A representative of that class left his mark on a library copy of Russell Lynes's The Tastemakers (1954). It is the middle class that is highly class-sensitive, and sometimes class-scared to death.

Thus the whole class matter is likely to seem like a joke to them - the upper classes fatuous in their empty aristocratic pretentiousness, the middles loathsome in their anxious gentility.

Proletarians generally don't mind discussions of the subject because they know they can do little to alter their class identity. On the other hand, upper-class people love the topic to come up: the more attention paid to the matter the better off they seem to be. A tendency to get very anxious suggests that you are middle-class and nervous about slipping down a rung or two. One woman, asked by a couple of interviewers if she thought there were social classes in this country, answered: 'It's the dirtiest thing I've ever heard of!' And a man, asked the same question, got so angry that he blurted out, 'Social class should be exterminated!'Īctually, you reveal a great deal about your social class by the amount of annoyance or fury you feel when the subject is brought up. In his book Inequality in an Age of Decline (1980), the sociologist Paul Blumberg goes so far as to call it 'America's forbidden thought.' Indeed, people often blow their tops if the subject is even broached. Tawney's perception, in his book Equality (1931): 'The word 'class' is fraught with unpleasing associations, so that to linger upon it is apt to be interpreted as the symptom of a perverted mind and a jaundiced spirit.'Įspecially in America, where the idea of class is notably embarrassing. It is as if I had said, 'I am working on a book urging the beating to death of baby whales using the dead bodies of baby seals.' Since I have been writing this book I have experienced many times the awful truth of R. It is not just that I am feared as a class spy. Then, a few minutes later, they silently get up and walk away. When, recently, asked what I am writing, I have answered, 'A book about social class in America,' people tend first to straighten their ties and sneak a glance at their cuffs to see how far fraying has advanced there. You can outrage people today simply by mentioning social class, very much the way, sipping tea among the aspidistras a century ago, you could silence a party by adverting too openly to sex. Although most Americans sense that they live within an extremely complicated system of social classes and suspect that much of what is thought and done here is prompted by considerations of status, the subject has remained murky.

Class by paul fussell