Teaching an Interdisciplinary Course on the American Upper Class

I teach a course titled the American Upper Class. I first taught the course in the early 1980s after having spent the previous few years writing about the extent to which Jews were and were not allowed into the Protestant Establishment. Drawing especially on the work of E. Digby Baltzell, an upper class sociologist from the Main Line of Philadelphia, and the work of C. Wright Mills, a radical sociologist from Texas whose father sold insurance, I had written a series of articles, and also coauthored a book titled Jews in the Protestant Establishment.¹ In the process of studying upper class Protestants, and the ways they had and had not allowed Jews into their midst, I began to focus more on the relationships between the American upper class (including elite boarding schools, exclusive city and country clubs, and debutante balls) and the American power structure.

Most colleges have sociology courses on "Stratification" that seek to teach students that there is a class structure in the United States (a big surprise to some students). By the 1980s most colleges had courses titled Race, Class and Gender (I have taught that one, too, though I title my course Class, Race and Gender). So, too, do most colleges include courses that focus on poverty in the United States. Not many have courses on the American upper class.

In this class I have sought to address some basic issues. First, though most students, like so many Americans, deny its existence, I try to help students understand that there is a class system in this country and that it has for the most part worked in rather predictable ways throughout the last 110 years. Second, I hope to show students that those in the upper class not only have a lifestyle that is much-admired and much-emulated, but that they are clearly connected to, but not the same as, those who run the institutions of power in the United States. Third, I hope that students will come to realize that those who are not in the upper class, and especially those who are at the bottom of the class structure, are very much affected by the advantages that those in the upper class have and work to maintain. Fourth, although the class differs substantially from the course I teach called Class, Race and Gender, I try to help my students understand that one cannot really understand class without also considering race and gender—the three (and other forms of oppression or discrimination) interact in complex ways. Fifth, I encourage students to think about how the American upper class is now part of an international upper class, and the ways those atop the class hierarchy in this country connect with those in the upper classes around the world. (Hint #1: there are now far more international students at the most elite boarding schools in the United States than there used to be. Hint #2: there are now a number of foreign-born CEOs of Fortune-level corporations, men from upper class backgrounds in their home countries.)

I teach at Guilford College, a Quaker liberal arts school in Greensboro, North Carolina. Guilford is somewhat selective, but not nearly as selective as many New England colleges. The students are geographically diverse (mostly from up and down the east coast, but some from the west, and some international students), and there is considerable diversity in terms of their class backgrounds. These days the tuition, room, and board runs about $33,000, though most students do not pay the full rate, and some are here mostly or fully on scholarships. Some students are from very wealthy families, many are from the upper middle class, and many are from middle and working class families. Many students are from rural North Carolina, or from small southern towns, and they see Greensboro as the big city. Therefore, when I teach this class, I do not assume that my students are from economically privileged backgrounds, or that they have ever heard of schools like Choate, Andover, or Exeter, though some have (and one or two may have...