Here at Pasadena City College, we have an excellent theater department. Here’s the press release for the newest production:
Follow a year in the lives of six upper-class friends through a series of holiday-themed parties as the Pasadena City College Performing and Communication Arts Division proudly presents “The Country Club,” which opens on Friday, March 23, in PCC’s Sexson Auditorium.
Playwright Douglas Carter Beane’s comedy-drama tells the story of a young and charmingly neurotic woman who retreats from a failed marriage and decides to go back to her upper-class hometown in Pennsylvania. There, she finds love, friendships, and tragedies. The play consists of nine scenes and evolves around different holidays.
“This ‘dramady’ reflects the typical White Anglo-Saxon Protestant domain of the upper-class,” said Duke Stroud, PCC professor and director of the play. “It’s a portrait of dysfunctional relationships, which are funny and dramatic at the same time.”
(Note: I’ve explained OKOP and NOKOP here, and I now have a whole specific archive dealing with class.)
I know nothing about the play, and I doubt I’ll be able to get a chance to see it. But the press release, which I read yesterday, got under my skin instantly. You see, I hate the use of the phrase “upper class” to describe American families.
I grew up in culture that described itself as “upper-middle class”. And in the WASP circles of my youth and my family background, I certainly encountered plenty of remarkably well-to-do people. I know the world of “clubs” fairly well, and though that world holds relatively little interest for me today, it’s still quite familiar. (Or as John Bradshaw would write it, family-ar). And here’s the thing: if there’s one maxim “our kind of people” all agreed on, it was that talking explicitly and publicly about class was prima facie evidence that you lacked it. Nothing could be more more NOKOP than to describe anything, be it a social gesture or a fashion accessory, as “classy.” Once, while at a family luncheon, I used the term “classy” to describe the play of one of John McEnroe’s opponents (we had just watched a Wimbledon match on television.) From the reaction of a few of my older relatives, you would think I had dropped the f-bomb. “I think you want to say that his behavior was ‘gentlemanly’, dear” one of my elders advised me. Another suggested that “sporting” would have been an even more appropriate choice. I was about 14, and just starting to get the picture: we don’t talk about class.
And even worse than calling something “classy”? Referring to the existence of an American “upper-class.” I was raised to believe that the only authentic upper-class that exists is to be found in Europe. As one hired geneaologist famously told my great-aunt Carmen when she speculated that we had many aristocratic forebears, “Mrs. Starr, dukes don’t emigrate.” “Dukes don’t emigrate” became the standard bon mot we all used (and still do) whenever anyone speaks of an upper class in the United States. As far as we’re concerned, we maintain the satisfying fiction that almost all are middle class: there’s lower-middle, middle-middle, and upper-middle. And the less said specifically about these strata, the better.
To be really honest, I feel protective of the very sort of people the press release from our theater department seems to disparage. I’ve reread it a couple of times, and it’s not particularly offensive (save for the wince-inducing use of “upper class”). But here’s the really blunt truth: there are very few folks on this campus — faculty, staff, students — who come from a WASPy upper-middle class background. On at least one side of my family, I do. And part of me feels as if this play (about which I know zilch) is going to caricature a culture that I value. And those doing the caricaturing on stage will, on this campus that is over 80% non-white, be those who know little or nothing about the culture they lampoon.
It’s embarrassing to cop to this. Frankly, I’m prepared to believe that there’s a certain element of both classism and racism in my response. And Lord knows, despite years and years of teaching at a diverse urban community college, despite living in a glorious, successful, interracial marriage, I still struggle with my own bigotry, my own elitism. I am not proud of it, and I continue to work spiritually and psychologically to overcome whatever vestiges of prejudice remain in my soul.
The “WASPy country-club set” don’t need me to defend them. Yes, I continue to maintain quite seriously that we don’t have an authentic “upper-class” in this country. I continue to feel uncomfortable when others discuss what sort of behaviors or clothing choices are “classy” or not. But my intellectual and political training tells me that there’s no point in defending those who have had the greatest access to power and privilege in our nation’s relatively brief history. My commitment to justice and equality tells me that there is much in what I call my heritage that is ugly, oppressive, elitist, emotionally stunted and whoppingly superficial. There is also, as I’ve posted before, much that is joyous and good. (Read my “Happy WASP boy”.)
