Rachel Risinger

March 17, 2010

All the Money in the World Will Not Buy You Any Class.

While I was reading Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon for Multicultural Literature, I was thinking initially about the “double minority” status occupied by the women, especially Ruth Foster-Dead and Pilate Dead who drive the stories beyond the actions of Milkman Dead and his father, Macon Dead. But as I was writing my research proposal, another concept emerged which seemed to eclipse the “double minority” status of these female characters, which was the notion of “class” in American society. Given the relationship of both women to Macon Dead, a seemingly prosperous business man in the community, societal norms dictate that there should not have been such a wide gulf in their economic circumstances. As in-laws, their communications and social interaction with each other should not have been so strained or clandestine.

America is thought to be a “classless” society because the collective population supposedly possesses the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” however; there exists within our society a major schism in the definition of happiness. For many, the elements of society who have the leisure time and evolved critical thinking skills to define happiness do so as financial success or security, and those who seek to define success do so on a widely ranging scale. There are as many definitions for success as there are individuals who would attempt to define the concept. On a purely personal level, as an hourly wage earning employee of a local government whose job security can be tenuous every four years when there is an election, I am not seen as “successful” by the standards of some acquaintances that have far greater financial resources, and they do not understand how I can be “happy.” I see their social commitments, the financial contributions they are expected to make to the organizations with which they are affiliated, and in some cases, the lack of decision making skills their children possess and thank goodness that I haven’t achieved their level of “success/happiness.” It is my intention in my research to examine the implications of class distinction in America based not only on economics, but also on the social stratification that exists in every isolated population. Is America ready to acknowledge class distinctions outside of economic constraints? Will America ever be ready?

In beginning the research for my paper, I started with the most basic terms and the Neumann Library data base, looking for “class in America” and “social inequality in America.” Even though I do not want to base the entire research for my argument with a discussion of economics as a distinction of class, some discussion of filthy lucre will be necessary in setting up the basis of my paper, because academically, economic distinctions are seemingly discussed first, then racial breakdowns enter the discourse. Gender does not seemingly come into the discussion of class on an academic level outside of feminist studies, and given that I am subject to take my arguments far afield without a lot of discipline on my part, I will not be expanding my research into feminist territory. This is a shame because I so wanted to explore the implications of stanza from Maya Angelou’s “I Rise.”

One resource that I am eager to explore is The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret by Michael Zweig. In this book, Zweig is concerned with discussing the pervasive attitudes that are attached to class in this country, even though we as a society like to envision ourselves as “classless” and demonstrate an outward understanding of the ideal that with work and effort one is rewarded. Zweig makes the argument that American social ideals, such as “family values” and “kinder and gentler” approaches to public scrutiny of the status quo are merely public relations gestures designed by educated elite to gently mislead and benignly influence the collective thinking of the American electorate.

Another work that lends itself towards proving part of my argument is The Mind of the South by W. J. Cash, in which he explores the relationship between poor Southern whites and their more economically successful white counterparts. It would be unseemly in their society for the better-off whites to look down their collective noses at the subsistence-earning white without property or the ability to employ black field labor, and they are put in the position of having to outwardly accept and even embrace the company of their poorer brethren rather than embrace the company of any economically well-off blacks in their society because to choose the society of blacks over whites would be seen as “race trading” and an affront to one’s position on the economic ladder in the South. A poor white was given higher status than that of a poor black simply because of the color of his skin, and not because of any necessarily measurable, or rational reason. In her Mississippi Quarterly article, Cultural Studies’ Misfit, White Trash Studies, Dina Smith of Drake University explores how the poor Southern white has been granted a social status that severs his existence forever from that of the poor Southern black and has had the title of “white trash” bestowed upon him by his contemporaries and popular media, elevating him somewhat up the “food chain” of poverty that exists in this country. Rather than “lazy” and “ignorant” like the poor Southern black, the poor Southern white’s existence is softened by description’s such as “unfortunate” or “hardworking but dim” which affords the white a passing sort of existence in the “higher” white class.

I don’t think that America will ever be ready to acknowledge that we do live in a society that recognizes class distinctions, at least not outside academia and marketing surveys. I make that statement now, at the beginning of my research with the hope that I will find something that proves me wrong, because I am a firm believer that a class system does exist in this country. Far more resources are available to the haves than are available to the have-nots in this county, and some of these precious resources are irrevocably wasted on the rich. I would really like to put that notion to bed once and for all, for myself and everybody who will come up after me, but I’m just not convinced as of yet that this will happen.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cash, W. J..The Mind of the South. New York. Vintage, 1991. Print.

Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York. Vintage, 2004. Print.

Smith, Dina. “Cultural Studies’ Misfit: White Trash Studies.”Mississippi Quarterly.

            (Summer 2004) 369-387. Print.

Zweig, Michael. The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret.  New York.

            Cornell University Press, 2000. Print.