In my opening post “Why Talk About Class” I mentioned how “respectfully whether you are or are not, you are middle class. This comes from the notion that someone who makes $20,000 dollars a year would dare utter their mouths to say they are middle class America. Where? But this is the delusion of white working class America who thrives on this “invisible” white privilege they can’t seem to understand indeed does exist; especially when you’d dare open your mouth in poverty and say you represent middle class America. But in this same breath you have those earning $200,000 per year saying the same thing so when you measure for that absurdity you understand the shrinking of middle class America. It’s not shrinking, delusion is growing among the working poor in the white community.
This is why they think there is an assault on the middle class in America; because many of them are starting to realize working class doesn’t equal “middle class” it’s a white way of saying working poor or lower class or just barely making it. I hate to be the bearer of bad news here. Those that are middle class don’t actually tend to be “working class” which by all means is blue collar labor or less when considering for unskilled laborers who are more likely to say they are working class.
They will literally be on the brink of financial collapse, receiving welfare and other aid and still have the audacity to say they are middle class while calling a Black person poor to their faces as if they are not in the same boat aside from race which believe it or not gives someone with kids that lives at home with their mother the audacity to say, “we are middle class” even though we can’t afford anything not even our kids. This is mind blowing audacity but that of white working class America, the forgotten majority if you will.
A lot if this audacity is the fact that they hide the term poor behind working class. While working class is meant to define those that are not rich but are also not poor, the issue is that “not rich” and “not poor” are indeed a mile apart and the reality is the median income for the working class is about $56,000 which indeed is not poor but it’s closer to poor than rich or really anything else if you account for households with kids and not single individuals. This differentiation is then important because it then shows how much closer to upper lower class and lower middle class they are than anything else and how middle class doesn’t necessarily mean you are not poor and struggling and mired with debt.
The reality is the average white American or American who in some regards identifies as white but is still a minority has a murky understanding of what is middle class this skews their class identity as well because the reality is White America won’t allow them to forget but for census purpose they get to identify as as long as they are not Black. A Black individual making under $40,000 a year has a full understanding they are lower class and borderline poor and it is systemically set up like that because of access to funding and other like loans. I will talk about that in great detail historically but this series isn’t about that but I’ll remember to link them.
So, this audacity and of course class cluelessness is why they think there is an assault on middle class America and why their needs can’t be addressed as such. Middle Class America is actually fine, it’s the reality that they were not that is actually wreaking havoc on the middle class. Once the access to funding and loans dries up for them, they find themselves in similar boats as the ones brought over by boats are in. Ironic, yes.
Williams, J. (2020). White working class : overcoming class cluelessness in America. Harvard Business Review Press, [] Copyright.
Everybody Thinks They’re Middle-Class. (2016, September 15). Bloomberg.com. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-america-divided/middle-class/