Uneasy Street

by Sherman, Rachel

  These relationships were not simply coincidental, however. Many downward-oriented people consciously sought out cross-class social relationships. Wendy said, “I think it’s important, [in order] to stay grounded, to not just hang out with people who have the same means and the same backgrounds.” To “stay grounded” is to remember the reality of one’s situation relative to that of others; Wendy sees spending time only with people similar to her as a threat to that commitment. Eliana told me, describing her cross-class friendships and her political activism, “I’ve tried to not be just in my bubble.”

  Inhabiting privilege well meant creating more varied networks. Yet cross-class relationships also generated discomfort, as they forced disparities into the open. Speaking of the $180,000 he’d spent on furniture for his new house, Gary said, “My friends come out there and see all this stuff, and they’re like, ‘Oh. That’s great, where’d you get that?’ You can’t say, ‘I did this on a shoestring.’ You know. It wasn’t a shoestring.” These affluent consumers also described feeling uncomfortable talking with friends about lifestyle choices, such as where to live and where to send their children to school. Wendy told me, “I wouldn’t characterize this [her lifestyle and spending] in this way to a friend of mine as comfortably as [to you]. Like, I’m trying to be honest for your work. … Whereas I think it’s—it’s uncomfortable.” When I asked why, she said her friends “are socially conscious people who are doing really wonderful things with their lives and don’t probably have the means that we have and are having to make some of these harder choices.” Beatrice made the same point when she told me, “My friends are facing the same problems that I’m facing [such as finding a school for children]; it’s just that I have resources to deal with them that other people don’t have.” She continued, “I feel just some concern about, kind of, rubbing their faces in the fact that I have this wider range of choices.” Ultimately, discomfort of this type might be one reason people end up with increasingly homogenous social worlds over time.

  For upwardly mobile people, family of origin was a significant referent. Miriam, a banker earning over $1 million annually, said she currently spent social time with “probably mostly similar types of families in similar types of jobs.” But, she added, “I make more money than my entire family put together.” Miriam did not feel guilty about her wealth exactly, but she described money as “dirty,” “soiled,” and “tainted.” She attributed this in part to her family, saying, “I mean maybe if all my siblings were, like, you know, doctors, lawyers, and bankers, yeah, then I probably wouldn’t care. It would be sort of, ‘This is what my family does.’ But it’s not what my family does. My family doesn’t become a banker in New York City and make a shitload of money. Right? That’s just weird.” Miranda, who was married to an inheritor, said she would not talk with her brother about issues she struggled with related to her affluence. When I asked why, she said, “Because he works really hard, and I think … talking about how difficult it is to have a lot of money and [being] worried about your kids being raised feeling entitled seems really hard when [he’s] trying to figure out whether or not [he] can afford something. You know what I mean?”

  Again, these differences also led to silences about money in these relationships. Teresa said she loved her lifestyle. But, she said, “I do feel guilt. I feel like I have to downplay it when I talk to my brother and sister, definitely. … I didn’t tell my sister I had a housekeeper for, I want to say, three years. I kept it like this big dark secret. I mean, I do like being able to get my parents nice things, and I definitely make a point of that and not thinking twice about getting my sister a wonderful present, but we never talk about how much this costs, how much our car costs, things like that, never, ever.”

  Both Teresa and Miriam had also grown up in politically progressive families. Miriam said, “I grew up in a family that [had] a very long tradition of workers’ rights, you know? … So to be, like, ‘The Man’ to this extent is sort of weird.” Teresa said, “My parents always said we wouldn’t want a lot of money because there would be too much guilt involved. Like there’s a million people who need money, and who are we to have that money? And their whole lives have been working towards giving back to the community, the world, and we never did have so much money. So there’s that feeling. Like, when I was planning my wedding I called my parents to give them a preliminary budget, and they were like, ‘Do you know how many people in the world that could feed?’ So there is that type of guilt as well.”

