When I was a Fulbright exchange teacher in Norway, I read the Guardian Weekly and discovered my favorite commentator on American political life, Gary Younge. His perspective is always refreshingly honest and pointedly leftist. I couldn't always agree with his point of view, but I always learned something from his columns.
Younge's latest column The US needs to talk about class continues a series he's done on the US presidential election campaign. He's been traveling around the country writing about the voters and issues. The Guardian site also has audio/video of these interviews. In today's column Younge focuses on the demise of Uniontown, PA. His argument: until we start talking about class, we're not talking about the right issue.
Younge quotes a survey that shows American ignorance and naivite on class:
Politicians too often cast the issue in populist terms of rich and poor, explains Michael Zweig, the director of the centre for study of working-class life at the State University of New York's Stonybrook campus. "Most people want to be rich and most of them don't know what rich is. A poll in 2000 showed that 19% of Americans thought they were in the richest 1% and a further 21% said they expected to be in the richest 1% in the next 10 years."
Mr. Zweig's findings come as no surprise. I remember the PBS series People Like Us: Social Class in America (2001) which pointed out that Americans identify with the class they "hope" to achieve rather than what their income might state. Everyone interviewed--folks living in the Hamptons and those living hand-to-mouth--all identified themselves as "middle class." Social markers like dress, speech, and cliques appear early in life, and by the end of high school, one's socio-economic class was established. Even as people fell further and further behind, they clung to the dream of being Jay Gatsby someday.
Still Younge argues that the time is right for a conversation on class.
Moreover, most people are heading into this bust without having enjoyed any of the benefits of a boom. Since the last recession the median wage has declined slightly. A Pew survey to be released on Wednesday reveals that most people feel they have been stuck in place or fallen backward over the past five years - the most gloomy short-term appraisal of personal advancement in almost 50 years. Thanks to the credit crunch, the days when people softened the blow by borrowing massively on their homes and credit cards are over. Americans are heading for a huge slump in their standard of living.
Savvy, because the biggest increases in unemployment or slumps in house prices (and in some instances both) are occurring in many of the swing states - namely Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada and Michigan.
On economics, neither Senator Clinton or Senator McCain can make the equity argument since they both support NAFTA and argue for free markets rather than fair markets. True incomes rose in the 1990s for some, but the disparity between rich and poor in this country is unseemly. And the lack of opportunity for many Americans to earn good wages is likewise appalling. We are simply not replacing lost manufacturing jobs fast enough with service-sector jobs. Or we're not willing to pay those folks the same. And we don't recognize what this is costing us.
I hope Senator Obama will take on this issue. He has done a good job presenting us with a vocabulary by which we can discuss race, and I have seen--here's the teacher in me talking--that people can be persuaded once they share common terms. I believe he can do so on the class issue. The key to winning this and future elections is framing its discourse. And like Gary Younge, I think it's a conversation long overdue.