16 ms·

>In older societies, everyone is aware of their class [...], but in America they seem to pretend that class doesn't exist there Americans aren't pretending be

by jasode 4y ago

>In older societies, everyone is aware of their class [...], but in America they seem to pretend that class doesn't exist there Americans aren't pretending because unlike England, the country itself was created without a monarchy handing out titles of nobility[1]. Europeans can trace deep historical bloodlines -- which further reinforces class distinctions and self-awareness across generations. However, America was built on immigrants arriving on ships where family records were lost. So if one still insists on overlaying the word "classes" on top of America, it is very different from "class" in Europe. Therefore, social class in America is more about wealth rather than hereditary titles. The ability for money (e.g. become a millionaire/billionaire) to change your status in society means social class in the USA is fluid and can change. Maybe a loose USA version of hereditary class might be families like Kennedys, Bushes, etc where the media nicknames the Kennedys "Camelot". Even so, a bricklayer who was the son of an Austrian village policeman and had a bloodline tainted by a bastard great-grandfather -- was able to marry into the Kennedy family. Why? Because Arnold Schwarzenegger became a successful multi-millionaire. The European-version of "lower class" in Arnold's family background wasn't a barrier in the USA. >Everyone pretends that racism in America is just that, when it's actually classism born of racist roots I think many do have pure and simple racism based on skin color. E.g. they don't care for black billionaires like Michael Jordan and they think it's wrong that a black judge sits on the Supreme Court. Yes, racism for some people may be (subconsciously) intertwined with class as you point out ... but for others, it's a simple dislike of black people. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peerages_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peerages_in_the_United_Kingdom

