let’s start here raise your hand if you
consider yourself middle class that’s a
lot of people now I’m guessing that some
of you who raised your hands live in
households that earn two hundred
thousand dollars or more a year
that’s actually not middle-class that’s
the top six percent but you know as
Americans we use the term middle class
almost indiscriminately so in a recent
Bloomberg story an amusement-park worker
earning twenty two thousand dollars a
year and a lawyer earning 200 volt
described themselves as middle-class
what happens if we look at Americans who
were just actually in the middle here’s
what we see the bottom 30 percent of
Americans are poor their median
household income is around 22,000 then
the middle 53% have a median household
income of around 75,000 typically they
have blue and pink collar jobs and then
the top 17% are the professional
managerial elite or PME they have a
median household income of about a
hundred and seventy three thousand so as
Americans we’re a little clueless about
class why does it even matter well we’ve
heard a lot about the top one percent
and the bottom ninety nine but the
conflict that’s driving American
politics today is between the PME that
top 17% and Americans in the middle so
we need to learn more about that here’s
where it started the PME lost connection
with a group whom prior generations
given a place of honor so this is
actually right here in Denver it’s the
mountain state’s telephone company
headquarters over on 14th Street and
it’s a mural painted in 1929 look at how
it celebrates the nobility of
blue-collar work similar things all over
the country but that was on the wane by
around 1970 when the famous TV show all
in the family
featured Archie Bunker a blue-collar guy
who was depicted as racist sexist stupid
and fat and then in the 1990s came Homer
Simpson amiable but ignorant also fat
closer to our day in orange is the new
black the character of pennsatucky is a
white working-class woman she’s depicted
as coarse ugly ignorant check out the
teeth class consciousness has given way
to class callousness and at exactly the
same period when you had this shift from
celebration to shame the economic future
of the American middle-class just tanked
so for example virtually all Americans
who were born in the 1940s did better
than their parents but today it’s about
half and wages used to rise when
productivity rose until the 70s that
stopped if it had continued wages would
be about double what they are today and
so blue-collar America heard the
cultural disrespect and they deeply
mourn the passing of the American dream
the result is a politics ruled by fury
we voted with our middle finger said one
Trump South Carolina voter
said another voter my fellow liberals
should have listened to those of us they
call Hicks hillbillies toothless idiots
they should have understood that we
don’t live in a flyover state we live in
our home you know I don’t like what this
dynamic is doing to American politics
for two reasons the first is ethical I’m
committed to social equality for all
groups not just for some groups and the
second is strategic the hidden injuries
of class are fueling a politics so
polarized that our democracy is
threatened now in order to begin to turn
this around we have to understand more
about what I call the class culture gap
because class isn’t just about money
it’s also a set of cultural traditions
that we riff off of to shape our
everyday behavior and make sense of our
lives class affects everything we do
from that first cup of coffee we have in
the morning till whether we prefer the
edgy or the tried-and-true let’s first
look at the professional managerial
elite their central ethic is
self-development that’s why as parents
we spend so much time trying to discover
our children’s every little micro talent
and develop it posthaste
these jobs require independent thinking
and so we display we we focus on
individual achievement and work devotion
and we display our originality
everything is artisanal from ice cream
to spiritualities and edgy because being
disruptive can yield a unicorn a Silicon
Valley company with a billion-dollar
valuation but you know in blue and pink
collar jobs being disruptive just gets
you one thing and that’s fired well
whereas the PME kind of takes stability
for granted in blue-collar America
stability is hard one and it’s much
cherished and so the focus is on self
discipline the kind that gets you to
work every day on time without an
attitude to an often not very fulfilling
job this is why the middle-class so
deeply deeply values institutions that
aid self discipline the military
traditional religion traditional family
life and why the taste is for the tried
and true think ample portions of comfort
food Olive Garden rather than smidgens
of sophistication think tasting menu so
what does all this have to do with
politics it turns out it has a lot let’s
examine that by looking at two of the
most divisive issues in the United
States today guns and abortion let’s
start first with abortion and with me my
grandmother was one of the first women
ever admitted to Johns Hopkins Medical
School she eloped with her handsome
rabbi my grandfather just a few weeks or
months before completing her degree
