The Middle Class: The Cream Filling of the Social Ladder

As the first of a series of hard-hitting questions I'll be asking readers in the future, I must ask you all: what would an Oreo be without its cream filling? While it gives the Oreo its sleek, symmetrical appearance,  the cream also provides a cushion between the two extreme wafers of crunchy, chocolate-y goodness, a stable middle-ground, if you will. No, I'm not just talking about Oreos because I'm craving a midnight snack, but because milk's favorite cookie serves as a wonderful analogy for the American middle class, the buffer group between the rich and the poor. 

Today's poor economy has caused the middle class to shrink, as if a giant tongue of unemployment has licked its way across the central rungs of the social ladder, a.k.a. our beloved cream filling (kind of a gross metaphor, but accurate!). In this article, Kenneth Repoza, a Forbes contributor, reports that a study that Pew Research conducted shows that a full 32% of Americans now report themselves as being members of the lower class, when only 25% reported themselves as such in 2008. According to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, American incomes are at a standstill, the job market is a disgrace, and the unemployment rate nearly makes history at 8.1%. The types of people who occupy these classes has changed, too; people under 30 make up the majority of the self-defined lower class group while the numbers of Hispanics and whites in the lower class grows. However, the unemployment rate of black Americans has stayed the same while those of the other races grew, placing a nearly equal percent of whites and blacks in the lower class. 

The four subsections of the middle class: the Top of the Class,  the Satisfied Middle, the Struggling Middle, and the Anxious Middle.

The concept of the middle class disappearing is interesting (and worrying) to me in itself; the fact that more and more people are slipping into the lower class is a legitimate manifestation of the dire state of our economy. However, Repoza's approach to this article is the thing about it that really struck me. He decides to attack the demographics behind each social group, making a point to single out white and black Americans. He says that "as a consequence, a virtually identical share of blacks (33 percent) and whites (31 percent) now say they are in the lower class," and he even titled the article "America's Middle Class Shrinks Further... Now, Blacks And Whites [Are] Equally Broke." He obviously thought that highlighting the social equality between black and white people would compel people to read the article, probably because they'd be surprised by that fact. I found it interesting that though the article was supposed to be about social classes and the dwindling middle class, but the author spun it in a way that compared the types of people who made up each class. Although the demographics of members of each social class should be put on record, using them as the basis for evaluating the social classes seems to be besides the point. Since the author used races of people to draw attention to the article, it's clear that people are more intrigued by seeing how their own race measures up to others than reading about the facts and figures of the economy.

*generic joke about how that is the way the cookie crumbles*