daniel-cussen 4y ago
Paul Hill also married a Kennedy. I saw a movie about him, In the Name of the Father. To summarize its about a man who just because he was Irish got accused of terrorism and the police frame him, largely because they wanted to look like they caught the culprit of a bombing to save face. A halfway-martyr, lost decades of his life to imprisonment. It had artistic merit. So with the Kennedy's remember they're Irish, so the Irish nobility was disintegrated by the English, all Irish are Irish nobility. And it has the most welcoming laws of returning, because it is actually far below it's peak population in the 19th century, when people were starving and escaping, the lowest point of poverty. Like if you want a title do an online class, fuck. And it didn't work the same way, it was Celtic not Germanic nor Roman, much less conquest, Bronze Age traditions to this day. So what you get instead is the origin of nobility, which are heroines and heroes. The Irish who made it in America attained worth, the whole premise of America is its the place to which people leave to come back--if they even feel like coming back--with reknown. Nobody gives a shit whom Beowulf's father was either. I'm not sure it's addressed in the tale, it doesn't matter. What matters is Beowulf, the hero. And in fact the monsters he fought were descended from Cain, that's like nobility, Beowulf ripped the monster's fucking arm off with his own masculine strength, declining to use a sword because he considered himself his equal. . I think the additional question is one of History. You go to a new place, what happens to your History? It's very tied to place, time originally comes from the idea of wanting to understand the heavenly spheres, that was time. "When" comes from "where".
popcorncowboy 4y ago
Except there's plenty of old-money (hereditary class) in the US that looks, talks and acts exactly like the "class" structures you're claiming are very different from those in Europe. You're arguing semantics because "it's different" in the US, which may be superfically true, but not meaningfully so. Whatever you want to call it, there are de facto class structures in the US that operate as the functional equivalents of class in Europe. You are either born into these circles or you remain outside of them (for at least a few generations). Wealth is only one part of this mix, and while it certainly does pay for your tickets into elite events, it does not buy you into the circle. > social class in USA is fluid and can change And this is one of the major false-hoods that people believe to be true but simply isn't. Americans in particular suffer from this belief. Social mobility is lower than most people expect, and the trend has been heading downwards for years.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Also, the perspective here might be skewed. After all this is place that observes and connects with newly generated wealth and millionaires. Which could even be considered a entirely new and separate social class. Or multiple. From your average developer, to bay area developer in FAANG and like to those that made multi-million to billion dollar companies. And all this inside single generation. Lower end is probably associated with your traditional professional classes. Then there is managerial classes. And finally the newly rich. Which might interact with others, but likely won't fully belong...
  - kstenerud 4y ago
    In essence, it's the 21st century equivalent of the "new money" industrialists of the 18th century. They weren't accepted by the established class either, and had to slowly bleed in over generations. In fact, you still regularly hear the disparaging words "new money" today.
    - Enginerrrd 4y ago
      To be fair, flashy, tactless, and pointless displays of wealth for it's own sake is the kind of thing people are looking down upon when they use that term.
synu 4y ago
I am not even sure this is really a Europe-wide thing. I migrated to the Netherlands from the US (West Coast) and class here is way closer to how it is in the US than in England for example. I understand (but can’t confirm) that France is quite egalitarian in comparison as well since the revolution.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Class (and income) in the Netherlands are very heavily education based (unless you have inherited money, but even then).
  - j7ake 4y ago
    Curious , what are the schools in Netherlands that are considered exclusive? I always thought Netherlands university was not selective.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      The universities themselves are not selective, any university would be ‘university’ (highest) level. The middle level are now called Universities of Applied Sciences, which give out a bachelors, but as far as I know never a masters diploma. The lowest level are vocational colleges, which don’t give you any internationally recognized credential at all (but do train you to do a variety of occupations). You basically get sorted into one of these levels once you leave elementary school based on educational skill and aptitude (by your final year teacher), and while changing is possible, it costs you years (which still seem very precious at the time). If you meet any Dutch person outside the Netherlands they almost per definition are middle level or higher, because anyone without a bachelors diploma often doesn’t get to immigrate (depending on country).
      - j7ake 4y ago
        Thanks for the insight, although this does not sound nearly as elitist as the French, UK, Chinese, and American university systems. Netherlands seems fairly egalitarian by contrast to these other systems.
johnny53169 4y ago
> Even so, a bricklayer who was the son of an Austrian village policeman and had a bloodline tainted by a bastard great-grandfather -- was able to marry into the Kennedy family. Why? Because Arnold Schwarzenegger became a successful multi-millionaire. For context, Schwarzenegger met Maria Shriver after he had gotten the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor for Stay Hungry(1976) while in an open relationship with another woman and married around a decade later after his big breakout in Conan and Terminator. He was by then already a successful bodybuilder, she didn't really marry a bricklayer, and anyway it's not like you can't find similar example in European nobility.
- angrais 4y ago
  I agree and you've summarised what I wanted to say. One addition: social mobility is possible in almost any class based society. So using one such example does not prove that class in USA==wealth.
- pavlov 4y ago
  European aristocracy doesn’t have a lot of taboos left around marrying from the lower classes. Maybe the most prominent example is Victoria, the Crown Princess of Sweden. She married her personal trainer, a gym entrepreneur and son of an ordinary civil servant, who received the titles of Prince and Duke.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Europeans have been famous for marrying "rich but common" Americans for so long it's a running joke in Wodehouse books.
    - bleuchase 4y ago
      Hell, Harry did it too.
endominus 4y ago
Class is more than lineage or wealth or race. The signifiers run much deeper than that. To use an example from https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1237182.html https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1237182.html - >So, for instance, if I don't like the medical care I get from the doctors my state-subsidized health plan (thanks, Mitt!) gives me access to, I can't just whip out my checkbook and buy myself care from a better reputed specialist. Being poor might yet shorten my lifespan, as it curtails my access to care. But on the other hand, if I present with a serious booboo to just about any doctor, I will have narcotic pain relief offered me with no questions asked, because someone of my social class is not suspected of being one of those naughty "med-seeking" addicts. The decision of whether or not to trust me with a prescription for percoset is not made on the basis of the MassHealth card in my pocket marking me one of the precariat, but my hair style, my sense of fashion, my (lack of) make-up, my accent, my vocabulary, my body language, my (apparent) girth, my profession (which, note, doctors often ask as part of intake), and all the other things which locate me in a social class to observers that know the code. Contrariwise, a patient of mine – who is a white woman of almost my age – who is covered with tattoos, speaks with an Eastie accent, is over 200lbs, and wears spandex and bling and heavy make-up, gets screamed at by an ER nurse for med-seeking when she hadn't asked for medication at all, and just wanted an x-ray for an old bone-break she was frighted she had reinjured in a fall.
mrow84 4y ago
All that bloodline stuff is real, but it’s a pretty small fraction of the population. Most people’s experience of class difference in the UK is economic, not hereditary (I think).
zbentley 4y ago
This is misinterpreting both the UK and the US in important ways. Wealth is germane to class in both, sure. But after that, most of what you said is incorrect. Family status in the UK is less about history than shared context: not "what titles did your ancestors hold?" (that might be highly relevant for the fractional upper crust, but not so much for others), but "did you go to the same (exclusive) schools as others in your social class?" and "did your last generation or two originate from the same (exclusive) areas?" The same is true in the US, ironically even more-so in some ways: while people certainly can change their status by becoming [mb]illionaires, that's both vanishingly rare and insufficient on its own. Rare: in that mobility in the US is almost nonexistent--so rare that many elite groups and institutions presume that none of their members transitioned into the elite by acquiring wealth. Whether mobility is greater in the US or the UK is a belabored and unclear argument I won't get into. Insufficient: as the article mentioned, there is a massive set of social context and mores that are shared by elites that are not necessarily shared by someone who recently became wealthy. This works almost identically to that context in the UK, just with superficial differences. That context amounts to an entire culture--which can be learned, or faked, but doesn't automatically switch on when you e.g. inherit money or sell a business to become wealthy. This isn't quite the same as the distinction between "old money" and "new money"; shared elite-culture context can be built in a single generation: a newly wealthy person is not automatically able to navigate and benefit from existing elite cultural structures, but if they research the shared background of people already in those cultures, they may put their children into e.g. the elites' schools or communities, at which point their children have a good chance at becoming "authentic" (really "passing", since authenticity is sort of a tautological quality here) members of the elite themselves. Everyone can point to an outlier to these phenomena--someone that proves that you can "break into" or are falsely excluded from a class by some criteria. You point to Schwarzenegger, others point to various rags-to-riches stories, or stories of people who carefully research and dissemble to enter elite cultural circles. While those stories certainly exist, outliers are, by their nature, less relevant than the rules that govern the overwhelming majority of class dynamics in these societies.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > in that mobility in the US is almost nonexistent What? I personally know lots of people who went from zip to millionaire. Even in the 1990s, it was estimated that Microsoft had minted over 10,000 millionaires, not including the value of their homes. And that's just Microsoft.
labcomputer 4y ago
> Americans aren't pretending because unlike England, the country itself was created without a monarchy handing out titles of nobility Except in California, where you can inherit property tax valuation from your parents and grandparents. Or transfer your below-market valuation to another property. Oh, and your valuation is required to decrease over time in real-dollar terms.
WalterBright 4y ago
> Maybe a loose USA version of hereditary class might be families like Kennedys This is ironic as Joe Kennedy (the patriarch) struggled hard against being an outsider for being Catholic. As far as I can tell, discrimination against Catholics has simply disappeared in the US.
- aklemm 4y ago
  It might come back due to obviously-bad Catholic ideas.

