Reflections in a Gilded Eye

By R.Z. Sheppard

SOCIAL STANDING IN AMERICA: NEW DIMENSIONS OF CLASS by Richard P. Coleman and Lee Rainwater; Basic Books; 353 pages; $15.95

Without mincing such words as geo-means, standard deviation and magnitude estimation, an American bases his SQ--status quotient--mainly on money. Although the statement seems self-evident, it is the ingeniously established bottom line to Sociologists Richard Coleman and Lee Rainwater's study of class in America, what their statistical Mr. Mim, the man-in-the-middle, likes to call his social standing. Yet the deeper one gets into the data and analysis of this book, the clearer it becomes that how Americans rank themselves is not a subject cashed in too quickly.

One reason is that Mr. Mim is sensitive and a little ambivalent about his SQ. He knows with the intuitive self-consciousness of the upwardly mobile that occupation, education, ethnic background and the concepts of social identity and life-style also count. Of course money talks. Indeed it whistles, hums and croons through the tangled switchboard of class lines that bind the conflicting emotions most Americans have about their place in an open, competitive society. What money says is "This way to the good life," not good as in Plato, but good as in "a good house in a good neighborhood." Beyond that basic aspiration lies the ubiquitous advertised vision of modern living ever flowering at one's fingertips. Mr. and Mrs. Mim's dream house would recapitulate a catalogue of status hardware: a room-to-room intercom, a "wet bar" in the "game room," an "in-ground" swimming pool and a "full" sprinkler system for the lawn, not merely a garden hose connected to one of those little spastic squirters. Ideally, all this should be found on "a couple of acres for privacy," though the fact that Squire Mim may end up a landed janitor tethered by weekend maintenance seems to be self-censored from the dream.

These and a two-car-garage load of other findings were rummaged up by Coleman and Rainwater in surveys of 900 residents of Boston and Kansas City. The study, which cut across all economic and social lines, was conducted in 1971-72. The length of time it took to analyze, write and publish the conclusions is undoubtedly due to the damnable complexity of the subject. This is evidenced in the book's colliding metaphors. The class structure in the United States is imagined either as a stepladder or as an escalator, a continuum without rungs. America's ethnic ingredients are blended in the traditional melting pot or tossed in a salad bowl, "in which each element remains distinct yet contributes to the flavor of the whole."

Most middle-level Americans divide that whole in three parts: the rich, the poor and "the rest of us." Coleman and Rainwater prefer a seven-layer view. From the top: the old rich of aristocratic family name; the new rich, or success elite; the college-educated professional and managerial class; Middle Americans of comfortable living standard; Middle Americans just getting along; a lower class who are poor but working; and a non-working welfare class.

As practitioners of a parascience, the authors are rightly humble about confusing their models with immutable truths. They may not have the lively journalistic bounce of an Alvin Toffler or the fluid drive of a Vance Packard, but Social Standing's scholarship adds some fascinating discriminations. For example, though money is the basic yardstick people use to rank themselves, income is only a component of status, not its cause. Education is the prime means to higher income -- which is then translated into higher status. But schooling that does not lead to a high-paying job earns few points. And the status value of education seems to be slipping: if the authors are right, by the year 2000 a 1970 high school diploma will devalue 15% in prestige and a college degree drop 11%.

Social position derived from money tends to decrease as one's income approaches the higher brackets. Among Boston's Brahmins, what counts most is family history, civic activities and cultural connections. In Kansas City's gilded Mission Hills section, it is country clubs and friends: the closer one can get to "the local and regional-legend rich" -- Royals Owner Ewing Kauffman, Hallmark Cards Founder Joyce Hall and the bank-owning Kempers -- the higher one's esteem.

By piecing together hundreds of such slivers of class consciousness, Coleman and Rainwater present a fractured mirror of how we see ourselves in the social hierarchy. Their book glitters with oddments: the highest-status job is president of a billion-dollar corporation; the most envied use of money is for travel and expensive recreation; inherited money automatically earns a higher social standing regardless of class; college graduates who are not doing well (earning less than $20,000 a year) emphasize their degrees when claiming status identification; to the proudest group belong those who got rich without much formal education; the welfare and poverty class distinguishes between physically and morally clean and unclean; at all levels of society the most frequently mentioned cause of downward mobility is alcoholism; Americans tend to place themselves in the highest class they can defend on the basis of their material achievements. Concludes one suburbanite: "You can see someone in a Cadillac, and that only tells you what they're aspiring to, not what they are."

Readers of Social Standing will recognize that "what they are" is every American's confusing little secret. What they aspire to is known by every successful merchant in the country. But materialism as a measure of class has its hazards. In the upward rush, the market is continually flooded with knockoffs designed to create the illusion of status.

The trick, as always, is to be able to distinguish the real article from the genuine imitation.

-- R-Z. Sheppard

Excerpt " Of course, there's class. Look around you. A man driving a Cadillac feels he can thumb his nose at me because I'm driving an old V.W.' 'You know there's class when you're in a department store and a well-dressed lady gets treated better.' 'Most people look down on the poor like me because you have to live so shabby and can't help yourself.' 'I'm a carpenter and I won't fit with doctors and lawyers or in country club society. We have different interests and want to do different things.' 'I would suppose social class means where you went to school and how far.

Your intelligence. Where you live. The sort of house you live in. Your general background, as far as clubs' you belong to, your friends. To some degree the type of profession you're in -- in fact, definitely that. Where you send your children to school. The hobbies you have. Skiing, for example, is higher than the snowmobile. The clothes you wear . . . all of that. These are the externals. It can't be {just] money, because nobody ever knows that about you for sure. "

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