At the behest of a friend, I'm reading a most ... peculiar volume.

- Demott, Benjamin. The Imperial Middle: Why Americans can't think straight about class. New Haven: Yale, 1992

At first glance, the book seems a bit ridiculous, though I must stress that any such indictment is well premature, as I'm judging only the scattered approach of the first pages. But it does seem to be the kind of thinking that was the staple of anti-PC hack comedy routines all through the 1990s.

I would like, however, to excerpt a portion which might jumpstart a reasonable discussion of the concept of class. In discussing a generalized presumption about the idea of class in America:3. Class is a mask that genial good sense sees through.

A culture valuing access and the absence of fixed levels can toy with the language of hierarchy and enjoy the frisson that accompanies any playfully subversive treatment of appearances as realities. But seriousness (not solemnity) returns, warning us not to trust surfaces, to dig a little deper, and to avoid exaggerating social influences. For everyone who delights in épatering the pious by talking hardnosed class, dozens exist who feel a modest civic obligation, when the subject of class comes up, to change the subject--move the discourse unobtrusively onto solider ground. This is done genially and casually, not fanatically, and out of respect for the truth that sensible people tend to prefer substance to shadow. Tone is everything on this front: no indicting of class as a racket or engaging in theorizing about the disposability of class. What happens is that class is simply brushed aside to permit clearer views. The process can occur consciously or unconsciously; it may or may not induce the sense of mild well-being that accompanies other affirmations of democratic virtues.

Many often-remarked peculiarities of American idiom can be traced to the penchant for treating class as camouflage--fog on the windowpane. The term lifestyle, introduced as useful shorthand for a variety of domestic living arrangements, achieved longevity because, as it incorporated consumer behavior into its range of reference, it obviated direct allusion to class. (Among American sociologists phrases such as "lifestyle enclaves" are now preferred alternatives to class-based terminology.) Many seldom-remarked peculiarities of American arts commentary are traceable to an insistence, by critics, on treating crucially important class dimensions of performers and talents as irrelevant trifles. Merce Cunningham and Michael Jackson give dance concerts the same night in Manhattan (Jackson is at Madison Square Garden). The younger performer's roots lie in pop, street dancing, the anguished history of an oppressed minority; the elder's roots lie in high art, classical ballet, the culture of the privileged. The New York Times assigns a critic who ordinarily works the snootier arts--Anna Kisselgoff--to review Michael Jackson, and her piece disposes of class in its lead. "Scrub away the veneer of street dances," writes Ms. Kisselgoff, "look past the occasional suggestive gesture and rotating pelvis, marvel at the backward gliding moonwalk and the isolated body parts ... and you see a virtuoso dancer who uses movement for its own sake. Yes, Michael Jacksan is an avant garde dancer, and his dances could be called abstract. Like Merce Cunningham, he shows us that movement has a value of its own ...." Arguably, Jackson's social origins are a source of his strength and deserve better than to be thought of as dirt. But to admit this would be to admit that class matters--an un-American admission.And he goes on like that. And on, and on, and on, and on .....

At any rate ... how dependent is the American classless society on class?

:m:,
Tiassa :cool:

As far as I know the classless society was the Soviet Union’s thing. I don't see this avoidance of class issues in America. Hell look at political races, candidates usually pander to one class or another specifically. I just don't see what this guy is talking about.

Technically, Mystech, I think I agree. But when we get right down to the voting booth, I think an issue still exists. Americans are in denial about much of their class consciousness. Demott presses the case with a plethora of brief considerations of press and literary moments demonstrating that class, while not real enough to bear specific political consequences, is indeed real enough for people to wish to deny.

For instance, I noted that this book seems a little ridiculous. And it still does. Demott heaps it on with almost humorless ferocity.

Another quick example, which just smacked me in the face this morning. I'm appreciative of the point largely because it deals with something I haven't been able to make clear to people here at Sciforums or in my personal life.

Incidentally, Demott is again addressing a myth, this time about the composition and nature of the American people:1. The American population is composed not of classes but of men and women of the middle united as strivers and self-betterers.

