(SES = socio-economic status, encompassing both social class and income/wealth levels)
In another thread, a sub-thread developed starting with a statement that “Hardly anyone in America socializes outside of their social class.” See replies #538 and those following in this thread:
Most seem to agree that most people’s social circles are largely SES-homogeneous, though there are some exceptions, such as the SES-diverse soccer team described in reply #558, or family relations when some members of the family have changed SES.
College can be an unusual case, since a college may have SES-diverse incoming students (not necessarily the case for all colleges), but SES-homogeneous graduates (most colleges and students see it as a goal, or at least a beneficial side-effect, that college will help students move or stay out of low SES, and bachelor’s degree attainment itself is often considered an indication of middle to high SES).
What other kinds of social circles can result in having SES-diverse social contacts?
Depends on venue and how open one is to socializing. For instance, there’s quite a bit of SES diversity in some corners of the indie performing arts world IME. Performers and participants I’ve known range from working-class or low income to genuinely wealthy folks whether they be trustafarians or those who earned it by their own efforts/talents. Sometimes, this works well and other times, there’s some tensions when the disparate worldviews clash.
Also, while my public had mostly lower-SES/immigrant students when I attended, there was a sizable minority upper/upper-middle class contingent there who mostly came from well-heeled private K-8 before opting for our public magnet due to strong interests in STEM and/or an independent streak which preferred being in a more “hands-off” environment.
This was how I became part of a HS social circle which enabled me and another classmate to spend a long weekend in the East Hamptons the summer after HS graduation. Parents of HS classmate in question were understanding enough to endure the horrified reactions of some of the denizens to the riffraff vibe I and the other friend gave off while he reveled in them as he felt the level of pretentiousness of some of his/his parents’ summer neighbors were ridiculous. Also, part of this might be a 17-18 year old male thing…
Colleges can be great facilitators for this, but they can only go so far in face of factors such as level of work ethic/effort/talent of individual student or larger events like being unlucky to be seriously affected by say…a recession like the one in 2008. There’s also a chance students from higher SES families could experience serious downward mobility.
This is something I’ve noticed with some college classmates as since graduation, our respective SES positions have done a 180 degree flip. It’s been a very delicate situation considering it’s arguably harder to come from an upper-middle class or higher background from childhood only to later experience financial setbacks which means one ends up in a much lower SES position not only economically, but also economically as one no longer has the financial means to continue undertaking activities associated with upper-middle class or higher lifestyles in our society.
I live in a rural, southern, farming community where people do socialize outside their social class. Kids growing up together, attending the same small school and remaining in the community (or coming back to the community after college) and church membership contribute to a situation where guests at parties do have very diverse social class and economic backgrounds.
This weekend I gave a baby shower for the daughter-in-law of a friend at the far end of my rural road. My friend married an older farmer at 17. I believe they both graduated from high school, but don’t know that for a fact. Her husband’s father died young and he had many responsibilities early on. They are very small landowners and their main crop is one that isn’t doing so well the last few years. They make ends meet in a variety of ways. They have a vegetable garden, chickens, fill their freezer during hunting season with venison. She has a home business.
For the most part, the women of my generation in this community who went to college are elementary school teachers or nurses. I would guess about half of the women of my generation at the party went to college. They were the daughters of the large landowners. Most of the men are farmers or contractors. These aren’t activities that produce a whole lot of money at the present.There is one developer, of family land. There is one doctor. There is one retired professor who is back home after spending his career on the west coast. He says he feels like he never really left home, because home was always the family farm. He is tenth generation on his land. This is typical out here.
The kids in our children’s generation have had more options. More of them did go to college. The ones that stay sometimes have jobs they can do on the internet from home. That is going to be huge in allowing this community to survive. One young woman at the party moved to Chicago after college and she and her husband had extremely well paying careers there. When she got pregnant, she moved back “home” and her parents set them up in a house on family land. Her employers allow her to work from home. Her husband got busy looking for jobs in the area within commuting distance and joined her when he found one. People out here regularly commute an hour or more each way to work so they don’t have to move away. At that party were women who regularly travel to urban areas in this country or overseas, and women who have never been more than a couple of hundred miles away from home. There were many hand made baby gifts and the really expensive gifts were delivered to the honoree’s home, rather than opened at the shower. Although in a community this size, it’s pretty clear who has a lot of money and who doesn’t, people are very careful about the feelings of others. That is just how they were raised.
I don’t go to church, but for several years before she passed away I took my elderly neighbor, who was no longer able to drive, to the monthly church bingo lunches. That was an extremely economically diverse group, but racially segregated. My impression is that men hunt in very economically diverse groups and do the processing together. The doctor and the man who mows my yard (and pretty much lives off the charity of his neighbors) hang out together in the mornings at the corner store. All the men hang out there. That is a racially diverse group, an economically diverse group, and an educationally diverse group. They are there every single day except Sunday, when they are at church - at least hypothetically.