  Upwardly mobile earners talked more about feeling privileged than did those earners who were not significantly wealthier now than they had been growing up. Raised middle-class, Penny talked about feeling guilty when she bought things for full price or shopped at fancy stores because she remembered shopping at the Burlington Coat Factory and “buying discount shoes” as a child. Her husband had been raised “working-class,” in her words, but now earns $3 million annually. She told me: “[He] is an anomaly. Where he’s in these meetings at work, and people are complaining ’cause they’re [not being paid enough]. You know, ‘That’s not fair. I should make 2 million instead of 1.5.’ And he’s like, ‘Do you know how lucky you are to be making this money?’ You know. Like, he truly feels it, in his heart. Like, ‘You’re being ridiculous.’” Penny’s husband invoked a point of reference outside the immediate world in which the other consultants seemed to live; he drew back to include more people in the scope of his vision.

  Finally, as I have noted, most people who recognized their privilege openly were liberal Democrats. Some were “conservative progressives,” as Gary characterized himself, or “pragmatic progressives,” as Sara, an inheritor of over $10 million, put it (both were distinguishing themselves from radicals). A few had more of a “socialist vision,” as Nadine put it; a real estate broker I interviewed characterized this type as “cashmere communists.” Downward-oriented people never expressed any disillusion with Obama for bringing up economic disparities, and they were more likely to favor taxation of wealthy people. In fact, they often expressed affinity with Occupy Wall Street, which was in the news around the time I conducted some of these interviews. Kevin, whose partner had significant inherited wealth, described himself as “liberal-left.” He said, “I feel like in this whole sort of, like, conversation over the last four years or whatever, of the 99 percent, like, it’s weird to be of the 1, or the 2, or the 3 percent when I feel like, ‘No, I’m Occupy. That’s me.’ There’s the weird paradox.” These politics constitute another kind of awareness of and concern for those with less, who seem much more present in the imaginations of these interviewees than they do in the imaginations of those who aspire to the middle.

  A few of the more progressive respondents also described their own social advantages as stemming from the same social forces that produce inequality and disadvantage. Eliana said, for example, “I am clearly personally benefitting from a system that aggregates toward inequality. And that allows a very, very, very, very small percentage of people to benefit. While the rest suffer, correspondingly. And so I feel that my wealth and poverty in the world have something to do with each other.” This stance contrasts sharply with the idea of upward-oriented people that “there will always be people above, and people below,” in two ways. First, these downward-oriented people believe that the “people above” and the “people below” are actually connected to each other by both economic relations and moral obligations. Second, they believe that structural change is possible. In their view, current social arrangements, especially of resource distribution, both could and should be different.

  FLEXIBLE ORIENTATIONS

  I have suggested that the class backgrounds, occupations, political views, and social networks of those I interviewed were related to a propensity to face upward or downward. But even these correlations (not causes in any case13) were not set in stone. As we have seen, Betsy was a management consultant and is now a stay-at-home mother. Her husband earns about $1 million per year. Her professional bac
kground is in the corporate world, where her husband also works. She is a social liberal but sometimes a fiscal conservative; she did not vote for president in the 2012 election because she disliked both candidates. So she is not especially progressive politically, which differentiates her from most of the downward-oriented inheritors. Nor has she experienced upward mobility, like most of the downward-oriented earners. And she does not appear to have especially diverse social networks. So we might expect her to offer a more upward-oriented discourse.

  Indeed, Betsy strongly differentiated herself from people with significant wealth. She had been raised in New York in an affluent family (she mentioned that she had had a brokerage account “from birth”). But, she said, “The level of excess is totally different now than when I grew up in the city.” She told me:

  In these private schools, there are a lot of very rich people. Like, millions and millions and billions of dollars. You go to their homes, they live in townhouses, you know, they’re on full-floor—I mean, unbelievable. … I kind of have an inside joke with some of the moms that I know, that we’re like, the “working class.” You know? Because we actually really work. Not that these people haven’t worked. But they have tons of money. We have been working very hard. And, like, we can’t stop working and continue to lead a lifestyle that we are living. And so we are much more aware of what things cost, and how to buy—you know, how to use your money, where to put your resources.