. . . . Challenges occur, to be sure--some eruption of psychopathic behavior, such as a mass murder, that momentarily shakes trust in the essential comprehensibnility and uniformity of the social landscape. But the newspapers that shake the trust on Mondey restore it by the weekend. "EXPERTS SAY MASS MURDERS ARE RARE BUT ON THE RISE," says the New York Times a few days after a pair of shattering tragedies. The respectfully quoted experts include a University of Virginia psychiatrist who consults for the FBI, and two criminologists at Boston and Northeastern universities. Each takes a position denying the need to imagine authentically different responses to life--attitudes, levels of rage, grounds for embitterment remote from the common run. "I never came across (a mass murderer)," says the psychiatrist, "who wasn't at least partially interested in suicide. They have a limited view of options, such as a career change, divorce, or declaring bankruptcy." They don't know, says the expert, that "depression is very common and easily treated."

The language states explicitly that problems outside the familiar middle mode don't exist. The would-be murderer should do as other strivers and self-betterers do--call and make an appointment with his analyst and with his tax accountant ... and with his marriage counselor. Bonded to each other, the newspaper, the experts, the audience assimilate the mass murderer to the norm . . . . (44-45)I know people like that, who aim for the classless society and then expect that everyone around them thinks exactly like them.

My own parents, thinking there's something wrong in my head, occasionally offer to pay for psychological counseling. No counselor can ever figure out that there actually is a problem, but I'm appreciative for the introspective opportunities. Nonetheless, this strange expectation of my family nullifies parts of the benefits anyone can receive from psychological introspection. Having convinced me that I'm in need of assistance, and having sought assistance, they literally cannot understand why I do not transform into a more normal person overnight. Personally, I wonder when my mother is going to learn one way or the other. In the meantime, it's an interesting psychological experiment.

However, as the clock ticked down and my daughter finally arrived, I scrambled and drew all of my shards and fragments together, and we're all pretty surprised at the resulting mosaic image: it turns out I'm the sane one in this family.

But my family asks the same question Demott addresses: Now that you've admitted that you're psychologically incompetent and in need of assistance, why are you psychologically incompetent and in need of assistance?

It's as if the twelve-step has been abridged to one: just admit that you have a problem and you magically become better.

If Americans could, per the title of the volume, "think straight about class" and classification (an all-important aspect Demott has not yet addressed in the early chapters) such minor idiocies as my family displays about my mental health would not occur. But like I said, I think I'm the sane one around here, so it's pretty easy to just smile and roll with the punches on that front.

But what about someone who's not me? I admit that it did take me several years to understand and fortify against my family's behavior, and not everybody in America--very few people, actually--conducts their lives as I do, with the specific intention of allowing enough room to wrestle with my head when it comes up. And it is apparent to me in conversations with people who are not in the best of spirits that no, solutions are not so easy for them, either.

It does seem that Demott is attempting a transcendental notion of class; he aims after general classification and compression. Many of the examples he puts up are designed to show a person (A) choosing a classification, and (B) directing resentment or other ill sentiment toward that classification. Somewhere in there he mentions two studies, one British and one American, which determined that the respective cultures had six and nine classes. And while I hadn't read that enumeration before, I think conceptually it's what most people reject about class: a fixed boundary of classification which serves as an appropriate generalism.

And here I have come to support the anti-class sentiments. I've grown up on class talk:

- "There are two kinds of people in the world: leaders and followers."
- "There are two kinds of people in the world: do-ers and don't-ers."
- Proletariat, bourgeoisie, &c.(labor classifications)
- Race, gender, the gender of your sexual partner .....
- "Don't worry about it, that's what they have maids for."
- "You don't need those kinds of friends." (e.g. children of blue-collar)
- "You don't want to be ______" (e.g. life ambitions)
- "Do you want people to think you're _____?" (e.g. appearance)
- "That kind of talk is for _____" (e.g. foul language)

Wrong was always "somebody else" in my life. There are two kinds of people in the world: "Us" and "Them". And "They" are always wrong.

And yet when it's time to examine issues of an "Us" and a "Them" in our own society ... well, just look at Affrimative Action in relation to the idea of social mobility.

During Washington's Affirmative Action debate, and during many I've witnessed in the news, I've noticed something odd about Americans. While class may be important to our social and political motion (Demott does address presidential candidates appealing to the laboring, "common" segment or class of society) yuo'll notice that when it comes down to "opportunity" and "Affirmative Action", a common argument against AffAct tends to depend on the presumption that two individuals born and raised under different tangible circumstances share similar enough worldviews that we need not account for the difference.