again and again she tried to get
readmitted no-go finally the family
moved to New Haven Connecticut where a
former classmate was by then Dean of the
Yale Medical School so she went and she
basically begged he said
Erma you should be ashamed of yourself
you already have a job a husband and
children
and so she gave up my mother gave up
about 20 years later when she was fired
from the only job she ever truly loved
as a reporter with a Brooklyn Eagle
newspaper when the men came back from
World War two and so coming up I carried
two generations of pain and I wanted to
make sure that pain didn’t define my
life too
that’s why abortion rights have always
seemed so important to me I knew I
needed to graduate from college and then
from law school and then I needed to get
tenure and ill-timed pregnancy it could
jeopardize everything and that’s why
two-thirds of college grads in the
United States support abortion rights
but only about half of those with high
school or less do the logic of their
lives is often different they fault
the PME for unhealthy work worship and a
failure to understand that family comes
first and their daily lives also look
really different the demise of
blue-collar jobs means that these
families face a daily scramble with mom
working one shift and dad working a
different shift sometimes literally
handing over the baby in the parking lot
in between and these tag-team families
they’re under such stress that they have
three to six times the national divorce
rate and so they look back on the
breadwinner homemaker family with
nostalgia and they still hold it up as a
an ideal you know these fights over
abortion their fights over what it means
to be a good woman identities are at
risk which is why they get so ugly so
fast
because when you have one side calling
the other mindless misogynists to me met
with a response you’re selfish
careerists class conflict becomes acute
you know debates over guns are similarly
visceral to me the ready availability of
guns
it means Las Vegas Sandy Hook
it means boys murdering their classmates
it means men killing people in church
but even as I understand I understand
how people feel differently because if
abortion involves ideals of womanhood
guns involve ideals of manhood and
that’s why two-thirds of women but only
43% of men support stricter gun laws and
there’s also a strong class dynamic so
57% of Americans with postgraduate
education but only about 35% of
Americans who have high school or less
feel that gun ownership in dangers
safety where I come from said Democrat
John Edwards of North Carolina he said
you know guns they’re not just about
guns there are also about independence
and that enter independence intertwines
with masculinity protecting one’s family
is key to the identities of blue but not
white collar men and in large areas of
the country hunting is a key form of
male bonding and male solidarity and
Jennifer Sherman’s study of rural
California found many men on disability
due to lack of jobs who hunted to help
support their families these rural men
were using guns to claim a full measure
of men
skill indignity protecting providing
pleasure power all key ingredients of
the masculine role and look I wish
masculinity worked differently but
whether you’re poor privileged being a
man is often seen as something that has
to be earned over and over and over
again after all pleasure power providing
they pervade Hollywood and Silicon
Valley to where works a masculinity
contest and harassing woman’s just one
way of keeping score so where does this
leave us here’s where it is really
really easy to see someone else’s truths
as partial and parochial what’s hard is
to see your own truths that way too we
all spend so much time trying to
convince the other side that we’re right
and they’re wrong if only they would
listen to us but here’s the reality our
politics stem from our values and our
values reflect our lives lives deeply
shaped by social class the PME feels
entitled to self development where
whereas the middle-class seeks stability
through self-discipline so what seems so
obvious to one group may not seem
obvious to the other obvious or even
true how can we begin to compromise on
these issues that go straight to the
center of our identities three steps can
help the first is we need to lower the
level of ambient anger by lowering the
level of open insult class slurs should
be as stigmatized as racial slurs
the second step is that we need to
address the key engine of middle-class
Fury the PME needs to care about the
economic prospects of the two-thirds of
Americans who lack college degrees you
know these these proxy wars on guns and
religion they reflect the raw pain of
Americans unable to give their families
of future and the last is the most
important we all on both sides need to
change the way we think about each other
you know too often advocates on both
sides there absolutists convinced of
their own moral purity but I think we’re
better off if we leave politics and
purity separate politics is about the
messy business of living peaceably with
decent people whose lives give them a
different truth lens the sooner we begin
to bridge this class culture gap the
sooner American politics will step back
from the brink let’s start now
[Music]
you
