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...If you work in a corporate setting, and you've pegged yourself as working class, rather than managerial or professional, it WILL affect your career.
By "pegged", I mean your vocal inflections, dress, mannerism, subject of causual conversation, vocabulary, etc, sound lower class. Even with college educated lower-class, people from upper middle class can peg someone in ten minutes who does not have the proper background for managerial advancement. One of the biggest tells is your attitude toward authority. Generally, a distrust toward authority is a big no-no for promotion. ...
My impression is that the American working class is fiercely individualistic, independent, and convinced of the uplifting value of hard work. The cynicism and quickness to blame "the system" is more common amongst people who were raised in comparative comfort, but who then found themselves in strained or diminished circumstances. Indeed, one of the reasons that American society has been so stable and impervious (perhaps up to now) to extremist movements, is this dogged optimism and faith in the system by the working class.
It’s been my observation, in a large institutional employer in the American Midwest, that managerial advancement flows more to persons who conform to institutional expectations, than to those who belong to the professional/upper-middle (or whatever’s the term) classes. In particular, my profession – engineering – is a “gateway profession”, where so many of its practitioners are the first in their family to go to college. If promotions came only to Patricians, we’d have few managers indeed. The institutional expectation is for people of meager backgrounds who went on to receive a reasonably good education, but who never quite distanced themselves from the blue-collar hobbies and idiom of their provenance. What’s so conducive to promotion is a paradoxical mixture of alacrity, jovial friendliness, individual verve and slavish devotion to compliance. Managers are rarely the best engineers, but they are the best at venerating the institution. It is, as others have mentioned, more about “emotional intelligence” than about having a good vocabulary or speech free of annoying accent.
But you’re absolutely right about the importance of “trusting” authority, and trusting the system, or at least appearing to do so. Those who are cynical about the system will be denied promotion, even if otherwise they have good social skills, and are gregarious and responsive to their fellow coworkers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NCN
... One of the main reasons southerners are thought of as dumb is that they are too polite to tell you what you look like from their point of view. Southerners know when they have been cheated and mistreated. They just choose to ignore it.
This is common also in the Midwest, and probably in most areas of lower population density and lower turnover of residents.
Often one hears that a prim, aloof politeness is a marker of higher social class. Assuredly, politeness and self-control are a good thing. But what if it is merely superficial politeness, to be followed by back-stabbing scheming and revenge? The "lower class" tendency is to discharge acrimonious tirade directly to people's faces, blowing off the proverbial steam, and leaving matters at that. Get angry, blow up, then forget about it. By such criteria, it is the Southerners who are "higher class", and the urban Northerners who are the opposite.
Practically speaking there is a supereasy way to ascertain your working or any class status. Despite all that equitable rhetoric USA feels like a somewhat feudal caste society, socio economic segregation runs really deep and wide on micro and macro levels. So all you need to do - just look at the people choosing to associate with you in a semi meaningful way. If you are working class, no matter what you think of yourself, it is unlikely you'll find any managerial etc. characters in your good acquaintances circle. Look at the people surrounding you - It is your class.
With the exception of skipping college, if more of America's working and middle classes actually went by this set of ethics, we would be much better off as a country.
If this was taught to children of all classes, America would be better off.
Practically speaking there is a supereasy way to ascertain your working or any class status. Despite all that equitable rhetoric USA feels like a somewhat feudal caste society, socio economic segregation runs really deep and wide on micro and macro levels. So all you need to do - just look at the people choosing to associate with you in a semi meaningful way. If you are working class, no matter what you think of yourself, it is unlikely you'll find any managerial etc. characters in your good acquaintances circle. Look at the people surrounding you - It is your class.
If I have no friends, does that mean I have no class?
It's interesting to me that in the US, unlike the UK, people tend to avoid labeling themselves "working-class". Unless they were raised in extreme poverty or are Warren Buffett , Americans prefer the term "middle class". But having been raised in a blue-collar home, I've found there are some significant differences between my expectations and experiences in life when compared with my "middle-class" colleagues and friends.
Interestingly, even though my wife is a foreigner, I find she relates to many of these perspectives, as she also comes from a working-class background. Some shared traits/experiences I've noticed:
1) Very little education in how to use/create wealth. Frugal by necessity, but sometimes spendthrifts at payday. No sense of how to invest wisely. Generous, literally, to a fault (for example, by unconditionally lending money to relatives and friends). A lot of time spent visualizing being rich, or hatching hare-brained schemes/playing the lottery, etc.
2) Work is seen as necessary drudgery, not a means to personal fulfillment. Unions are our only defense / don't cross a picket line. Satisfaction is found in hobbies, family, or weekend tasks around the house. College is OK if it leads to a job, but you'd better get a scholarship, and parents can't help you navigate the labyrinth of applications, SATs, tutoring, and financial aid. Reading is an OK escape, but don't do it too much. The TV is always on.
3) "Don't think you're better than other people." Mistrust of "pretense," "elitism," and "fancy stuff." What's familiar (sports teams, neighborhoods, religions, race) is good. For example, domestic beer>boxed wine>any foreign stuff (unless there's an ethnic connection, i.e., Guinness if you're Irish-American). Food should be cheap & plentiful; healthy eating, not smoking and taking care of yourself is weak.
4) Not knowing "the Code." Tendency to over/under dress for the occasion, speak too frankly among wealthier people.
I don't encourage a class warfare mentality, nor do I romanticize growing up working class, but I find the differences interesting. Although I'm probably a "middle class latte-drinker" now , I'm sure I've internalized some of the values I was raised with.
What are your "growing up working-class" experiences?
I grew up in a middle to upper middle class family, but my husband grew up very much in a working class family. He has a better appreciation for what we have than I do probably. We grew up knowing we would never be poor, we would go to college, we would take decent vacations and never have to suffer for lack of money. He grew up in a family that insisted college was the only way to go and he appreciated all the help including small loans and scholarships he got. I took it all for granted and spent more time goofing around than taking my school seriously. I will add one thing though, my parents did make all of us work for our spending money, even in high school.
I grew up upper middle class in a working class neighborhood.
Working class is the level between low class and middle class. Kinda like a lower middle class.
5) An irrational fear that you'll be judged by strangers for your poor grammar and spelling.
Very true!
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, Americans prefer the term "middle class". But having been raised in a blue-collar home, I've found there are some significant differences between my expectations and experiences in life when compared with my "middle-class" colleagues and friends. 
, I'm sure I've internalized some of the values I was raised with.
Very true!
