The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity

by Kwame Anthony Appiah

To speak of the upper classes or of the lower classes is to invoke a system in which the latter are supposed to owe a kind of social deference to the former; and to speak of the middle classes is to imagine them as placed between these two, looking down, like the upper classes, toward the lower; looking up, like the lower classes, toward the upper. A class system inevitably involves elements of hierarchy, in which relations among classes are asymmetrical. This does not mean that people higher up the hierarchy are free to treat those below in any way they like: there are forms of respect that, so to speak, look downward as well as upward. But in general, there will be a pattern in which those in the higher ranks of a system of status—those with higher standing—receive deference from those of lower status, and can expect their needs and interests to receive more weight as well.