And I may have to swallow my own issues, and go see this play.
UPDATE: I’m reminded that nearly a century ago, my great-great grandfather wrote and privately published his memoirs. Speaking of ancestry, he wrote something lovely that is quoted as often as the “dukes don’t emigrate” line. A.A. Moore said in 1915:
Children, let your modest pride be this: you come of sturdy stock.
I love that. Even if I suspect it’s a reference to the fact that many of us are big-boned.
Well, my point of contention with the play’s description is the use of “typical” - “typical” in the sense that these situations are “actually played out” most of the time, or “typical” in the sense that this is how outsiders “hypo-perceive” and stereotype these situations?
Also, about mentioning class as an indicator that one does not have it: it’s a good thing that English is not like Balinese (or Japanese or Korean) in this regard. Every time one speaks Balinese, the speaker indexes the difference (or alignment) in social status and caste between speaker and addressee (and sometimes a separate third-party) automatically - it cannot be avoided.
“part of me feels as if this play (about which I know zilch) is going to caricature a culture that I value. And those doing the caricaturing on stage will, on this campus that is over 80% non-white, be those who know little or nothing about the culture they lampoon.”
I think that what you describe here is applicable to most definable groups of people, be they categorized by race, gender, religion, or socioeconomic status. When it is a group that you identify with, there is a natural fear of being misunderstood by way of mockery and over-simplification. As an Asian-American, I know my sensitivity radar shoots into high gear when representations of Asians pop up anywhere. Not that I always care, but boy, am I paying attention. Conversely, when I was in China, I was hyper-sensitive about how perceptions about Americans were systematically flattened into gross two-dimensional cartoons. For me, the key has been to consciously tone down my defensive reactions and just be prepared to shed light on the underlying complexities if such an opportunity arose. I can relate to your reaction, but I would try to move beyond it.
I’m a former student — really enjoy the blog!
Your comment (with regard to charicatures of Americans) is interesting, Connie. I always enjoy seeing Americans represented, even lampooned, in other cultures. (For instance, I love seeing the Monty Python folks play Americans.) I know a Swedish guy who is really offended by the “Swedish Chef” character on Sesame Street, and I know a Jewish guy who is never offended by (American) comedic representations of Jews, so I guess people can go either way on this issue.
Interesting stuff–I’ll definitely read the other post when I’ve got time. What really interests me here is my own reaction, which was, at first, irritation with defending what looks, from a complete outsider’s POV, like the privileged status, and a culture which is based around things I either don’t get or don’t agree with. Then I did a doubletake and realized how much time I’ve spent defending and embracing my own “white trash” roots, particularly when I was at a university where most of the students were wealthy, and didn’t see any kind of value in “my” culture. Because, I think, it’s easy to deride soemting you don’t get, and instinctive to to defend something you belong to.
Dukes DO emigrate, sometimes. They lose their fortunes, periods of social upheaval happen, they like the US better, they are the “illegitimate” offspring.
That phrase is silly.
It’s funny; I think at least some of the relatives on my mother’s side, and some of the people in my school district when I was growing up, would probably count as WASP upper middle class, and I did know some well to do people as a child, but a lot of the OKOP stuff you talk about is still alien to me. It never would have occurred to me that “classy” would be a word you wouldn’t use, or that “upper class” wouldn’t be a perfectly ordinary way to refer to people in the US who are, in fact, rich. And so on. If I had an “OKOP” as a child, it was more a general sense that our kind of people were people who valued study and education, and, in so far as I thought of anyone as being ethnically like me, it would have been, I suppose, the Jewish and Italian-American kids at my school (since there weren’t so many other Greek-Americans). And I don’t know a thing about the world of “clubs.”