consider yourself middle class that’s a
lot of people now I’m guessing that some
of you who raised your hands live in
households that earn two hundred
thousand dollars or more a year
that’s actually not middle-class that’s
the top six percent but you know as
Americans we use the term middle class
almost indiscriminately so in a recent
Bloomberg story an amusement-park worker
earning twenty two thousand dollars a
year and a lawyer earning 200 volt
described themselves as middle-class
what happens if we look at Americans who
were just actually in the middle here’s
what we see the bottom 30 percent of
Americans are poor their median
household income is around 22,000 then
the middle 53% have a median household
income of around 75,000 typically they
have blue and pink collar jobs and then
the top 17% are the professional
managerial elite or PME they have a
median household income of about a
hundred and seventy three thousand so as
Americans we’re a little clueless about
class why does it even matter well we’ve
heard a lot about the top one percent
and the bottom ninety nine but the
conflict that’s driving American
politics today is between the PME that
top 17% and Americans in the middle so
we need to learn more about that here’s
where it started the PME lost connection
with a group whom prior generations
given a place of honor so this is
actually right here in Denver it’s the
mountain state’s telephone company
headquarters over on 14th Street and
it’s a mural painted in 1929 look at how
it celebrates the nobility of
blue-collar work similar things all over
the country but that was on the wane by
around 1970 when the famous TV show all
in the family
featured Archie Bunker a blue-collar guy
who was depicted as racist sexist stupid
and fat and then in the 1990s came Homer
Simpson amiable but ignorant also fat
closer to our day in orange is the new
black the character of pennsatucky is a
white working-class woman she’s depicted
as coarse ugly ignorant check out the
teeth class consciousness has given way
to class callousness and at exactly the
same period when you had this shift from
celebration to shame the economic future
of the American middle-class just tanked
so for example virtually all Americans
who were born in the 1940s did better
than their parents but today it’s about
half and wages used to rise when
productivity rose until the 70s that
stopped if it had continued wages would
be about double what they are today and
so blue-collar America heard the
cultural disrespect and they deeply
mourn the passing of the American dream
the result is a politics ruled by fury
we voted with our middle finger said one
Trump South Carolina voter
said another voter my fellow liberals
should have listened to those of us they
call Hicks hillbillies toothless idiots
they should have understood that we
don’t live in a flyover state we live in
our home you know I don’t like what this
dynamic is doing to American politics
for two reasons the first is ethical I’m
committed to social equality for all
groups not just for some groups and the
second is strategic the hidden injuries
of class are fueling a politics so
polarized that our democracy is
threatened now in order to begin to turn
this around we have to understand more
about what I call the class culture gap
because class isn’t just about money
it’s also a set of cultural traditions
that we riff off of to shape our
everyday behavior and make sense of our
lives class affects everything we do
from that first cup of coffee we have in
the morning till whether we prefer the
edgy or the tried-and-true let’s first
look at the professional managerial
elite their central ethic is
self-development that’s why as parents
we spend so much time trying to discover
our children’s every little micro talent
and develop it posthaste
these jobs require independent thinking
and so we display we we focus on
individual achievement and work devotion
and we display our originality
everything is artisanal from ice cream
to spiritualities and edgy because being
disruptive can yield a unicorn a Silicon
Valley company with a billion-dollar
valuation but you know in blue and pink
collar jobs being disruptive just gets
you one thing and that’s fired well
whereas the PME kind of takes stability
for granted in blue-collar America
stability is hard one and it’s much
cherished and so the focus is on self
discipline the kind that gets you to
work every day on time without an
attitude to an often not very fulfilling
job this is why the middle-class so
deeply deeply values institutions that
aid self discipline the military
traditional religion traditional family
life and why the taste is for the tried
and true think ample portions of comfort
food Olive Garden rather than smidgens
of sophistication think tasting menu so
what does all this have to do with
politics it turns out it has a lot let’s
examine that by looking at two of the
most divisive issues in the United
States today guns and abortion let’s
start first with abortion and with me my
grandmother was one of the first women
ever admitted to Johns Hopkins Medical
School she eloped with her handsome
rabbi my grandfather just a few weeks or
months before completing her degree
again and again she tried to get
readmitted no-go finally the family
