I started yet another Barbara Ehrenreich book last night, Fear of Falling, a book about what she called the "professional middle class." (IMHO any book of her's is worth reading.) I believe her main thesis is addressing how the "professional middle class" went from a liberal "were are all in this together" attitude in the 1960's to an "we're looking out for ourselves" attitude in the 1980's, but I just started the book, so don't take that as gospel. The "fear of falling" was of falling out of the middle class, as so many have done over the past 50 years.
This post was prompted by the author's struggle with defining the "middle class." Ostensibly, the term started as a descriptor of those in between "the rich" and "the poor," although in Revolutionary times, those between the elites, aka gentlemen, and the scum of society were referred to as the "middling sort," you know tradesmen and the craftsmen and the like, so it wasn't just an economic term. And that is a massive number of people, so subdivisions were created by various and sundry "experts." One such division was to break the middle class down into "white collar workers" and "blue collar workers." The blue collar workers, sometimes also called the working class (as if others did not "work for a living") were people who worked with their hands operating tools: people who used shovels, rakes, sledge hammers, hammers, wrenches, etc. making their livings via their bodies. The white collar workers, used their minds to make their way and thus could afford to wear white shirts as they were unlikely to get dirty. The white collar workers used their hands also, but it was at a computer keyboard, a typewriter, a drafting board, etc. I always thought this division a bit condescending because craftsmen used their minds extensively in their work. An auto mechanic trying to diagnose a poorly performing car is not just using his hands. In any case, it is what it is.
When the term "socioeconomic status" became popular, the middle class was broken into categories by that: we had the "upper middle class" and the "lower middle class," etc.
Ms. Ehrenreich (now sadly departed) decided to use the term "professional middle class" to address her issues, namely being lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers, writers (like her), financiers, etc.
She claims that when we refer to the behaviors of middle class people, we usually are just referring to these "professionals." She points out, for example, that you are about as likely to see a ghost on a TV news show as an actual blue collar worker. The TV news is of, for, and by the professional, college-educated middle class.
In any case, just this introduction as stirred a few thoughts. Back in the 1970's the Democratic Party decided to shift its association away from ethnic and racial minorities, organized labor, and the working class and focus on the professional middle class as their primary target. Their thinking was "Where are those other folks going to go, certainly not to the Republicans." Yeah, brilliant thinking. In my youth the Democrats were the party of organized labor and working class people. Now, the Dems lack of support for organized labor and their abandonment of working class people has lead those people to seek other pastures.
Those people, in the Republican fold, are more than a little sick of being ignored and are throwing monkey wrenches into the gears of politic all over the place. Hallmarks of these feelings is the election of a Black president by a deeply racist electorate, and when that did not work, they decided to elect a non-politician, actually a snake oil salesman, to show how upset they were. Did anyone get the message? Not yet as far as I can see. The non-professional middle class is attacking the status quo and the status quo isn't even noticing it.
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