.com/payday

Cross, W. E. (1995). The psychology of nigrescence: Revising the Cross model. In J. G. Ponterotto, J. M. Casas, L. A. Suzuki, & C. M. Alexander, Handbook of multicultural counseling (pp. 93-122). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Haggis, P. (Director). (2004). Crash [Motion Picture].

McArdle, M. (2008, January 7). TheAtlantic.com. Retrieved February 19, 2008, from Megan McArdle Asymmetrical Information: http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/01/the_pword.php

McIntosh, P. (1988). White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women's studies. Wellesley, MA: Author.

National Center for Educational Statistics. (2005). First-generation students in postsecondary education: A look at their college transcripts. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

Scalzi, J. (2008, January 3). Point of privilege. Retrieved February 19, 2008 , from Whatever: http://wbarratt.indstate.edu/socialclass/step_into_social_class_2.htm

U.S. Department of Education. (2006). A test of leadership: Charting the future of U.D. Higher Educaiton. Washington, DC: U.D. Department of Education.

Van Galen, J. (2008, February 13). Class, Race, and Privilege. Retrieved February 19, 2008, from Education and Class: http://educationandclass.com/2008/02/

Van Galen, J. (2000). Education & Class. Multicultural Education , 7 (3), 2-11.

Zemsky, R. (2007, January 26). The rise and fall of the Spellings Commission. The Chronicle Review , p. B6.

Zweig, M. (2000). The working class majority: America's best kept secret. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Part 1 - Introduction to social class

2008-02-17T13:56:00.000-08:00

I am putting together a manuscript for eventual publication and thought that I would begin by posting it to my very quiet blog. As the "privilege meme" took off and the conversation turned out to be quite interesting, after the initial hate mail, I have a new understanding that the blogsphere is a new marketplace of ideas.

Introduction to Social Class

Talking about social class makes people nervous. Milton Bennett’s (1998) model is a useful tool to deconstruct conversations about class. Many people are in the denial stage about class “We really don’t have class in the US”, they are unaware of the important cultural and personal differences that class apprehends. Others are in the defense stage about class and have a negative attitude about the classes above them or below them “They’re poor because they don’t work hard, and those rich snobs think they’re better than the rest of us.” Still others repeat the myth “Well, we’re all really middle class anyway” minimizing and belittling real class differences. Personal reactions to differences depend on many things, and Bennett’s Intercultural Sensitivity model is one among many useful tools for self examination when class comes up in conversation.

Many people learned in school that class is about money, which is the same as saying that ethnicity is about skin color. Money is part of class and skin color is part of ethnicity. The sticky idea here, the sound bite, is that social class is more than rich and poor. Most models of class are useful in certain ways and inadequate in other ways. The trick is to figure out which tool works best for what you need to do.

How we see class is important. If we see class as about money then we will identify money problems within class and pursue money related solutions to these problems. If we see class as external to the individual, then our understanding of class, the problems we see, and the solutions we promote will reflect this idea that class is external to the individual. If we see class as internal to the individual, then the problems we see, and the solutions we promote will reflect this view of class. If we see class from multiple perspectives, from a more complicated view, the our understanding of the problems of class will be richer, the problems we see will be more complete, and the solutions we promote will be more broad based. Class is more than rich and poor.

The reality of class

Class as income. The reality of class depends on how we describe class. The simplest answer is that class is about money, and money is income. There are huge disparities in US American’s income. While income certainly is a one way to score wealth, is a trucker who makes $80,000 truly upper middle class? Income tables from the US Census Bureau in 2006 (2006) indicate that in 2006 dollars

5% of US American Families make more than $174,102

20% of US American Families make more than $97,032

40% of US American Families make more than $60,000

60% of US American Families make more than $37,774

80% of US American Families make more than $20,035

Class as wealth. Wealth is accumulated economic assets and income is potential wealth. In the contemporary US only a small percent of the population has any wealth at all. Most people owe more money than they have. Mortgages, car loans, credit card debt, school loans are all balanced against savings and retirement dollars. Class as wealth is useful when making distinction among the wealthy, but most people have no wealth.

Class as capital. While Marx (Marx, 1885) used economic capital as one analytic tool to examine class others like Bourdieu (1986) in Forms of Capital suggested that class should also include social capital and cultural capital. Other forms of capital, such as academic capital, have been used to examine the role of class on campus. Social capital is one criteria used by the World Bank in examining loans.

