America’s Darkest Secret

American society revolves around the axis of race, and in many ways race edged out other social schisms from our view.  Gender is now seeing a late resurgence as a critical, unfinished social debate.  Class, however, has never seemed to figure strongly in American self-conceptualization, partly because the American dream itself is predicated on the idea that class boundaries can be erased with a bit of elbow grease.  Hence class divisions are not seen as being self-perpetuating.  The corollary to this is also that if you find yourself poor and stuck in an undesirable class, it’s probably your fault.

Barbara Ehrenreich is probably one of the most influential social commentators on the issue of class in America today. As the Guardian points out, she’s quite controversial.  People think she’s a socialist wing nut. I don’t agree with some of her conclusions, but the issue of class is something that is worth talking about in the states, especially since a lot of the negative stereotypes that are conflated with race in this country sometimes have more to do with class than with ethnicity.