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240 CHAPTER 8 Social Class in the United States

Cultural Diversity in the United States

Social Class and the Upward Social
Mobility of African Americans

The overview of social class presented in this chapter doesn’t
apply equally to all the groups that make up U.S. society.
Consider geography: What constitutes the upper class of a
town of 5,000 people will differ from that of a city of a million.
In small towns, which have fewer extremes of wealth and
occupation, family background and local reputation are more
significant.
So it is with racial–ethnic groups. All racial–ethnic groups An unwelcome cost greets many African Americans who
are marked by social class, but what constitutes a particular move up the social class ladder: an uncomfortable distancing
social class can differ from one group to another—as well as from their roots, a separation from significant others—parents,
from one historical period to another. siblings, and childhood friends (hooks 2000; Lacy 2007). The
Consider social class among African upwardly mobile enter a world unknown
Americans (Landry and Marsh 2011). to those left behind, one that demands
The earliest class divisions can not only different appearance and
be traced to slavery—to slaves who speech, but also different values, aspira-
worked in the fields and those who tions, and ways of viewing the world.
worked in the “big house.” Those These are severe challenges to the self
who worked in the plantation home and often rupture relationships with
were exposed more to the customs, those left behind.
manners, and forms of speech of An additional cost is a subtle racism
wealthy whites. Their more privileged that lurks beneath the surface of some
position—which brought with it bet- work settings, poisoning what could be
ter food and clothing, as well as lighter easy, mutually respectful interaction.
work—was often based on skin color. To be aware that white co-workers per-
Mulattos, lighter-skinned slaves, were often chosen ceive you as different—as a stranger, an
for this more desirable work. One result was the development intruder, or “the other”—engenders frustration, dissatisfac-
of a “mulatto elite,” a segment of the slave population that, tion, and cynicism. To cope, many nourish their racial identity
proud of its distinctiveness, distanced itself from other slaves. and stress the “high value of black culture and being black”
At this time, there also were free blacks. Not only were they (Lacy and Harris 2008). Some move to neighborhoods of
able to own property but some even owned black slaves. upper-middle-class African Americans, where they can live
After the War Between the States (as the Civil War is among like-minded people who have similar experiences
known in the South), these two groups, the mulatto elite and (Lacy 2007).
the free blacks, formed an upper class that distanced itself
from other blacks. From these groups came most of the black For Your Consideration
professionals. After World War II, the black middle class ex- ↑ In the box on upward social mobility on page 86, we dis-
panded as African Americans entered a wider range of occu- cussed how Latinos face a similar situation. Why do you think
pations. Today, more than half of all African American adults this is? What connections do you see among upward mobility,
work at white-collar jobs, about 22 percent at the professional frustration, and racial–ethnic identity? How do you think that
or managerial level (Beeghley 2008). the upward mobility of whites is different? Why?

Drawing the Poverty Line
To determine who is poor, the U.S. government draws a poverty line. This measure
Read on MySocLab
was set in the 1960s, when poor people were thought to spend about one-third of their
Document: The Compassion Gap
in American Poverty Policy incomes on food. On the basis of this assumption, each year, the government computes
a low-cost food budget and multiplies it by 3. Families whose incomes are less than this
amount are classified as poor; those whose incomes are higher—even by a dollar—are
poverty line the official measure considered “not poor.”
of poverty; calculated to include This official measure of poverty is grossly inadequate. Poor people actually spend only
incomes that are less than three about 20 percent of their income on food, so to determine a poverty line, we ought to
times a low-cost food budget
multiply their food budget by 5 instead of 3 (Uchitelle 2001). Another problem is that