Think of it this way: I'm generally considered white. My family paid money to send me to a private school. I've had a computer since I was nine years old. I learned some guitar, I play trumpet reasonably enough to teach my child the basics. I have spent much of my leisure pursuing literary ambitions. Reputation was my reason for not being involved with drugs in high school.

My brother was raised similarly, and on top of it received a fairly large scholarship because of ethnic considerations.

What do we have in common with someone raised in an "inner-city" environment? My schools were not plagued by guns. My neighborhoods were not the kind where the biggest success you know is a drug dealer or a pimp. I'm taught to look at a middle class existence and want more. Many are taught to aspire to the existence I'm taught to transcend.

And yet I don't see this acknowledged in debates about welfare mothers or Affirmative Action. I didn't hear it when people focused on gang violence in schools. It's not present in discussions of Columbine and similar shootings.

And so I look back to that part of the title of the book: Why Americans can't think straight about class.

I think class is still very important and tangible to the American sociopolitical outlook. I just don't think most Americans give much real thought to the importance of class.

Think of a lack of sympathy in the gratuity debate. I technically agree with those who see tipping as a bonus for good service. I tip, however, customarily. If I thought for a minute that the person serving my beer of food or whatever to me could get through their life solely on the wages paid them by their employer, I would reserve my tipping habits to proper "gratuity". As it is, though, hell ... it's a buck or two. It adds up over the course of a day. Nobody I know serving drinks for "a living" can make a living on what their bosses pay them. A waitress mother depends on tips to keep her child fed and housed. And we can say "shoulda", as in, "She shoulda got a better education and done somethin' else with her life," but that only avoids the factors of class separation which interfere with mobility, and institutionally, Americans protect the notion that class mobility is inherent, ergo a classless society.

You know that person who says, "It's not that I have anything against ____. I don't. You know me, I even have _____ friends."

There's more of them out there than you think. There's more of them out there than I thought, and we all know how grimly I regard the amorphous mass of humanity I call my neighbors: sympathetically, but with disgust and a measure of fear. I think of one of my friends who has nothing against gays. We all know her. She even has gay friends. Yes, it's true. But she doesn't actually care about them any more than her other friends. She likes having gay friends for the fashion statement. Though I must admit that "fashion accessory" is a step up in American regard for homosexuals, it's still classist and unkind. I never did ask her why we never met those friends, and why the only time we heard about her gay friend with HIV it was either for a free haircut or to buy drugs? Oh, and then of course the social innuendo, the "gay dropping" ... "Well, my gay friend says ...." Yes, honey, your gay friend is EF Hutton, right?

I think Americans employ class presumptions, I think they attempt to deny class in certain parts of their lives, and the result is an incoherent beast which frightens the hell out of them.

Two cents or so.

Thanx much.

:m:,
Tiassa :cool:

So basically what it comes down to is that you don't feel Americans take into account class specific considerations enough. For instance saying that if a ghetto kid wants to get out of the inner city then all he needs is to get himself an education is actually much more complicated in practice than in theory? Simple enough. This whole thread is a bit long winded and round-about, but that’s just the way you like to operate, isn’t it, Tiassa? No complaints from me, on that front, really, it’s a welcome change from all the single paragraph threads, and one liners that are a dime a dozen around here.

Hearing about your friend, I’m reminded that I myself need to find a prissy rich girl to attach myself to. I really think that I could enjoy having people think that somehow my advice is wise and sage simply because I like to suck my boyfriend’s dick. If I could get her to buy me things, well that’d be all the better. Yes there are certainly worse things to be than some rich girl’s fashion accessory.

I don't know ... every time I try to restate Demott concisely, well ... I think that's the reason his book is all over the place. It's not a particularly easy difficulty to identify. It's not that I'm ignoring you, Mystech, but rather that figuring out Demott is best done leisurely and without any mind whatsoever to a time frame. Check out this passage on "omni syndrome", and you might see the difficulty I have compressing it. To a certain degree, I sound like him, and he like me, though I must stress that I do not know Mr. Demott, and this is the first occasion that I know of that I've read his work.

