American Identity
By David Roediger
Democrats and Republicans vie for the lead in terms of promises to stand up for the putatively noble but chronically fragile middle strata of the class structure. Both parties praise the middle class as the broken heart of the nation and hold that only they can mend it.… The hottest controversies over the size of the middle class have come from the left, and especially from writer-activists in the developing field of working-class studies.
In rejecting the idea that an overwhelming majority of Americans are members of the middle class, Michael Zweig, long-time professor of economics at the University of Stony Brook, and labour studies educator Jack Metzger offer critiques turning on how ‘middle class’ is defined. They point out that surveys in which the term ‘working class’ is absent from the choices offered to respondents artificially inflate the numbers of those choosing a middle-class self-identification.