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jcl's avatar

I think that there's a missing piece here, and that's social mobility. For social mobility to exist, it would have to be possible for working-class people to become ruling-class, and generally that involves a stint in the loathed middle. But as soon as a working-class person starts to move toward the middle, to see Obama's promise of higher education for their children as an opportunity rather than a threat, they become that dreaded middle class, disdained by both high and low, described here as self-promotion-obsessed and lacking in empathy.

So it's seen as a positive here that "the people I know that are actually from ruling-class backgrounds, they like working-class people because they're more real [than the middle class]". But couldn't you also also frame it as, "ruling-class people like working class people who know their place" (because if they don't they are, in this framework, middle class by definition). And couldn't this dynamic undermine social mobility?

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Lynda McDonnell's avatar

I so appreciate this distinction between ‘becoming’ and ‘belonging.’ It helps me understand my frustration with what seems like lack of ambition among working class family members and my oversupply of middle-class striver’s syndrome.

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