moved to New Haven Connecticut where a
former classmate was by then Dean of the
Yale Medical School so she went and she
basically begged he said
Erma you should be ashamed of yourself
you already have a job a husband and
children
and so she gave up my mother gave up
about 20 years later when she was fired
from the only job she ever truly loved
as a reporter with a Brooklyn Eagle
newspaper when the men came back from
World War two and so coming up I carried
two generations of pain and I wanted to
make sure that pain didn’t define my
life too
that’s why abortion rights have always
seemed so important to me I knew I
needed to graduate from college and then
from law school and then I needed to get
tenure and ill-timed pregnancy it could
jeopardize everything and that’s why
two-thirds of college grads in the
United States support abortion rights
but only about half of those with high
school or less do the logic of their
lives is often different they fault
the PME for unhealthy work worship and a
failure to understand that family comes
first and their daily lives also look
really different the demise of
blue-collar jobs means that these
families face a daily scramble with mom
working one shift and dad working a
different shift sometimes literally
handing over the baby in the parking lot
in between and these tag-team families
they’re under such stress that they have
three to six times the national divorce
rate and so they look back on the
breadwinner homemaker family with
nostalgia and they still hold it up as a
an ideal you know these fights over
abortion their fights over what it means
to be a good woman identities are at
risk which is why they get so ugly so
fast
because when you have one side calling
the other mindless misogynists to me met
with a response you’re selfish
careerists class conflict becomes acute
you know debates over guns are similarly
visceral to me the ready availability of
guns
it means Las Vegas Sandy Hook
it means boys murdering their classmates
it means men killing people in church
but even as I understand I understand
how people feel differently because if
abortion involves ideals of womanhood
guns involve ideals of manhood and
that’s why two-thirds of women but only
43% of men support stricter gun laws and
there’s also a strong class dynamic so
57% of Americans with postgraduate
education but only about 35% of
Americans who have high school or less
feel that gun ownership in dangers
safety where I come from said Democrat
John Edwards of North Carolina he said
you know guns they’re not just about
guns there are also about independence
and that enter independence intertwines
with masculinity protecting one’s family
is key to the identities of blue but not
white collar men and in large areas of
the country hunting is a key form of
male bonding and male solidarity and
Jennifer Sherman’s study of rural
California found many men on disability
due to lack of jobs who hunted to help
support their families these rural men
were using guns to claim a full measure
of men
skill indignity protecting providing
pleasure power all key ingredients of
the masculine role and look I wish
masculinity worked differently but
whether you’re poor privileged being a
man is often seen as something that has
to be earned over and over and over
again after all pleasure power providing
they pervade Hollywood and Silicon
Valley to where works a masculinity
contest and harassing woman’s just one
way of keeping score so where does this
leave us here’s where it is really
really easy to see someone else’s truths
as partial and parochial what’s hard is
to see your own truths that way too we
all spend so much time trying to
convince the other side that we’re right
and they’re wrong if only they would
listen to us but here’s the reality our
politics stem from our values and our
values reflect our lives lives deeply
shaped by social class the PME feels
entitled to self development where
whereas the middle-class seeks stability
through self-discipline so what seems so
obvious to one group may not seem
obvious to the other obvious or even
true how can we begin to compromise on
these issues that go straight to the
center of our identities three steps can
help the first is we need to lower the
level of ambient anger by lowering the
level of open insult class slurs should
be as stigmatized as racial slurs
the second step is that we need to
address the key engine of middle-class
Fury the PME needs to care about the
economic prospects of the two-thirds of
Americans who lack college degrees you
know these these proxy wars on guns and
religion they reflect the raw pain of
Americans unable to give their families
of future and the last is the most
important we all on both sides need to
change the way we think about each other
you know too often advocates on both
sides there absolutists convinced of
their own moral purity but I think we’re
better off if we leave politics and
purity separate politics is about the
messy business of living peaceably with
decent people whose lives give them a
different truth lens the sooner we begin
to bridge this class culture gap the
sooner American politics will step back
from the brink let’s start now
[Music]
you
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