Social class is a tricky issue to discuss and define in the United States, and, for some reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about it recently. I’ve been trying for a few days to compose a post about my thoughts on social class, but I can’t seem to create a post that really encompasses all my thoughts. So I decided to ask you all to answer some questions about your perception of class, and then in a few days I will answer the questions myself in a post. Please leave me some comments with the answers to as many of the following questions as you are willing, and please be honest!
1. How do you define social class? By income (standard in the U.S.) or profession (standard outside the U.S.)? Or do you use a totally different definition?
2. Which social class do you consider yourself a part of now?
3. Which social class did you grow up in?
4. How did the social class you grew up affect your worldview, financially and otherwise?
5. What do you consider to be “markers” of social class? Cars? Homes? Clothes? Or do you think that social class is marked by a way of thinking/acting, rather than by possessions?
6. Following from #5 (assuming you think that social class is more a way of thinking/acting), do you think that we are all “socialized” into a class? If so, who socializes us? Our parents? Our extended family? The community we grew up in?
7. How does one know that she has changed social classes, assuming for the sake of argument that in America one can change her social class?
Let me know what you think, and then I’ll tell you what I think!