"Parents of HS classmate in question were understanding enough to endure the horrified reactions of some of the denizens to the riffraff vibe I and the other friend gave off while he reveled in them as he felt the level of pretentiousness of some of his/his parents’ summer neighbors were ridiculous. "
It was a choice for you to act like riffraff. You could have acted with class regardless of your SES.
The two venues that come to mind where we mingle with people poorer and richer than us are church and the charter school (which draws from various neighborhoods so it’s more SES diverse than the public school).
But both venues are self-selecting for people with common values so it is a very placid sort of co-mingling. I like it.
I’ll say that most of my friends are indeed upper middle class to upper class, but that covers a lot of territory. I think the more important point is - can you be welcoming and friendly towards anyone. I am perfectly at ease in my grandmother’s working-class-at-best neighborhood and I wouldn’t be intimidated to be in a room full of investment bankers either. People are people.
I consider myself middle class. My kids attend schools here in DC where their friends range from embassy and world bank kids to cabdriver kids to ex-currency traders to unemployed/never employed kids…
I have tended to discourage them from hanging out at the homes of the very last group, and prefer to be the host for those kids. I think school and college are the most diverse group situations most people ever encounter. Neighborhood friends and work friends tend to be less diverse
Deliberately trying to “tweak” people for a laugh is the very definition of low class. Which has nothing to do with money. You could have acted graciously which is always appropriate. The fact that you didn’t speaks more to you than the so-called “pretentious” Hamptons neighbors.
My social circle (I don’t mean neighborhoods I walk through, I mean people I am friends with and get together with intentionally) is extremely varied in terms of SES. I’ve lived all over the world and have BEEN at several different levels of wealth and class myself as well.
There’s a set of friends I have in my small town who I know through my kids…more than half of them middle to upper middle class and mainly somewhere around my age though there are several exceptions I can think of. Mostly white, but not all. I have a close friend on Medicaid and a close friend in a McMansion with a beautiful boat. No one I know cares (if they did they wouldn’t be the kind of people I’d hang out with anyway).
There’s a large set of friends I camp with a few times a year, with a band. That one is all over the place in terms of SES, from literally homeless to upper class as in private jet. Friends from my childhood that I still spend time with when I am in NY…again, all over the map from quite poor to quite wealthy, because I grew up in a poor mostly black area but attended a private school on scholarship (also did the visit friends’ summer houses thing as cobrat did), and in between commuted to a school in a more diverse area. I have a set of friends in an island country that I visit 1-2x a year over the past 30 years…also everything from dirt poor to very wealthy, and from many different countries as well.
I suppose it’s possible I could have led the kind of sheltered life that exposed me only to people of my class. My kids might have been like that growing up here (some of their friends are that sheltered), had we not taken them everywhere we possibly could and spent significant time in the city their dad and I are from.
As it stands, I am very comfortable with people from all classes and races, and i have no trouble making connections with people that I like, and getting to the point that we contact each other and get together intentionally, and more, sometimes.
I think my kids have been and will be just fine in a college with a diverse set of students to hang with.
My SES circle is very diverse. Mainly through church and extended family.
I believe that only two classes exist:
normal people. They have families, stable friendships, they work, have ethics, and moral principles. If they have sick relatives - they support them. If they have kids, they take care of them. They can be rich or poor; it is very easy to relate to them.
people with issues. They can be poor or rich. They can’t form stable families, or any other form of stable relationship. They often have issues with alcohol, drugs, jail culture, promiscuity, etc. I try to stay away from these folks.
Thus, I don’t understand the value of “diversity” in college. Normal people are always normal. You don’t need to go to college to learn it.
13 - I don't think they socialize with her or invite her to the White House.
I read that it’s the big cities that are more stratified socio-economic wise. In a small town, people tend to socialize with all folks regardless of income, in my experience.
@alh, when I read cobrat’s post, I did so in the context of many earlier ones in which he talked about gleefully crashing private parties, stealing food, and generally trying to epater la bourgeoisie.
,I read that it’s the big cities that are more stratified socio-economic wise. >
How could you be stratified, if you share the same public transportation, same parking problems, same grocery stores, probably, live in the same neighborhoods?
Stratified as in not socializing across large gaps in wealth. In a small town, a farmer or a small businessman may be the millionaire next door, and he is next door, socializing with those who have a lot less. In my small town, a classmate of mine made a fortune in real estate, but you’d never know it by the way he lived or dressed.
The “millionaire next door” types can live in suburbs or big cities.
However, the “glitzy rich” may be more likely to be found there as well. Or, if the “glitzy rich” live in rural areas, they may live away from the ordinary small town folk.
Snootily continuing in your role as the stick-in-the-mud, I see.
The “riffraff vibe” here was more in the absence of wearing designer clothes along with our retorts to some reactions when they found out we didn’t attend one of the tony tri-state area private/boarding schools and shudder attended a NYC public school.
Retorts had some overlap with jokes alums from my and older HS graduating classes had about Princeton and its students/alums. Figures considering you’ve mentioned how much you admired Princeton in previous posts.