And even so, my background’s probably more privileged than that of most of your students.
i just have to say, the contention that there is no such thing as an “upper class” in the united states seems akin to the contention that the tooth fairy is real.
i’m sure its dimensions and inhabitants could be debated, but its existence? really? wowza.
And here’s the thing: if there’s one maxim “our kind of people” all agreed on, it was that talking explicitly and publicly about class was prima facie evidence that you lacked it.
Including people who mention as a matter of fact that they come from a working-class background? Or I suppose in that case it would go without saying, wouldn’t it…
What I find weird about this is that, while of course the adjective “classy” is vulgar and nobody who talks about being it is, I certainly share that justifiable prejudice — this is completely unrelated to discussions of social class! How do OKOP in academia talk about Marxism, for heaven’s sake?
Or is that the point, that they don’t?
Antigone, the remark to my aunt Carmen may indeed be less true now than when he uttered it back around (I think) 1905, maybe 1910. The upheavals of 1917-1945 that brought a smattering of genuine aristocrats to these shores had not yet occurred. As for younger sons, technically they aren’t Dukes — the law of primogeniture is pretty darned strict.
Lynn, I realize I need a more precise term. Other than directing people to read a John Cheever short story or two (Cheever is the great OKOP writer of the 20th century), it’s hard to pin down what I mean. You mention the importance of study and education, and in the WASP milieu I refer to, manners trumped book knowledge every time. I’m talking about people for whom the “gentleman’s C” is not a joke, and for whom too much hard work seemed, well, gauche, as if one had something to prove. There are endless subsets of different social groups… where’s Vance Packer when we need him?
Kate, I am willing to admit that there are a group of very powerful and wealthy people out there. I suppose that given the American context, calling them “upper class” makes sense. What I have written about here is not a genuine rejection of the whole notion of an “upper class”, but a brief anecdote about my upbringing and my own reflexive discomfort with the term.
Oh, sophonisba, good distinction. Talking about class in the theoretical sense (as in a discussion of Marxism) is very different from saying “she’s got a lot of class”. The former is quite consistent with OKOP, not the latter! ;-)
Whats with the need to give race, gender and religion their own index, but then lump social and economic status into one group?
The easiest example that comes to mind is the Republican paradox. I often note that people use their status as a Republican to increase their social status, in ways that their economic status fails them.
Well, at least that was true until Katrina…
What I find weird about this is that, while of course the adjective “classy” is vulgar and nobody who talks about being it is, I certainly share that justifiable prejudice
Actually, I’d tend to be dubious about people who call themselves, or members of their immediate family, “classy.” Calling other people classy isn’t something I ever learned to avoid.
You mention the importance of study and education, and in the WASP milieu I refer to, manners trumped book knowledge every time. I’m talking about people for whom the “gentleman’s C” is not a joke, and for whom too much hard work seemed, well, gauche, as if one had something to prove.
Ah, now that’s so totally alien to the (mostly non-WASP) milieu I grew up in. My set of ingrained values was that book knowledge trumped manners every time, and that people who would get a “gentleman’s C” were privileged twits who lacked our sense of the value of hard work. And that if you’re looking for a guy to date, you look for the one with brains, ambition, and drive, not the one who’s coasting on that gentleman’s C.
I actually haven’t read John Cheever; maybe I’ll take a look at his stories.
I’m from Pennsylvania and I’d like to know where this “upper class” hometown referred to in the blurb for the play is supposed to be. Mainline Philly suburbs, maybe? ‘Cause when I think “upper class” WASP-y types the Keystone State is hardly the first place that springs to mind. In fact, living in Philly a few years ago was the first time I recall really encountering a significant number of people remotely “upper class” in a WASP kind of way (interestingly, owing to Penna’s unique history, several of them were Quakers).
Of course now I live in Boston where you can’t swing a cat without hitting some guy whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower… (we kid because we love!)
Yes, the Mainline area, Bryn Mawr, Haverford, that sort of place… that’s where I assume this play is set, though I’m just guessing.
