“It is the tendency of the social burdens to crush out the middle class, and to force society into an organization of only two classes, one at each social extreme.” 

When 19th century Yale professor William Graham Sumner made this observation more than 100 years ago, few would have guessed how true his statement would prove to be in 21st century American society. 

The United States has long prided itself on being the “land of the free” where “all men are created equal.”  However, the highly polarized views that have come to light in the midst of the increasingly mean-spirited debate surrounding health insurance reform suggest that Americans do not really live in the wonderful, egalitarian melting pot in which we like to imagine ourselves.  America’s latest dirty little secret is that we are a society of highly stratified social classes where sadly, the “haves” exhibit a fairly fanatical dedication to holding on to what they have at the expense of the lowly and put upon “have-nots.”

In stark contrast to much of the rest of the global community, the United States is a young country.  One might think that our nation would have done a better job of observing other cultures around the world, plagued by strict and oppressive social stratification and absorbing the fact that such systems are divisive and offer little in the way of benefits to the citizens who must endure them.

Great Britain, for example, has a strict social hierarchy dating back hundreds of years.  Members of the royal family and the aristocracy, a privileged class holding inherited titles, traditionally enjoyed wealth, fine houses, land and a comparatively leisurely lifestyle made possible by the lower class citizens who served them.

Or consider India, with its complicated caste system where priests, rulers, landowners and warriors are held in higher regard than merchants, artisans and farmers.  And sadly, at the very bottom of the social strata are those forced to exist as outcasts from this rigid system.  Most troubling seems to be the fact that unlike the merely poor in modern day England or America, who can (at least theoretically) work or marry their way into a higher class, the caste system of India appears to offer practically no opportunity for upward mobility.

While the modern class system in the U.S. and the U. K. is not so much a function of family name and breeding as it once was, income, occupation, religious and political affiliation and even factors as superficial as skin color or sexual preference now appear to be the criteria used to determine who is “in” and who is “out” in terms of value in our society.

And that is a shame because it causes us to judge the value of our fellow human beings,  not on the basis of their skills, talents, strength of character, kindness, altruism or capacity for hard work, but rather on highly external and often shallow attributes which the recipient did nothing to attain.  It often results in talented members of the lower classes being grossly underestimated by their more privileged counterparts which in turn can often dampen their motivation to strive for more in life.

Despite being touted as one of the richest countries in the world, the numbers of those who are poor in America seem to be growing in frighteningly large proportions.  And while there is no inherent dishonor in being merely poor, the expansion of a highly underprivileged underclass in many of America’s inner city and rural neighborhoods is becoming an increasingly disturbing trend.  Crime, drugs, substandard housing, and schools, along with the inaccessibility to jobs and community services make it almost impossible for these unfortunates to break the cycle of poverty.

Though political conservatives seem to enjoy admonishing these folks to “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps,” the reality is that many of them simply do not know how.  Even though it is true that 19th century European immigrants to the United States often arrived with practically nothing in terms of money, connections, or material goods, they generally had life skills and a work ethic that their parents and extended family members had instilled in them long before they arrived in America. 

Sadly, many of today’s extremely underprivileged among us have had no such role models or familial support.  And the tendency of those who have “made it” by achieving long sought-after upward mobility to abandon their old neighborhoods and associates only exacerbates the problem.  When we socialize and interact only with people in a similar social circle, limiting our friendships to those who have similar educational backgrounds and income levels, we miss the chance to learn from each other and help one another grow.

Government programs won’t solve these issues.  What it will take to put all citizens on more equal footing is for everyday Americans to make the decision to stop judging one another on the basis of superficial status symbols and to begin exhibiting a willingness to form genuine relationships with people both above and below their own perceived “social class.” If we all could commit to this, it just might stop the spread of poverty and the cycle of drugs and crime that generally follows in poverty’s wake.

There are countless ways to assess the value of a person.  But in order to produce real and lasting change in our country, we need to recognize that social class just isn’t one of them.