Books: Reflections in a Gilded Eye

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.