Status, or How to be More Equal

In The Status Seekers (McKay, $4.00), Vance Packard sets out to describe class behavior in America, and to prove that movement between classes is becoming more difficult, and class lines more rigid. Mr. Packard is a popularizer, and his The Status Seekers is an “as-told-to” version of the weakest thinking of our worst sociologists. Classes, we are told, are contrary to The American Dream, contrary to the ideals of the Founding Fathers, and anti-democratic. Yet, Americans are supposed to be cut up into some five levels: the Real Upper Class, the Semi-Upper Class, the Limited Success Class, the Working Class, and the Real Lower Class.

If you are a Jewish bootlegger who never got past the eighth grade, live in a dilapidated house in the poorest section of town, vote Democratic, have a bootblack for a friend, don’t kiss your wife when you make love to her, and derive most of your income from stealing, then you are Lower Class. But if you are a kissing, Republican, Episcopalian doctor who doesn’t work (you have inherited the money), with two homes and a long list of clubs, you’re an Upper-Upper. Packard superficially describes the nuances of how to go from bootlegger to doctor; tells both Jews and Episcopalians they should understand each other more, and suggests to Negroes the way to get ahead: “Pretend you’re not.”

MM

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Michael M. Mooney

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In The Status Seekers (McKay, $4.00), Vance Packard sets out to describe class behavior in America, and to prove that movement between classes is becoming more difficult, and class lines more rigid. Mr. Packard is a popularizer, and his The Status Seekers is an “as-told-to” version of the weakest thinking of our worst sociologists. Classes, we are told, are contrary to The American Dream, contrary to the ideals of the Founding Fathers, and anti-democratic. Yet, Americans are supposed to be cut up into some five levels: the Real Upper Class, the Semi-Upper Class, the Limited Success Class, the Working Class, and the Real Lower Class.

If you are a Jewish bootlegger who never got past the eighth grade, live in a dilapidated house in the poorest section of town, vote Democratic, have a bootblack for a friend, don’t kiss your wife when you make love to her, and derive most of your income from stealing, then you are Lower Class. But if you are a kissing, Republican, Episcopalian doctor who doesn’t work (you have inherited the money), with two homes and a long list of clubs, you’re an Upper-Upper. Packard superficially describes the nuances of how to go from bootlegger to doctor; tells both Jews and Episcopalians they should understand each other more, and suggests to Negroes the way to get ahead: “Pretend you’re not.”