Wow, another post about how hard it is to be white and affluent (hedged fore and aft with the usual disclaimers, which are about as convincing as Ted Haggard’s excuses). And this not long after another abnegatory-yet-self-congratulatory post about how onerous it is to endure the sexual advances of nubile young women. What’s next, a complaint about how hard it is to be tall and thin? You’re as predictable as a mystery play — and the similarities don’t end there.
Where are you getting the impression, Reader, that I’m complaining about anything? I had hoped that this post would strike a reflective tone; I was being candid about a knee-jerk reaction I had to reading a press release, and how it connected to my sense of my own upbringing. I have never once claimed that WASPs were oppressed.
And where I talked about how how onerous it is to endure the sexual advances of nubile young women, I have no idea.
given the American context
right, exactly, context is king. and also, i knew you weren’t trying to genuinely reject the whole notion - that comes through in your tone, and is pretty consistent with your general style of identifying and questioning things. my shock was mainly at the fact that they idea could have been promulgated seriously in the first place.
and that shock, too, is context - that an upper-class did exist in america was not questioned where/how i grew up, just as the fact that it didn’t exist in america was not questioned in yours.
i do find it interesting, though, that you say “I continue to maintain quite seriously that we don’t have an authentic “upper-class” in this country.” i’m curious to know why that is - and whether you might be open to considerating the idea that, given the context, your family might actually have been part of what is generally perceived as the upper class?
(i, of course, have far too little information to make that kind of assessment, and i don’t mean to say that i think you’re obligated to! it’s just my own curiosity talking there.)
“I continue to maintain quite seriously that we don’t have an authentic “upper-class” in this country.”
I think you use a very narrow definition of upper class. First of all, as measured by wealth, the US ideal of class mobility is a myth for many people. See: http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/Rich-Poor-Gap13may05.htm
Secondly the use OKOP strikes me as elitist in a social sense. People are separated into Our Kind and not Our Kind (and Our Kind is superior). That fact that you mock this attitude speaks well of you. But I am not persuaded that classes don’t exist in this country just because we do not use titles for our owner class. Wishing there weren’t classes doesn’t make it so.
I went to school with a fair number of people who coasted with a gentleman’s C. Being a lower middle class kid with a caddy scholarship, I also though they were entitled twits. I do have an appreciation for those members of the upper class who do go on to live useful, civic-minded lives. Not many have the financial security to build/fund museams, hospitals, etc.
I guess my objection to the notion of an upper class is based on the assumption that class is about more than wealth or power or status — it’s based on enduring inheritance too. I tend to reflexively think of “upper class” as a synonym for “aristocracy” (and I do mean an aristocracy of birth, not wealth or merit.)
If I expand that definition, then I suppose an upper class exists. But as for my family, there were always people I knew who were both wealthier and better-connected than we were. And above all, we knew we were the descendants of pioneers who had simply gotten here first and stolen more. (That’s unfair, but it’s not entirely inaccurate.)
Edith Wharton has a whole thing about how the American upper class rejects the label upper-class. It’s probably in Age of Innocence, but it might be House of Mirth. It’s a common theme, and I think it’s basically a tool of self-justification: the upper class pretends that privilege doesn’t exist, because then they can pretend that their elite status is just a result of their superiority to others, including other rich people. You can see that in the thing Hugo mentions about stigmatizing hard work. This sets up an insurmountable barrier for the upwardly mobile, because pretty much by definition the only way someone from lower down the social scale can make it into the upper class is via hard work. (You could also marry into it, which is somewhat more complicated. I think, basically, that marrying into it is acceptable if you can pass for being born into it.) So by definition anyone who would be eligible to enter that class won’t be permitted, because they’re obviously a tacky striver, not like the tasteful and restrained people who happened to be born OKOP. It’s an invisible, unspoken barrier, but it’s a barrier nonetheless.
I’m definitely NOKOP, and until I was 14 I didn’t realize that OKOP existed. (This is odd, because one of my closest friends in elementary school was hard-core OKOP. But I had no idea that she represented a culture, rather than one eccentric and charming family.) But I ended up at a snotty private high school filled with OKOP types, which was eye opening. I will freely admit that I have some issues about this, some of which might be me conflating OKOP stuff with general high-school angst. And I’m sure that OKOP culture looks different from the right side of the invisible divide. But what I saw was a bunch of people who had elevated subtle exclusion to an art form, and it’s not a culture that I hold in especially high regard.