by jasode 4y ago

daniel-cussen 4y ago

Paul Hill also married a Kennedy. I saw a movie about him, In the Name of the Father. To summarize its about a man who just because he was Irish got accused of terrorism and the police frame him, largely because they wanted to look like they caught the culprit of a bombing to save face. A halfway-martyr, lost decades of his life to imprisonment. It had artistic merit. So with the Kennedy's remember they're Irish, so the Irish nobility was disintegrated by the English, all Irish are Irish nobility. And it has the most welcoming laws of returning, because it is actually far below it's peak population in the 19th century, when people were starving and escaping, the lowest point of poverty. Like if you want a title do an online class, fuck. And it didn't work the same way, it was Celtic not Germanic nor Roman, much less conquest, Bronze Age traditions to this day. So what you get instead is the origin of nobility, which are heroines and heroes. The Irish who made it in America attained worth, the whole premise of America is its the place to which people leave to come back--if they even feel like coming back--with reknown. Nobody gives a shit whom Beowulf's father was either. I'm not sure it's addressed in the tale, it doesn't matter. What matters is Beowulf, the hero. And in fact the monsters he fought were descended from Cain, that's like nobility, Beowulf ripped the monster's fucking arm off with his own masculine strength, declining to use a sword because he considered himself his equal. . I think the additional question is one of History. You go to a new place, what happens to your History? It's very tied to place, time originally comes from the idea of wanting to understand the heavenly spheres, that was time. "When" comes from "where".

