business careers. Working-class entertaining is designed to denote a space apart from
jobs, not be an extension of them. The goal is not to impress people you don’t know well,
but to comfort those you do with abundant portions of familiar dishes—think Old
Country Buffet, not Chez Panisse.
Blue-collar jobs often involve technical rather than social skills, and the working class
takes pride in their technical expertise, not their ability to influence other people. A pipe
fitter criticized “shirt and ties types” for “too much politicking.” “They are jockeying for
jobs and worrying about whether they are making the right moves and stuff. I feel that I
don’t have to get involved in that.” Working-class men often see professionals as phony
and value their own ability to call a spade a spade. Said a man who had left Wall Street to
be a firefighter, “In big business, there’s a lot of false stuff going on.” Said an auto
mechanic, “You know what I hate? Two-face. I can’t stand that. You’re a fake, you’re a
fake. Why be a fake?”^64 “Middle-class game-playing bullshit” was the verdict of one
class migrant.^65
Irony versus sincerity is yet another class divide. Both black and white workers value
sincerity and direct talk because they believe it sets them above the (fake, suck-up)
professionals. The professional elite values irony and polish, because this sets them above
the (inarticulate, unsophisticated) working class.
So much of what the professional elite identifies as normal life the white working class
sees as the display of class privilege. Take the standard professional-class ice-breaker:
“What do you do?” It makes sense in a class context where personal dignity stems from
economic power and professional achievement. When people ask me, I reply, “I’m a law
professor.”
But that kind of honor is available to only a few in the working class—to firefighters,
police, soldiers. For most, the dignity work affords is from what it allows you to buy and
whom it allows you to support, not from the job itself. “What do you do?” is not the first
question at a party. I remember attending my class-migrant husband’s high school
reunion when, with a regrettable lack of code switching, he posed the “What do you do?”
question to a classmate. The classmate’s face got very red as he came right up into Jim’s
face and hissed, “ I sell toilets.”
This helps explain why, in working-class communities, attention often shifts from what
one does to who one is —to character. Working-class whites seek to “keep the world in
moral order,” to quote Lamont, often measured by adherence to “traditional” values.^66 “I
- Why Does the Working Class Resent Professionals but Admire the Rich?