CoEternity

As a nation, the U.S. denied from its inception the limits of class just as much as it deluded itself about the effects of hosting a slave economy. As with the 3/5th rule and disenfranchisement of native peoples, the Constitution was turned against itself again when it provided for the indirect election of senators: the assumption was that good men of solid station would choose from among their ranks the men who would run the more powerful half of Congress. Both of those contradictions were eventually resolved by means spelled out in the self-same document that created them.

But these legal changes don’t alter the fact that, to this day, we kid ourselves about class in this country. Heavy doses of rags-to-riches tales taught in our schools were meant to teach that “your fate is up to you.” Hence, students who leave that safe high school explanation for the complexities of class-jumping are set against a system they didn’t know existed.

Most of us take comfort in remaining safe within our social group. When that social group is well off, we are often free to look over at the less fortunate with pity or disdain, depending upon our predisposition.

But wherever we are stationed along the prosperity continuum, we often look in both directions and take comfort that we are not like “them.” At the same time, the rebellious or ambitious among us will go to great lengths to separate themselves from their own upbringing––try to run to another spot on that continuum. And this is a dynamic repeated up and down the scale of wealth.

In any given family, one child may choose to separate from family patterns and go up or down in status. If the family is wealthy and/or patient enough, there may be a prodigal son event, but plenty of families break and remain on opposite sides of the resulting fault line.

Yet for most of us, our group provides our comfort, our identity and our refuge. We are emboldened, by group safety, to branch out, but we most often accept our home group as that which is genuine in our lives.

The distinctions among classes have a central attitude in common with discrimination among colors: the attitude of denial in the dominant group that the problem is as bad as those other folks think.

Class distinction doesn’t go away, but our constitution confers to it no lasting, defensible legal status, and actively limits its power.

A class act, that constitution.