Here’s the thing, though. I don’t think that being OKOP really matters that much at this point. It doesn’t come with any real advantages above those that are conferred by wealth. The only exception I can think of is that OKOP have better legacy connections with elite colleges than people whose wealth is of a more recent vintage, and I don’t think that’s really a huge advantage, all things considered. It’s also probably true that not-so-rich people from OKOP backgrounds have cultural capital that similarly-situated NOKOPs don’t, but we’re talking about a small group of not-rich OKOPs relatively speaking. So while it’s galling to have a bunch of entitled jerks think they’re better than you for no good reason, it’s really not a socially significant phenomenon. I think we’d be better off keeping our eyes on the structures of inequality that really matter in American society.
Sally, amen to the observations in your first and third paragraphs. Agree completely.
What bothers me about this (inclusive of your older posts on NOKOP/OKOP and class, which I just went back and read) is that despite your recognition that “much in what I call my heritage that is ugly, oppressive, elitist, emotionally stunted and whoppingly superficial,” it seems like most of your writing on this topic has slanted in the direction of publicly defending your right to love your family and not feel guilty about what your ancestors may have done.
I have no bone to pick with either of those, really. But I don’t find it very original, or a useful contribution to the discussion. There are people all over the place aggressively defending their right to not feel guilty about what their ancestors did! Rather than flippantly dismissing “the sins of the ancestors” (as you do in an earlier post), let’s have some real theological reflection on the Hebrew Bible’s repeated assertion that the sins of the ancestors DO fall upon the children. I think those verses provide an excellent biblical model for reflecting upon the _responsibility_ (rather than guilt) that we carry for addressing the situations of inequity that have been left to us, like it or not, by the actions of our ancestors.
And I think it is critical for European-Americans, while not trashing everything in our inherited ethnicities, to reflect carefully on what aspects of our inherited culture do reflect the deep influence of centuries of being colonizers, and not too easily claim that “our culture is as good as anyone’s”.
Carl, there’s an important distinction between
a. not feeling guilty about what one’s ancestors did (guilt ought to be reserved for one’s personal failings only)
and
b. not feeling responsible to work to create a more equitable society.
Insofar as I have benefitted from unmerited privilege, I have an obligation to share with others and seek to create a more just California. It’s not white guilt, it’s an acknowledgement that what I have been given is less about my personal virtue and more about my heritage.
To paraphrase Ann Richards, those of us born on third base had better not lie to ourselves and assume we hit a triple to get there. I don’t think I do tell myself that lie.
We need to be honest about the mistakes of our ancestors. We also need to see those mistakes in a historical context, and avoid the tendency to mythologize and glamorize those who were the victims of colonization. Cruelty is a human universal, and sin — at least the capacity for sin — is found in every tribe and nation under the sun. Collectively, some have inflicted both more harm (and perhaps more good) than others.
Hugo: I agree with your comments on privilege in the middle two paragraphs. I don’t have any problem making the distinction between guilt and responsibility - I think I made that distinction pretty clear in my own comment. But I am wary of the self-serving potential in choosing to emphasize “I don’t need to feel guilty” more than “I need to be responsible”, especially since the former is already a deafening chorus in our society compared to the feeble whimper of the latter. And I am also wary of subtly excising real analysis of our historical collective culpability as a critical element in “working to create a more equitable society”, and leaving out the need for actual, physical recompense for past wrongs.
On the one hand, yes, of course; and on the other hand, no. I think these are precisely the vacuous truisms that are so tempting to _replace_ substantive reflection on what our collective history means and what it says about us.
(The rest of this comment out-grew comment size, so I posted it over on the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog - young.anabaptistradicals.org.)
