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Class Matters ReviewMost books about race and class in America tend toward the macroscopic, marshalling their arguments behind surveys, statistics, and broad statements of theory or conjecture. Case studies or anecdotes about specific individuals are presented, if at all, to illustrate and particularize from whatever generalized conclusions their authors happen to be espousing. Such works of course serve useful purposes, but they can seem coldly impersonal, lacking any sense of the human lives that comprise all those statistics. Only occasionally do writers like Studs Terkel or Barbara Ehrenreich come along to put a human face on these issues.
Journalism, on the other hand, revels in the particular. Human drama provides the attraction, and individual stories create the base from which to propel the writer into broader statements of issues and positions. Thus, it is hardly surprising that CLASS MATTERS, a book compiled from stories previously published about class in America by the New York Times, should consist largely of anecdotes.
That it works so well is a tribute not just to the writers themselves, but to the editorial framers of this collection. CLASS MATTERS addresses the great taboo of America, the myth of a classless society. Never does the book claim that American life is caste-bound or separated into rigid classes. Rather, the opening chapter asserts that while class mobility still exists (that is, one can be born poor and lower class but, through dint of steady self-application in school and hard work thereafter, the opportunities for "upgrading" oneself are effectively limitless), the degree of such mobility has lessened considerably in the last 30 years. Never has it been more true that the best choice one can make in life is one's choice of parents, and economic trends and (especially) Republican public policy are only exacerbating the problem.
The bulk of CLASS MATTERS is taken up with extended newspaper articles that articulate various aspects of class in America and its effect on people's lives. For example, the opening chapter details the crises of three individuals who suffered heart attacks - how their responses, emergency care, choice of doctors and treatments, and follow-up care differed according to their socioeconomic class. Other stories document interclass marriages (she upper, he lower), a lawyer whose return to her Appalachian roots forces her confront class differences, an immigrant Mexican restaurant worker in New York struggling to survive while working for a successful, Greek immigrant boss, and an upward-striving family of corporate nomads bouncing from one big city bedroom community (like Alpharetta, Georgia) to another.
CLASS MATTERS occasionally detours (to its positive credit) away from pure case history reporting to discuss more general topics. One of the most telling concerns the dropout rate in American four-year colleges (only 41% of low income students manage to graduate within five years) and the increasingly middle-class nature of those colleges' student bodies. As Anthony Marx, President of Amherst College, is quoted as saying, "If we are blind to educational disadvantages associated with need, we will simply replicate these disadvantages while appearing to make decisions based on merit." In one simple statement, Mr. Marx hits dead-on the most crucial educational issue of 21st Century America. Other chapters discuss the treatment of class in American fiction and cinema and the efforts of corporate marketers (BMW, Godiva, cruise lines) to downscale their products to lower classes while retaining the aura of upper class luxury.
The book's closing chapter, "Angela Whitaker's Climb," is by far its most affecting piece. The story describes the Herculean efforts of Ms. Whitaker, a middle-aged Chicagoan with five children by nearly as many different fathers, to turn her life around through nursing school. A tenth grade high school dropout and a former crack addict, she loses two of her sons to the streets but manages to get an Associate's Degree, pass her nursing exams, and find professional employment that puts her solidly into middle class life. Yet every day is a precarious balance: struggling to make ends meet, keeping her children on the right path, and satisfying the financial needs of her extended family. While Ms. Whitaker's story is touching for its emblematic demonstration of the Horatio Alger myth, her difficulties in achieving success make it clear that she is unusual, one in perhaps ten thousand, or maybe one in a million. Her success is admirable, but it is the extraordinary odds against that success that make her story a chilling, almost frightening tale of class in America.
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