  In this upward-oriented move, Betsy differentiates herself and her friends from the “very rich,” who not only have “tons of money” but don’t have to work and don’t have to worry. (Her joke about being “working class” invokes the legitimacy of wealth that comes from work, even though she no longer works for money herself, as I discuss in chapter 2.)

  Yet Betsy also talked at length about her privilege relative to other people in general and in her life specifically. She said, of her home renovation:

  My friends who … have different circumstances—I don’t really like to talk about it [with them]. And I don’t really like to, you know, discuss the headaches of my renovation. Like, it just seems wrong, and kind of gross to me, to talk about stuff like that. I’m not saying I’d hide it or anything. If someone asks me about it, sure, I’ll talk about it. But I’m not out there with it, like it’s the standard thing that everybody does. I realize that it’s not. For us, we worked towards it. We wanted to do this. You know. And we were able to. It’s not like—you know, we’re—at the end of this, we’re going to have to, like, rebuild the nest egg for a while. You know? And it’s not without its risks and consequences. But, you know, I realize that—it’s—you know, like, home ownership is really not a—reality for a lot of people. Most people. Especially in Manhattan! It’s crazy.

  Betsy still gestures toward others with more by emphasizing the effort she and her husband put in (“we worked towards it”) and the fact that their resources are not unlimited (they’ll have to “rebuild the nest egg for a while”). But she also signals an awareness of privilege. This awareness comes from her relationships with people who have less than she (“my friends”), as well as her capacity to imagine those people in a broader sense (“most people”). She mentions the challenge of talking about signs of privilege, such as renovations, with those who have less, and also the decision to avoid that talk. Betsy illuminates the fine line she has to walk between two unacceptable forms of managing privilege: being “gross” by mentioning it gratuitously and being disingenuous by “hiding it.”

  Betsy also talked about the circumstances of people working for her more than did most of the upward-oriented people. Her nanny had left her own young children in her home country. Betsy told me, “And I, like, could not get my head around it. … It made me feel bad in some way on a daily basis. … That was awful. It really—I loved her, but it made me feel really bad.” Ultimately, Betsy was glad the nanny decided to return to her country of origin and sent her money for a period of time after she did so. Betsy described feeling conflicted again when she told me about a conversation she had had with the foreman of her apartment renovation. Betsy had recently decided not to keep a light fixture she thought was too big for the kitchen, though she had agonized about it because she did not want to act like “a princess.” She recounted, of her relationship with the foreman, “You know, we talk about our kids, and one day I was like, ‘Oh, what is your daughter doing for the summer?’ And he was like, ‘Oh, nothing.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, she’s not going to camp?’ He’s like, ‘Camp’s too expensive.’ Jesus Christ. You know? Like, we’re talking about how I don’t want my six hundred–dollar, five hundred–dollar lights. That makes me feel really bad. And I don’t like that. So I feel like that’s kind of—it makes me feel bad about myself.” In this anecdote, again, Betsy recognizes not only her privilege vis-à-vis the worker but also the discomfort that arises from talking with people who are less advantaged than she is.

  I think it is likely that at least some of the respondents I have called “upward-oriented” are more like Betsy in that they do see their privilege and feel some discomfort with it. They may minimize their unease not because they haven’t thought about it but because they felt uncomfortable talking about it.14 The African American respondents I described earlier, who resisted being called “affluent” yet ultimately recognized that they were affluent but uncomfortable with admitting it, exemplify this tendency as well. So it is hard to know what exactly the relation between talking about one’s privilege and thinking about it might be and how this relationship might vary from person to person or depending on the situation. That is, some people might be more likely to talk about it to me than to a friend, while others might feel the opposite. The same person might also be more likely to talk about it at some moments than at others.

