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Poverty and the Hierarchy of Social Class<\/span> <\/span>93<\/span>
don\u2019t take it personally. If you observe the rules of social class in relation to me, I\u2019ll do<\/span>
the same with regard to you. This is how things work in this society\u2014and probably all<\/span>
societies in Earth.<\/span>
This message and these rules might seem cruel and down-putting, but the fact is, this is how<\/span>
social class works everywhere. Some societies are more hierarchical than others, but all are hi-<\/span>
erarchical. Very few people would admit outright to believing in them, but most follow them<\/span>
anyway. And sociologists have found that these rules and messages do tend to be followed.<\/span>
When it comes to friendships, like hangs out with like; there\u2019s a strong measure of consonance<\/span>
or similarity in the tastes, values, beliefs, and lifestyles of friends, at least, in comparison with<\/span>
those in different class positions. The same with marriage; like tends to marry like, like is<\/span>
more comfortable with like, like gets along with like more than with those who are unalike,<\/span>
and unalike partners are more likely to divorce than those who are similar to one another\u2014<\/span>
class-wise as well as in virtually all ways. Neighborhoods are more homogenous with respect<\/span>
to class than heterogeneous. And so on. There are exceptions to these rules, but as with all<\/span>
rules, for the most part, they tend to prevail.<\/span>
What has all this got to do with deviance? It\u2019s really quite simple: when we contravene these<\/span>
rules, the people we know will probably call us on it; they are likely to remind us that we have<\/span>
violated the norms of our society. \u201cAre you sure you want to do this? Is this really the neigh-<\/span>
borhood you want to move to? Is he\/she really the right partner for you? Why do you want to<\/span>
be friendly with Billy? He\u2019s not our kind.\u201d The people you don\u2019t know, but who are of a higher<\/span>
social standing than you are, and are members of the groups, associations, and social circles<\/span>
you wish to enter, are likely to inform you that you have over-stepped your boundaries. To put<\/span>
the matter plainly, deviance is densely woven into social class and status systems. Whenever<\/span>
someone violates the rules of class or status, interacting parties are likely to react in a negative,<\/span>
censorious matter in order to put the violators in their place.<\/span>
One consequence of the failure to achieve a respectable position in meritocratic stratification<\/span>
is that poorly educated males, those with only a high school diploma, who are in the prime<\/span>
of their occupational lives (roughly, 25\u201354), are increasingly slipping out of the labor force<\/span>
as a result of underemployment, unemployment\u2014occasional work or no work at all\u2014earlier<\/span>
retirement, and an earlier death, including \u201cdeaths of despair.\u201d In 1965, among American men<\/span>
in this age range with no college education, 98% worked; of those in 2017, only 68% worked<\/span>
(Hochschild, 2020, p. 19; Sandel, 2020). The very ranking system of social class and socioeco-<\/span>
nomic status sorts people into hierarchical categories that is virtually equivalent to a system of<\/span>
morality, a system of achievement and under-achievement that situates those at the bottom as<\/span>
disreputable and \u201cbad\u201d and those at the top as righteous and \u201cgood.\u201d And this ranking system<\/span>
has decidedly pernicious psychological consequences on its lower-ranking members.<\/span>
In addition to being a ranking based on income, education, and occupational prestige, so-<\/span>
cial class is a<\/span> <\/span>moral<\/span> <\/span>ranking: people who rank toward the top of the class structure consider<\/span>
themselves superior in multiple ways; worse, those who rank lower on the socioeconomic<\/span>
ladder usually recognize that they have<\/span> <\/span>