> Americans fetishize wealth and often discriminate based on signals of wealth from others, so it makes perfect sense that we fetishize a social signal of wealt

> Americans fetishize wealth and often discriminate based on signals of wealth from others, so it makes perfect sense that we fetishize a social signal of wealth that cannot be faked effectively. This is not particular to America, and is known as conspicuous consumption, which is also what the article covers. > both wealthy Americans and racist Americans (there's a lot of overlap) moving to and driving the creation of suburbs were trying to find ways to exclude both poor people and non-white people. Were wealthy Americans more or less racist than less wealthy Americans in this time? Since you mentioned lawns were a status symbol as part of a hierarchy, why is it not sufficient that they were maintaining lawns out of a desire for status i.e. "keeping up with the Joneses"? Indeed, this is what the article said was an anxiety of the time. > A 1959 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association on the psychosomatic effects of suburban development and “conspicuous consumption” explicitly mentioned the lawn as a source of psychological tension. “Many of our patients are overconcerned about keeping up appearances: ... there cannot be a blade of crabgrass in the lawn.” There was evidently a hierarchy, but I don't think you can so easily call its primary motivation as racism, or classism.