Why talk about Class? We don’t; but we should. Class is a socioeconomic identifier, indicator, and capital creator in so many words. Your socioeconomic class can literally put you in the position of the haves or the have-nots. Class is part of what determines who you are in society, and you are nobody if you’re not middle class or above. And humbly, you’re middle class to the public, whether you actually are or are not. And that little notion has come around to bite much of White America in the butt, and they are taking it to heart.
Today, the average White American thinks they are middle class, and regardless of how poor they are or how much they are struggling, you can’t tell them any different. In their minds, they do what they have to do to get by, so even IF they are not middle class, they are the working class—beyond just blue-collar. They are those that pull themselves up by the bootstraps and work hard. In their minds, they are the only ones who do this, and others are either getting handouts or are flat-out lazy because they are just barely getting by. They are grappling with the fact that they now have to work two or more jobs, or a regular job and a side hustle they call a small business. They can’t make ends meet, and because this hasn’t been their reality for quite some time, the fact that it is now is making them angry, and with that, their latent racism comes out. But this isn’t just about race, though the factor of race is important because it will demonstrate their desire to be exclusive of those just like them economically but different in race. It’s how you end up with an angry “working class” instead of a group of people that can just fit in with the working poor or lower middle class, who pretty much have the same issues economically when you consider most things and the political climate. Those things that the poor benefit from would benefit this same “working class” equally. But they don’t consider themselves equal because they are different.
Working class, in reality, is just the upper tier of the lower class and the bare bottom of the middle or as some would say, the working poor. But, because they are White, many of them don’t like the “poor” label because “poor” isn’t for them, and the poor Whites they think of when they consider the poor ones they can’t seem to identify with because those must be the homeless. Poor just doesn’t identify with any of them. The issue with this is that they create a self-identified class that no one else can truly identify with but them. And because they are the majority, it has become a non-issue because the issue they have isn’t really an issue unless you make it about the white race in particular; that simply doesn’t want to fit in with the “others”. It becomes self alienation because aside from not wanting to be classed like them, what then really is your issue?
They make a conscious choice to separate. The middle class has their political hot takes, the lower class theirs, the POC and the Blacks theirs, the liberals have theirs, but the white working class is pretty much forgotten because the working landscape has changed and the working class is no longer just blue-collar white conservative males.
This series will dive deep into class and socioeconomic consciousness—both its presence and the lack of it today. Both are deeply rooted in classism and racism, but they are indeed not one in the same. I find that many White Americans are both classist and racist but are blind to the presence of both in their character and behavior. And while this series will not focus solely on that, it will focus on the white anger that creates it and how deeply ingrained it is into their personal identification with class status and the socioeconomic leverage and capital it grants them.
The White working class wants so much to be differentiated from the poor, even if the plot is such and they are stricken with the same statistics and datasets as the aforementioned. This is a social identifier of “white” privilege that so many White Americans fail to see but love to low-key brag about when they try to denigrate Black Americans with the plight of personal financial literacy and aptitude within the Black Community.
The theory is that they (the white working class) don’t want this so-called pious pity, but they are angry that they haven’t received any real help. As contradictory as it all is, it is rooted in classism and racism and in the notion that “poor” is only for people of color and the Black Community. The irony of it all is that when you remove any people of color or Black people, they very much understand what is actually poor, middle, and upper class. The issue is that they hate to think that they themselves could have so much in common with a person of color or someone who is Black.
If we learned nothing else during the 2024 election, we learned that the narrative hasn’t changed and that they’re still blaming immigrants and minorities for their loss of economic stature and for their failures. This alone is enough reason why talk about class in America.
Williams, J. (2020). White working class : overcoming class cluelessness in America. Harvard Business Review Press, [] Copyright.
Khazan, O. (2015, November 4). Middle-Aged White Americans Are Dying of Despair. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/11/boomers-deaths-pnas/413971/