CHAPTER 4
Why Does the Working Class Resent Professionals but Admire the Rich?
MEMBERS OF THE ELITE tend to assume that working-class people want to join their
ranks. This is not always true.
Professionals aren’t necessarily admired. Many are seen as suspect. Managers are seen as
college kids “who don’t know shit about how to do anything, but are full of ideas about
how I have to do my job.”^48 Barbara Ehrenreich recalled in 1990 that her blue-collar dad
“could not say the word doctor without the virtual prefix quack. Lawyers were shysters
... and professors were without exception phonies .”^49 Sociologist Annette Lareau also
found mistrust of doctors and other health professionals. She also found resentment
against teachers by working-class parents, who perceived their children’s educators as
condescending and unhelpful^50 —a resentment that perhaps fuels working-class support
for conservatives’ assault on teachers’ unions.^51
However, this resentment of professionals does not extend to the rich. “There’s an almost
mystical desire among the working class to see a rich person from the upper class reach
out to them,” commented class migrant Eric Sansoni* (remember, a class migrant is
someone who starts in one class but moves to another—in this case, out of the working
class and into a professional job). “[I] can’t knock anyone for succeeding,” a laborer told
Lamont. “There’s a lot of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked
darned hard for every cent they have,” chimed in a receiving clerk.^52 “The main thing is
to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody
else,” said a machine operator. The ideal is to own a business. “The dream of self-
employment is one expression of class consciousness, not a denial of it,” noted an
influential book on class.^53
Daily life reinforces admiration of the rich but resentment of professionals. Most
working-class people have little contact with the truly rich outside of “The Apprentice”
or “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” but they suffer class affronts from professionals
every day: the doctor who unthinkingly patronizes the medical technician, the harried
office worker who treats the security guard as invisible, the overbooked business traveler
who snaps at the TSA agent.
Remember: class isn’t just about money. Everything we do is class-marked. Especially
today. Although my family was wealthy, my mom shopped at Sears and the A&P, I went
- Why Does the Working Class Resent Professionals but Admire the Rich?