Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America

by Barbara Jensen

Classism in America is based on the assumption of the superiority of middle (and upper) class styles, tastes, attitudes, and values. Everyone is taught in school which ones are the “good” manners, “proper” English, the “good” schools, the “best” occupations. Everyone sees the movies and other media telling which are the “normal” people. The assumption that professional and managerial advancement is the measure of human worth is hammered at all of us from virtually every major social institution. Classism delivers its harsh judgments on working class styles, values, and behaviors. These features are seen as having “no class,” or being subnormal, by middle class people, but they are really threads in a larger fabric of working class culture. Classism has been the single most destructive psychological factor in my process of crossing, then straddling, classes. At the heart of the invisible passage from one world to another is the assumption, everywhere in the middle class, that working class life is simply inferior in all ways. This is classism. Classism is psychologically destructive to people because, once internalized, it can result in a profoundly divided self, the loss of life-long family and community ties, and/or a confusing present where one feels “nowhere at home” (Ryan and Sackrey 1996).