popcorncowboy 4y ago

Except there's plenty of old-money (hereditary class) in the US that looks, talks and acts exactly like the "class" structures you're claiming are very different from those in Europe. You're arguing semantics because "it's different" in the US, which may be superfically true, but not meaningfully so. Whatever you want to call it, there are de facto class structures in the US that operate as the functional equivalents of class in Europe. You are either born into these circles or you remain outside of them (for at least a few generations). Wealth is only one part of this mix, and while it certainly does pay for your tickets into elite events, it does not buy you into the circle. > social class in USA is fluid and can change And this is one of the major false-hoods that people believe to be true but simply isn't. Americans in particular suffer from this belief. Social mobility is lower than most people expect, and the trend has been heading downwards for years.

Ekaros 4y ago
Also, the perspective here might be skewed. After all this is place that observes and connects with newly generated wealth and millionaires. Which could even be considered a entirely new and separate social class. Or multiple. From your average developer, to bay area developer in FAANG and like to those that made multi-million to billion dollar companies. And all this inside single generation. Lower end is probably associated with your traditional professional classes. Then there is managerial classes. And finally the newly rich. Which might interact with others, but likely won't fully belong...
- kstenerud 4y ago
  In essence, it's the 21st century equivalent of the "new money" industrialists of the 18th century. They weren't accepted by the established class either, and had to slowly bleed in over generations. In fact, you still regularly hear the disparaging words "new money" today.
  - Enginerrrd 4y ago
    To be fair, flashy, tactless, and pointless displays of wealth for it's own sake is the kind of thing people are looking down upon when they use that term.

synu 4y ago

I am not even sure this is really a Europe-wide thing. I migrated to the Netherlands from the US (West Coast) and class here is way closer to how it is in the US than in England for example. I understand (but can’t confirm) that France is quite egalitarian in comparison as well since the revolution.

Aeolun 4y ago
Class (and income) in the Netherlands are very heavily education based (unless you have inherited money, but even then).
- j7ake 4y ago
  Curious , what are the schools in Netherlands that are considered exclusive? I always thought Netherlands university was not selective.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    The universities themselves are not selective, any university would be ‘university’ (highest) level. The middle level are now called Universities of Applied Sciences, which give out a bachelors, but as far as I know never a masters diploma. The lowest level are vocational colleges, which don’t give you any internationally recognized credential at all (but do train you to do a variety of occupations). You basically get sorted into one of these levels once you leave elementary school based on educational skill and aptitude (by your final year teacher), and while changing is possible, it costs you years (which still seem very precious at the time). If you meet any Dutch person outside the Netherlands they almost per definition are middle level or higher, because anyone without a bachelors diploma often doesn’t get to immigrate (depending on country).
    - j7ake 4y ago
      Thanks for the insight, although this does not sound nearly as elitist as the French, UK, Chinese, and American university systems. Netherlands seems fairly egalitarian by contrast to these other systems.

johnny53169 4y ago

> Even so, a bricklayer who was the son of an Austrian village policeman and had a bloodline tainted by a bastard great-grandfather -- was able to marry into the Kennedy family. Why? Because Arnold Schwarzenegger became a successful multi-millionaire. For context, Schwarzenegger met Maria Shriver after he had gotten the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor for Stay Hungry(1976) while in an open relationship with another woman and married around a decade later after his big breakout in Conan and Terminator. He was by then already a successful bodybuilder, she didn't really marry a bricklayer, and anyway it's not like you can't find similar example in European nobility.

angrais 4y ago
I agree and you've summarised what I wanted to say. One addition: social mobility is possible in almost any class based society. So using one such example does not prove that class in USA==wealth.
pavlov 4y ago
European aristocracy doesn’t have a lot of taboos left around marrying from the lower classes. Maybe the most prominent example is Victoria, the Crown Princess of Sweden. She married her personal trainer, a gym entrepreneur and son of an ordinary civil servant, who received the titles of Prince and Duke.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bombcar 4y ago
  Europeans have been famous for marrying "rich but common" Americans for so long it's a running joke in Wodehouse books.
  - bleuchase 4y ago
    Hell, Harry did it too.