  Therefore, although staying attuned to these patterned differences is generative, trying to classify people rigidly or permanently as having one orientation over another is ultimately futile. Instead, recognizing the flexibility of these interpretations is important because it highlights the interpretive work people do to situate themselves in a way they are comfortable with. Not talking about privilege takes it off the table as a basis for comparison. Talking about oneself as “in the middle” also takes it off the table, in a sense, by deflecting attention to those who have more.

  We often imagine that wealthy people are operating in their own “bubble” with reference groups primarily composed of people “like them.” We also often assume that it is “human nature” to compare oneself to people above. But I have shown in this chapter that these comparisons and reference groups vary. Furthermore, the bases of comparison—that is, what it means for other people to be sufficiently “like you” to compare yourself to them—are not somehow determined a priori. Instead, people make choices, though not always consciously, about which social others to keep in their consciousness, spend time with, and talk about.

  As Eliana put it, “I feel that there’s a myth of privilege. That [privileged] people are more out of touch than they really necessarily are. I don’t think the privilege automatically puts the person out of touch. I feel like some of that is a set of choices and consciousness. And you can deal with difference. You can make it part of your life, that you deal with difference.” Some of the privileged literally “deal with difference” more often, and sometimes more intentionally, than others—through their choices of work and peers and/or by virtue of their family backgrounds. Others, as I have suggested, avoid spending time with or even thinking about people who are different, at least partly because it is uncomfortable.

  This chapter has analyzed how people locate themselves on a distributive continuum. Do they have a lot or a little, and relative to whom? But it has also shown that these self-locations have a moral dimension. The rest of this book investigates that dimension. Regardless of how they oriented themselves to others, or of how much they talked explicitly about their social advantages or acknowledged discomfort with their position, the
people I interviewed all alluded to the importance of being morally worthy of their wealth. As I outlined in the introduction, upward- and downward-oriented people articulated a set of similar ideas about what it means to be a “good person” and avoid “entitlement”: primarily, to work hard, consume reasonably, and give back. In talking about these imperatives, upward-oriented people do acknowledge their privilege, though often indirectly. Downward-oriented people symbolically mitigate their privilege, despite having recognized it explicitly, by appealing to these (middle-class) values.

  I begin in chapter 2 with the first of these ideas: the moral imperative of hard work. As we have seen, some of my interviewees invoked “having to work” as a sign that they were not privileged, or at least not as much as some others. But whether or not they “had to” or did work for money, to interpret themselves as hard-working was crucial to their sense of worth.

  2

  WORKING HARD OR

  HARDLY WORKING?

  PRODUCTIVITY AND MORAL WORTH

  Paul was an executive in his mid-forties, earning about $500,000 annually, with two young children and a stay-at-home wife. I interviewed him in a bustling café as he stole an hour away from his midtown office. Our conversation focused primarily on the significant renovation he and his wife were carrying out on their home. Near the end of the interview I asked if he felt he “deserved” his lifestyle. I had started asking interviewees this question after I noticed that they often seemed to feel conflicted about their advantages. The question was ambiguous, I knew, perhaps even nonsensical. But I was interested in how they might interpret it and in the explicit justifications they might use to answer it.1 Paul responded, without hesitation, “Absolutely. Damn right I fucking deserve it. … Where I am today, I’ve earned every dime on my own. No one’s done it—I mean, my in-laws have helped, but I’ve done it. My job, my career, my [current employer] career, my [previous employer] career, this is all me. No one’s helped me. It’s been me. So I’ve earned every fucking dime, absolutely.” Paul equates “deserving” with “earning” so completely that he responds almost as if my question was about whether he had earned his wealth. He also invokes independence and self-sufficiency, saying he did it “on my own.” Although he alludes to having received help from his in-laws, he quickly turns away from this acknowledgement in order to maintain his self-interpretation as autonomous.