- Excerpt: "Omni Syndrome" (http://homepage.mac.com/bdhilling/sisyphus/OmniSyndrome.html)

I mean, maybe he's just taking thousands of words to wax philosophical on the obvious: people are greedy f@cks who will whore any idea to their own ends. And this level of speculative academia is only important--and this is a whopper for me to swallow--because it turns out people really are so stupid that they apparently do need to be protected from bad art and malicious expression.

In my youth, I recoiled from talk of media influencing my young, independent mind. Listening to King Diamond didn't make me a Satanist; something about the idea of selfish logic within the religion itself seemed really attractive at the time. Watching a movie didn't make me want to kill; the nobility of killing (e.g. wars in defence of freedom and dignity) made me want to watch war movies. People blamed Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest for teenage suicides, but the one thing that was anathema was to look at the parents and their contribution to the mess. It seemed absurd that a guy could hear something that's not even in a song and decide to obey.

But Demott lays a savage assault against pop media entertainment, indicting record reviews, political exploitation, Cosby Show, Cagney & Lacey, the movie Working Girl ... and frankly, I have to admit that it's kind of like reading the Communist Manifesto--a not-entirely-interesting rearrangement of things I think I already knew intuitiviely.

I've included the discussion of Working Girl on to the end of the chapter. The excerpt is windy and macabre, and the language remarkably dated. The last paragraph, for all its cheese, is apropos the period he's describing.

But I think what Demott is after is destined to stay somewhat vague and nebulous until that human majority that is dangerously and dysfunctionally stupid is somewhat reduced by ... well, am I holding out for chance?

But I know people who went to college on ethnic-based scholarships whose argument against ethnic-based scholarships is that people don't need them because we're all the same.

And there's a possible inroad: We're all the same. What does that mean to how many people? How many would agree? How many would object? What range of diversity can we expect in considertions of such a phrase?

It's hard to reinforce the functionally proper aspects of such a statement while simultaneously suppressing the manifestions of unethical and exploitative dysfunction.

In the end, "So basically what it comes down to is ..." turns out to be a a problematic way of looking at it.

But since I'm keeping it windy in here, I'll just stop now and leave Demott's wordiness to be the confusing part.

:m:,
Tiassa :cool:

I'm a bit confused about what you are trying to say Tiassa. I read your ramblings twice and I still don't get the exact position:

Are you pro-class or anti-class?

If so, is there an example throughout history of a classless society, or in fact a species of animal that exists in an egalitarian manner?

I'd love to claim neutrality on class, but I see it according to (at least ... at least) two levels:

- There is an intangible principle that class shouldn't exist. This I agree with.
- There is the reality that class ideas do exist and have tangible effect in the world.

The problem is that class is a seemingly infinitely-tricky issue. It is so subjective that my determinations of class and objections thereto are subject to argument. Recognizing what class is and what it does in society, while it seems a simple task, is ridiculously complex.

If nothing else, Demott's ramblings (and my own accompaniment droning) point this out in practical example. Demott has a broad vision, but seems generally to just pile it on and expect the reader to figure out the somewhat obvious trends and also to validate them. I'm actually commenting on this book as I get around to reading it. It's nothing that inspires me to put it away quickly in a complete dose, say, over a weekend. It seems like a litany of things we already know but don't know what to do with. And that latter part, what to do with these things, is what Demott is thus far failing to do. (I expect no better success for myself at this point. I hope for it eventually, but ....)

While I don't think classlessness has existed among people except at such times as our brains were not complex enough to hold such classifications, I do wonder what the evolution of our physical humanity as well as our social humanity brings.

Though I must admit that "fashion accessory" is a step up in American regard for homosexuals, it's still classist and unkind.

how? are you saying homo's are in a class of their own? define class. i hold that ancestry (old style) and socioeconomic factors(modern) form the underpinnings of classist society

example of the former could be a homo of blue blood tho penniless being a member of some exclusive country club in new england being upper class
example of the latter could be a homo immigrant millionaire in an la country club, again upper class
a homo peddling his script while working as a bus boy would be a working class stiff

so ahh perhaps the discrimination is not based on class but something else...sexual orientation? sub-cultural? homophobia?

The problem is that class is a seemingly infinitely-tricky issue. It is so subjective that my determinations of class and objections thereto are subject to argument. Recognizing what class is and what it does in society, while it seems a simple task, is ridiculously complex.

it can be complicated if all variables are taken into acct. however simple generalizations also appear possible tho the results will naturally not show the whole picture