When social class meddles with your decisions it may “feel” like you are lacking fundamental traits. On a closer look, it would ease your mind and sharpen your strategies to differentiate when you’re swimming against a social phenomenon or against your own ghosts.
Social class is said to have been abolished in many countries when socialists and communists dismantled the bourgeoisie. But communism only invented a different kind of class, the nomenclature and declared that the proletariat was to be worshiped instead of the intellectuals and previously rich, but never more than the party. After the fall of communism, capitalism took back its dominant place and with it, the idea that anybody who is enough of something – smart, astute, innovative, organized, informed or simply has a lot of money – could do and be anything. Did these political and economic systems and their ideologies truly dismantle social class? Absolutely not.
All they did was to conceal it and make it a taboo topic of discussion. If your parents are rich you are said to be able to drive the business you inherit to failure or success, if you are poor you are said to have the opportunity to become anything you want – it is all up to you, as most self-help books keep telling us. My argument here is that social class is definitely not dead and it matters more than you think. Should it stop you from trying to get the things that you want to achieve? Not at all. However, it may help you understand why it takes longer, why it takes more effort, why you need to work more than others, why opportunities don’t spring up like mushrooms after a rainy day and why your group of friends cannot help you with anything even if they want to or why they can make all the difference in the world. It may also help you calm down that anxious feeling that you are not doing things fast enough, well enough and why you cannot seem to secure the social capital needed to get you ahead. Social class comes with the social capital and a resourceful one. Also, it might help you understand that you may be higher social class in your country of residence, but as a migrant, your status changes, as social capital amenable to class is international only at the highest levels.
But first, let’s understand what social class is. Generally, in sociology, social class is a concept that is measured by using three main variables: income level, education level and occupation type. Funny that the very things that we are told to be available to everyone, according to their own effort, strength or wits, are actually the stuff that makes social class possible. In more detailed analyses of social class these three defining variables need to be backed up by the same ones measured for a person’s parents. In other words, if you are the first generation to experience social class mobility, it is only your children that will experience some fast and notable benefits that would improve their chances.
If you come from a family which is already well educated at a formal level, has some higher level income, but does not necessarily occupy a white collar type of job, you may already be on the higher end of life as long as you do not get into dramatic trouble. But if your parents come from lower income and blue collar or even a physical kind of labour, even if they have some higher education, your options in life may be a bit restricted, at least in certain types of jobs. While it is true that it is possible to reach a high income, get higher education and have a white collar job yourself, even if your parents don’t, the probability of this happening may not be as big as for those whose parents were already higher up the social ladder and may require more effort. This may sound obvious in theory, but the way it feels when you are deciding where to go with your life, may feel tremendously different. And if on top of this you are a woman, your odds are against you anyway. I know we have positive discrimination policies in place and that we now value women in science and so on, but we still have more men in higher level positions than women in so many fields, and gendered industries and so on and so forth. We have made progress, but there is still some more to go.
I know that most of you know this in theory and understand the concepts. But do you really understand how it applies to you and why this matters when you make career or life decisions or when you evaluate your efforts or, for that matter, when you are evaluated at work?
First of all, those who either by family of origin or by current status or both classify as not higher class may take longer to achieve their dreams, may need to work harder than those who fit the higher class bill and may even achieve less things, have less opportunities and fail more opportunities because of not having access to the right information at the right time. Their route from where they are to where everybody wants to be is actually longer. If your parents live in Palo Alto California, the steps you need to take in order to get into Stanford University are much less in number than the steps you need to get there from Kenya or even Albania, both physically and socially speaking. Everything will stand in your way or facilitate your path, from culture, to type of education, school you go to, neighbourhood, family structure and resources (e.g. if you were raised by your grandparents, by a single parent or all your family, if your parents suffered from some addiction or if they could help you with your math homework, etc.) to the friends who live next door to you and so on. Clearly, your personality, hard work, motivation, drive and so on will play a part, but it will not be the most part. Ceteris paribus your individual traits will make a difference, but how many times have you been in a job interview which evaluated people against their background and the difficulties they had to face in life? Absolutely none. And would that be feasible for employers? For sure, where there is a will there is a way. Would it lead to any gains for employers? I guess it depends on their goals.
Now, this is not an argument against those born in wealthy families. They have their own problems and difficulties. In the end, no life is devoid of tragedy, loss but also immense joy. Some more than others. However, the main argument is that when you make decisions about your life and especially when you allow others to evaluate your work and your results according to some socially agreed grid, you need to understand where you came from in order to see where you are now and how much of your route you’ve already walked. You need to understand why you might miss opportunities, why things “don’t seem to happen to you” and why you constantly seem to fall short of something that others have. These may all be symptoms of social class and you need to look closely and diagnose the problem sharply. You will gain peace of mind, clarity and possibly a chance to be kinder to yourself and to others.
