Meritocracy and Class Structure

In Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, Brooks claims that the new upper class was composed of the educated elite – that wealth was no longer attributed to the same social rules of the past with the same wealthy families remaining in power merely by their status but had to compete within the educational institutions with the emergence of new individuals obtaining education and competing for prestigious, well-paying jobs. While describing the old elite, Brooks states:

They knew it was vulgar to be gaudy, they tended toward thriftiness, but they seem not to have seen their own money as an affront to American principles of equality. On the contrary, most took their elite status for granted, assuming that such position was simply part of the natural and beneficent order of the universe. There was always going to be an aristocracy, and so far the people who happened to be born into it, the task was to accept the duties that came along with its privileges. (Brooks, 2014, p. 312)

By contrast, the new elite came about due to opportunities presented from educational attainment, and this new elite often times found themselves struggling between their knowledge and guilt of social injustices and the woes of the lower class, while also having found themselves in new positions of wealth and power. According to Brooks, “In the resolution between the culture and the counterculture, it is impossible to tell who co-opted whom, because in reality the bohemians and the bourgeois, co-opted each other. They emerge from this process bourgeois bohemians, or Bobos.” (Brooks, 2014, p. 314)

Ain’t No Makin’ It: Leveled Aspirations in a Low-Income Neighborhood, however has a far dimmer version of social stratification and the reality of accomplishments in America. It chronicles the viewpoints and lives of two separate groups growing up in a low-income neighborhood: the Hallway Hangers and the Brothers. The Hallway Hangers disagree with the widespread notion in America that society values and rewards individuals based on their merits and accomplishments, while the Brothers believe they buy into this American dream ideal, where they should be able to work their way out of the low-income neighborhood and lifestyle that their neighbors have fallen victim to.

In conclusion of the study, the Hallway Hangers have struggled with maintaining full-time employment, many ending up in the criminal justice system and working within the underground economy selling drugs when the secondary labor market has failed to provide them with the means of supporting themselves. Although doing slightly better than the Hallway Hangers, the Brothers also have not been able to attain the American dream through hard work as they had previously believed. Thus, Macleod concludes:

Conservative and liberal commentators alike often contend that if the poor would only apply themselves, behave responsibly, and adopt bourgeois values, then they will propel themselves into the middle class. The Brothers followed the recipe quite closely, but the outcomes are disappointing. They illustrate how rigid and durable the class structure is. Aspiration, application, and intelligence often fail to cut through the firm figurations of structural inequality. Though not impenetrable, structural constraints on opportunity, embedded in both schools and job markets, turn out to be much more debilitating than the Brothers anticipated. Their dreams of comfortable suburban bliss currently are dreams deferred, and are likely to end up as dreams denied. [if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span>CITATION Mac14 \p 621 \l 1033 <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]

I find myself leaning more closely in my perspective to MacLeod than to Brooks. I have known many people that have done everything they were told to do, work hard and obtain a college education, only to still find themselves trapped in the lower class, only this time strapped with college debt. Now that’s not to say that obtaining a college education is pointless – many people do end up finding some form of greater success after college. Education and hard work is not the end-all answer that many people like to chalk it up to be however, and moving out of the class you were born into is far more difficult than many like to admit.

Bibliography

Brooks, D. (2014). Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. In D. B. Grusky, Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective. Boulder: Westview Press.

MacLeod, J. (2014). Ain't No Makin' It: Leveled Aspirations in a Low-Income Neighborhood. In D. B. Grusky, Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective. Boulder: Westview Press.

#inequality #education #sociology