Social Class
Class passing, analogous to racial and gender passing, is the concealment or misrepresentation of one’s social class. Whereas racial and gender passing is often stigmatized, class passing is generally accepted as normative behavior. Class passing is common in US media and is linked to the notion of the American Dream and of upward class mobility. English-language novels which feature class passing include The Talented Mr. Ripley, Anne of Green Gables, and the Horatio Alger novels. Films featuring class-passing characters include Catch Me If You Can and Andy Hardy Meets Debutante. Class passing also figures into reality television programs such as Joe Millionaire: contestants are often immersed in displays of great material wealth, or may have to conceal their class status.
Motives for class passing might include:
- Achievement of class mobility. Individuals may class pass to achieve social mobility. For instance, working-class students may class pass in educational institutions to obtain academic credentials and the associated rewards.
- Concealment of previous class status. Upwardly mobile individuals may class pass to conceal previous membership in the lower or working classes.
- Membership in the Working Class. Membership in the working class can be construed from multiple viewpoints: on the one hand, working-class identification can be a source of positive identification; on the other, working-class identity can be a source of stigma. Working-class individuals report fear of disclosure of their identity, particularly if poor performance at work or school or deviant behavior may be attributed to them. For instance, a study of working-class students found that they link the fear of performing poorly on standardized tests to a fear of being discovered as working class.
Read more about this topic: Passing (sociology)
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or class:
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co- ordinate grid system laid over it. The instructor could point to different parts of her and say, “Give me the co-ordinates.”... The Major could see every unit in the Army using his idea.... Hot dog!”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)