Moving Up: The Challenges of Communicating a New Social Class Identity

Sample

ESPN SportsCenter was on, but Jim Morgan wasn’t listening. Instead he was lying on his couch in an otherwise dark room, the light from his television screen flickering across his blank face. His phone was buzzing with text message alerts, but he was ignoring those too. He had a rough week—a rough couple months, to be exact—and he needed some time alone to gather his thoughts. Since being hired as an entry-level attorney at one of the most prestigious law firms in the city, Jim was nagged by a little voice inside his head saying he didn’t quite belong: Kids from his working-class neighborhood grew up to work on the auto assembly line or to manage grocery stores or to enlist in the Army. They didn’t become attorneys at high-powered law firms. Whenever that pesky voice chimed in, Jim would do his best to silence it. He was smart, he graduated in the top 10 percent of his law school class, and he had an indefatigable work ethic. His logic just about licked that little voice until Monday afternoon.