endominus 4y ago

Class is more than lineage or wealth or race. The signifiers run much deeper than that. To use an example from https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1237182.html https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1237182.html - >So, for instance, if I don't like the medical care I get from the doctors my state-subsidized health plan (thanks, Mitt!) gives me access to, I can't just whip out my checkbook and buy myself care from a better reputed specialist. Being poor might yet shorten my lifespan, as it curtails my access to care. But on the other hand, if I present with a serious booboo to just about any doctor, I will have narcotic pain relief offered me with no questions asked, because someone of my social class is not suspected of being one of those naughty "med-seeking" addicts. The decision of whether or not to trust me with a prescription for percoset is not made on the basis of the MassHealth card in my pocket marking me one of the precariat, but my hair style, my sense of fashion, my (lack of) make-up, my accent, my vocabulary, my body language, my (apparent) girth, my profession (which, note, doctors often ask as part of intake), and all the other things which locate me in a social class to observers that know the code. Contrariwise, a patient of mine – who is a white woman of almost my age – who is covered with tattoos, speaks with an Eastie accent, is over 200lbs, and wears spandex and bling and heavy make-up, gets screamed at by an ER nurse for med-seeking when she hadn't asked for medication at all, and just wanted an x-ray for an old bone-break she was frighted she had reinjured in a fall.

mrow84 4y ago

All that bloodline stuff is real, but it’s a pretty small fraction of the population. Most people’s experience of class difference in the UK is economic, not hereditary (I think).

zbentley 4y ago

This is misinterpreting both the UK and the US in important ways. Wealth is germane to class in both, sure. But after that, most of what you said is incorrect. Family status in the UK is less about history than shared context: not "what titles did your ancestors hold?" (that might be highly relevant for the fractional upper crust, but not so much for others), but "did you go to the same (exclusive) schools as others in your social class?" and "did your last generation or two originate from the same (exclusive) areas?" The same is true in the US, ironically even more-so in some ways: while people certainly can change their status by becoming [mb]illionaires, that's both vanishingly rare and insufficient on its own. Rare: in that mobility in the US is almost nonexistent--so rare that many elite groups and institutions presume that none of their members transitioned into the elite by acquiring wealth. Whether mobility is greater in the US or the UK is a belabored and unclear argument I won't get into. Insufficient: as the article mentioned, there is a massive set of social context and mores that are shared by elites that are not necessarily shared by someone who recently became wealthy. This works almost identically to that context in the UK, just with superficial differences. That context amounts to an entire culture--which can be learned, or faked, but doesn't automatically switch on when you e.g. inherit money or sell a business to become wealthy. This isn't quite the same as the distinction between "old money" and "new money"; shared elite-culture context can be built in a single generation: a newly wealthy person is not automatically able to navigate and benefit from existing elite cultural structures, but if they research the shared background of people already in those cultures, they may put their children into e.g. the elites' schools or communities, at which point their children have a good chance at becoming "authentic" (really "passing", since authenticity is sort of a tautological quality here) members of the elite themselves. Everyone can point to an outlier to these phenomena--someone that proves that you can "break into" or are falsely excluded from a class by some criteria. You point to Schwarzenegger, others point to various rags-to-riches stories, or stories of people who carefully research and dissemble to enter elite cultural circles. While those stories certainly exist, outliers are, by their nature, less relevant than the rules that govern the overwhelming majority of class dynamics in these societies.

WalterBright 4y ago
> in that mobility in the US is almost nonexistent What? I personally know lots of people who went from zip to millionaire. Even in the 1990s, it was estimated that Microsoft had minted over 10,000 millionaires, not including the value of their homes. And that's just Microsoft.

labcomputer 4y ago

> Americans aren't pretending because unlike England, the country itself was created without a monarchy handing out titles of nobility Except in California, where you can inherit property tax valuation from your parents and grandparents. Or transfer your below-market valuation to another property. Oh, and your valuation is required to decrease over time in real-dollar terms.

WalterBright 4y ago

> Maybe a loose USA version of hereditary class might be families like Kennedys This is ironic as Joe Kennedy (the patriarch) struggled hard against being an outsider for being Catholic. As far as I can tell, discrimination against Catholics has simply disappeared in the US.

aklemm 4y ago
It might come back due to obviously-bad Catholic ideas.