Felice Yeskel, Ed.D, and Jennifer Ladd, Ed.D, are founders and co-directors of Class Action, a national organization working to bridge the class divide. Yeskel is co-author of Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Growing Inequality and Insecurity. See their web site www.classism.org for more information and links to the two series described in this article.
In the last month, two of our country’s most elite newspapers published a series of unprecedented articles about social class in America. On May 13, 2005, The Wall Street Journal published part one of “Moving Up: The Challenges to the American Dream”, a series chronicling declining mobility and opportunity in the United States. Two days later, The New York Times began their “Class Matters” series, declaring “class is still a powerful force in American life.” The month-long series examined class disparities in marriage, educational opportunities, religious life and comparative immigration experiences. Although these articles address an often-taboo subject, they overlook a crucial element: potential ways to remedy the flaws in the current system.
In a journalistic tour de force, the second Times article chronicled three New York City residents who suffered heart attacks within several weeks of one another. The health and longevity prognosis for each of them varies widely and is largely dictated by their class differences: working poor, middle class and wealthy.
In our boundless tell-all culture, there is no word or concept that is more off-limits than "class." As a society, we have, over the course of several generations, developed a common language to talk about differences of gender, race and sexual orientation. Newspapers and TV interview shows explore every aspect of American life through the lens of cultural diversity, such as aging, disability and mental illness. Almost everything…but class.
These high-profile newspaper series sound a cultural and economic policy alarm bell. One assertion is that inequality matters. In the last three decades, we’ve become a vastly more unequal society. The rungs of the ladder of opportunity are weakening, threatening our national self-image as a meritocracy based on opportunity. Three years ago, British commentator Will Hutton observed:
U.S. society is polarizing and its social arteries are hardening. The sumptuousness and bleakness of the respective lifestyle of the rich and poor represent a scale of difference in opportunity and wealth that is almost medieval—and a standing offence to the American expectation that everyone has the opportunity for life, liberty, and happiness.
Many progressives have long argued that trends of inequality are bad for the economy, our democracy and culture. But many conservatives and some liberals, while uncomfortable with the accelerating income and wealth gap of the last three decades, believe that inequality is the price we pay to maintain a dynamic, growing and opportunity-creating society. As long as there is mobility, they argue, we should tolerate high levels of inequality. Indeed, our culture celebrates the rising number of millionaires and billionaires as a harbinger of broader prosperity.
But if mobility has stalled, and one’s opportunity is tied increasingly to inherited status, then the defense of inequality vanishes. Too much inequality in a nation can lead to restricted opportunities.
It is unlikely that either newspaper series will address ways in which the advantaged can use their money and power to rewrite the rules of the game, contributing to the erosion of opportunity. Tax cuts lead to budget cuts, forcing many states to cut education spending and financial aid for higher education. At a time when moving up the economic ladder is closely tied to attending a four-year college program, the opportunity becomes farther out of reach for poor and working-class young adults. Meanwhile, elected officials are reluctant to pass legislation or make the educational investments that contribute to a level playing field. So as we hardwire inequality into the rules of the economy, tackling our collective misunderstanding about class becomes all the more important.
One remarkable finding in the first Times article is the glaring disparity between the public perception of mobility in American and the reality. Americans overwhelmingly believe that we live in a mobile society. Half of those polled believe they have a chance to become financially wealthy. But data now shows that the United States has less mobility than the countries of Europe, which are often thought to have rigid class and caste systems.
Unfortunately, the Times also perpetuates this misunderstanding. In discussing class mobility, the newspaper uncritically cites the bootstrap boosterism of Forbes magazine, reporting that only 37 members of Forbes 400 inherited their wealth, significantly down from almost 200 in the mid-1980s. Indeed, while 37 people may have directly inherited their way onto the list, how many of the Forbes 400 were born into privileged families already in the top quintile or top 5 percent?
Forbes classifies Philip Anschutz—net worth of $5.2 billion—as “self made,” not as an inheritor. But Mr. Anschutz inherited an oil and gas field worth $500 million. Regardless of how much sweat and toil he may have contributed to his enterprise, he is hardly a rags-to-riches story. How many more “self-made” fortunes on the Forbes list had inheritances or robust opportunities provided to them as young adults? This is just one way the Times fails to apply its own broader framing of class privilege and opportunity that it brings to the overall series.
One positive element of both series is that class is understood to be more than economics. Those who are raised poor and working class are different because people are more likely to die from the manifestations of class oppression: poor health care and food, stress, overwork, etc. Our classist system provides real material rewards and benefits for the owning and upper-middle class at the expense of the poor and working class.
The premise of a meritocracy is that people earn and get what they deserve, based on their effort, drive and intelligence. But if a society advertises itself as such, and, in practice, allocates success based on hereditary advantage, how are those who are not winners supposed to respond? Such a contradiction leads many members of the poor and working class to blame themselves, rather than demanding that society live up to its promise of opportunity.
The fact that these two newspapers have taken on the topic of class is important. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have approved the subject as valuable to American discourse. Now university presidents, foundation officials, legislators and journalists have the green light to explore themes of opportunity, mobility and class.