“I always enjoy seeing Americans represented, even lampooned, in other cultures. (For instance, I love seeing the Monty Python folks play Americans.) I know a Swedish guy who is really offended by the “Swedish Chef” character on Sesame Street, and I know a Jewish guy who is never offended by (American) comedic representations of Jews, so I guess people can go either way on this issue.”
This is true. I grew up in Appalachia, ‘coal miner’s daughter’ and all that applies, and I find it very entertaining when the redneck/hillbilly stereotype is employed in popular culture. When done badly, it can be offensive, but when it’s done well, it’s just beautiful and hilarious (and I think the difference is when, as Hugo said, the stereotype is used by people who understand the culture vs people who don’t). My mother, on the other hand, finds all portrayals of us highly offensive and cannot understand how I do not. The difference between us, I think, is that she is very much embarrassed by her background and was raised that way by her parents (grandma was the child of immigrants and was very much OKOP, even in southern WV married to a decidedly NOKOP man and all mom’s siblings try really hard to distance themselves from their neighbors and friends), while I’ve embraced my ‘redneck roots’ for the most part. At least, I don’t feel the least bit embarrassed or ashamed of where (and who) I come from. Sure, I’m upwardly mobile and I’ve left WV, gotten educated, etc., but no matter where else I go or what else I do, my favorite places in the world are in the hills of southern WV and my favorite people are the people who live there.
Hugo:
It seems to me you’re equivocating on the term “class”. The claim that your family can’t be “upper-class” because “Dukes don’t emigrate” explicitly ties class to the hereditary nobility: you aren’t upper-class in the British sense because you (apparently) aren’t descended from the titled nobility. But you then reference that fact in order to “maintain the satisfying fiction that [we] are middle class”, breaking that category down into “lower-middle, middle-middle, and upper-middle”, which in American usage is unequivocally a reference to wealth or income. You use your lack of hereditary “upper-class” status to deny your economic “upper-class” status, but the term doesn’t carry the same meaning at all when used in those two different contexts - and it is the latter, the one you deny, that is most salient in the US.
It’s easy to elide the distinction between these usages, both because wealth is often inherited with ancestry, and because the economic classes have distinct mores and manners, such that one can claim a certain “class” status on the basis of one’s values and behavior independently from one’s wealth or heritage. Thus one can plausibly claim membership in multiple classes on these different grounds. It seems to me, from your description, as if your family claims (but doesn’t speak aloud) “upper-class” status as a matter of manners and values, and “middle-class” status as a matter of heredity, while carefully avoiding the question of which class their wealth or income would mark them out to be. And, again, it’s the latter sign that most outsiders would look to to identify your class, regardless of what you say about yourselves.
Hugo, Hugo, Hugo…
i realize you might well grasp this intellectually, even if not viscerally, but the only people who could seriously not think there’s an upperclass (and every other kind, too) in this country are the kind who’ve never experienced its underclass.
i’m a thirtysomething immigrant here in the upper midwest. i spent my time flipping burgers for a living when i got laid off from my first blue-collar job; nowadays i refer to that as part of my compulsory Americanism education. i’ve done my time living in a trailer park; i got fond of telling anybody who’ll listen that the stereotypes about “trailer trash” are all true, all too true. (King of the Hill? thinly fictionalized documentary. been there, had those neighbours. had worse neighbours, in fact…) currently i’m holding on to the lower edge of the middle class with my knuckles whitening. if i’m lucky indeed, i might make it into upper-middle before i retire, though i doubt i will be. you, Hugo, by your self-descriptions are solidly upper class, please take my word for that.
my native country wasn’t a classless society, either, although we did tend to pride ourselves on social egalitarianism quite a bit. it was a great deal closer to the classless ideal (if ideal that notion be) than the U.S. is now, or likely ever was. the contrast i saw on immigrating here highlighted that (and many other things) starkly; America is most definitely a class-stratified place to live, do not ever doubt it.
…heh. here i thought all my experiences of genuine culture shock were in the past by now, left behind shortly after deplaning at JFK, and then along come you with this post… it’s not that bad a sort of feeling, the second time around. :-)