--- Paul Papadeas <papadeas13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> This is the consensus attitude that embodies
> America's corporate class?
>
[WS:] Very intersting story. I've seen similar attitudes spread out throughout society - not just corporate elites but truck drivers, retirees, academics, stay home moms etc. It is easy to think of them as a outcome of brainwashing by media - but this is very simplistic at best, and oftentime outright false.
I am inclined to think that this is natural cognitive outcome of class and ingroup-outgroup divisions in society - something that sociologists like Ruciman call "relative deprivation." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_deprivation The basic concept here is that one views what people "deserve" though the prism of social status hierarchy.
Higher status people "deserve" what their status implies, but when the lower status people get the same - they do not "deserve" it but rather "usurp" or "grab" it. One perceives that what one "deserves" depends of one's reference group and its social status. If one's reference group is the upper class (or high status foreigners,) one things that one desrves the same perks and one gets upset when one does not get them. At the same time, one gets upset when people of lower social status (i.e. lower social classes or low status foreigners) demand the same treatment, because they do not "deserve" them.
This kind of thinking is apparent in treating Mexicans by your boss. They are seen as "low status" and thus not desrving what the US society supposedly "gives" them. The social status connection inhis thinking can be demonstrated by contrasting his attitude toward Europeans - he does not identify with them but he does not see them as being of lower social status either - so he cognitively brackets them out as being something altogether different.
This can also explain Joanna's case of Romanian immigrants who complain of other immigrants. But of course - they identify themselves with the US upper crust (just as the vast majority of the US middle class does) and they "deserve" the Amerikan dream - whereas the hordes of other immigrants are of lower social status and thus they "steal" that "dream" which they do not "deserve."
A sad part of it is that this is not limited to the US - it is nearly universal. You can see it fully blown in most Third World countries . My friend from New York, who is of Puerto Rican descent told me a story that when they went to Mexico she was treated like shit by the locals while the same people kissed the ass of her "gringo" husband. Of course, I see that quite a bit when I travel back to Poland and other countries as well.
I think the only way to address this is on a collective rather than individual basis -i.e. by changing the collective reference group of the majority of the people - so they do not identify themsleves with the upper classes, e.g. like in Scandinavia, where middle class identified itself with the working class rather than the upper class idlers, as many US-ers and Brits do.
Wojtek
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