Class as education. August Hollingshead (Hollingshead, 1957) (Hollingshead, 1975) developed the Two factor model of social position and later the Four factor model of social status to help his research. These measures looked at educational attainment and occupational prestige and both are related to income. According to the US Census Bureau (2006) in 2006 of adults over 25

1% have a Doctoral Degree

1 % have Professional Degree

6% have completed a Master’s Degree

28% have completed a Bachelor’s Degree

86% have attained a High School diploma

It must also be noted that 50% of the students at community colleges are “first generation students” whose parents have no experience on any campus, just like the national average. However, only 27% of students at four year colleges are first generation students (National Center for Educational Statistics, 1998).

Class as prestige. Prestige is an obvious marker of what is better in US American culture. Higher prestige colleges are considered better colleges. Higher prestige English dialects and varieties are considered better English. Higher prestige clothing, purses, and accessories are considered better. Higher prestige beer is considered better. When higher prestige is put to the test it is not often better. While most people think of class as money, most people behave as if class is prestige.

Class as occupation. Hollingshead’s social status measure (1957) (1975) examined occupational prestige as one marker of class. In US America occupation is very important as a status marker. The most recent examination of occupational prestige comes from Davis, Smith, Hodge, Nakao, and Treas (1991) and provides an overview of what the US American people believe about occupation and prestige.

Class as culture. Social class is a collection of subcultures arranged in a hierarchy of prestige. (Barratt, 2005). Class can be seen as cultures that have shared values, rituals, beliefs, and even language. When class is seen as culture then all of the tools of ethnicity come into play. The only problem is that ethnicities are often seen as equal, which neglects the inherent inequality of class.

Class as identity. Contemporary US America has been called an identity society. We all develop a gender, ethnic, and class identity at an early age as we go through a process of identification and differentiation. Gender and ethnic identity does not change for most people, and in a society without class movement class identity does not change. However we know that class movement is a fact of life for many, both rising in class and falling in class. This dynamic gives rise to the idea that we all have a social class of origin, a current felt social class, and an attributed social class; where we came from, what we think of ourselves, and what others think of us. As a first generation student moves up in social class a mismatch between their class identities arises. It should not go without notice that this can engender internal conflict.

Class as a system. The fundamental interconnectedness, the multicausality and the equifinality of the elements of class make systems theory an effective tool for working with class. When seen through the lens of class and systems institutions like banks and schools take on a different image. One consequence of the work of these institutions is the recreation and reproduction of class (Bourdieu, 1986). When education is seen as a commodity then it is possible to see luxury goods, mass market items, and discount items that reflect social classes, prestige, and admissions requirements.

Social Class on Campus

Using Strange and Banning’s (Strange & Banning, 2001) model each campus has a social class environment that has coevolved with the campus human aggregate, physical campus, organizational environment, and the constructed campus. Average SAT scores, admissions selectivity, students’ dress, cars, language, and even disposable income are all markers for the campus social class human aggregate. Similarly, the campus physical plant reflects the campus social class environment, with high prestige campuses having more prestigious architectural and physical features. Campus organization reflects stakeholder needs and higher social class students will have different needs than lower social class students. Consequently the campus organization will be different. The constructed social class environment, seen in the light of social class as a social construct, reinforces the collective beliefs of the campus members.

College is a middle classing experience for first generation and lower social class students. The college experience is an opportunity where students can learn the attitudes, values, and behaviors like the speech and dress patterns typical of a higher social class. Disparity between student social class of origin and campus social class environment is no doubt a source of student campus mismatch (Terenzini, Springer, Yaeger, Pascarella, & Nora, 1996) (Pascarella, Wolniak, Pierson, & Terenzini, 2003) (Pascarella, Pierson, Wolniak, & Terenzini, 2004).

The model, or metaphor, that we use for class determines what we do. How we think about class determines how we act about class. If class is seen as a sociological or group phenomenon then our work with class will be with groups and not with individuals. If class is seen as economic, then our work with class will be economic. If class is seen as cultural then our work with class will be about culture. Having multiple models, being multiparadigmatic, will enable multiple interventions.

References

Barratt, W. (2005). Socio Economic Status: The inequitable campus. American College Personnel Association Annual Meeting. Nashville, TN.

Bennett, M. (1998). Intercultral communication: A current perspective. . In M. Bennett, Basic concepts of intercultural communication (pp. 1-34). Boston: Intercultural Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson, Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. New York: Greenwood Press.

Davis, J., Smith, T., Hodge, R., Nakao, K., & Treas, J. (1991). Occupational presitge ratings from the 1989 general social survey. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.

Hollingshead, A. B. (1975). Four factor index of social status. New Haven, CT: Unpublished manuscript. Department of Sociology, Yale University.

Hollingshead, A. B. (1957). Two factor index of social position. New Haven, CT: Unpublished manuscript. Department of Sociology, Yale University.

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More to come