Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America

by Barbara Jensen

The number of millionaires doubled between 1986 and 2006, and the number of billionaires increased from thirteen to perhaps a thousand, while the net worth of everyone else fell by 15 to 20 percent in order to fund this redistribution of wealth (Frank 2007; Zweig, quoted in Yates 2007). Only the upper middle class kept its previous value (while net worth in the upper class skyrocketed by over 70%). In these decades, the “power” 1980s and ’90s, with its celebrity CEOs, as in the Gilded Age of robber barons in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, being a winner did not necessarily bring a sense of responsibility toward others less fortunate. Then, as now, this inflation of the upper class eventually led to joblessness and financial devastation for the rest of the population, working class and middle class folks alike. Cultural classism sees these socioeconomic winners as crass and vulgar; moral classism sees them as selfish because they do not necessarily feel the need to give back to society. But, as Lamont pointed out, people who fall into this group strive for a comfort level in material things that is clearly valued across classes.