While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica du jour, my father was on a bricklayer’s scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home — he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn’t interested in Thucydides, and I wasn’t up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York City he can’t get into: colleges, condos, office towers. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn’t welcome anymore. Related by blood, we’re separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working-class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.
What drove me to leave what I knew? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and anti-intellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It’s like that for Straddlers. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing: the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-and pop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo folk may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brie to Kraft slices. They marry outside the neighbourhood and raise their kids differently. They might not be in church on Sunday.
When they pick careers (not jobs), it’s often a kind of work their parents never heard of or can’t understand. But for the white-collar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In Corporate America, where the rules are based on notions foreign to working-class people, a Straddler can get lost. Social class counts at the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate norms are based on middle-class values, business types say. From an early age, middle-class people learn how to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It is as though they are following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to read.
People born into the middle class to parents with college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital’. Growing up in an educated environment, they learn about Picasso and Mozart, stock portfolios and crème brulee. In a home with cultural capital, there are networks: someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job. Dinner-table talk could involve what happened that day to mom and dad at the law firm, the doctor’s office, or the executive suite. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement that will carry them through their lives. This ‘belongingness’ is not just related to having material means, it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early access and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more organic, ‘legitimate’ means of appropriating cultural capital, Bourdieu tells us. Those of us possessing ‘ill-gotten Culture’ can learn it, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater match between middle-class lives and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates — universities or corporations. Children of the middle and upper classes have been speaking the language of the bosses and supervisors forever.
Blue-collar kids are taught by their parents and communities to work hard to achieve, and that merit is rewarded. But no blue-collar parent knows whether such things are true in the middle-class world. Many professionals born to the working-class report feeling out of place and out of place and outmanoeuvred in the office. Soon enough, Straddlers learn that straight talk won’t always cut. Resolving conflicts head-on and speaking your mind doesn’t always work, no matter how educated the Straddler is.
In the working-class, people perform jobs in which they are closely supervised and are required to follow orders and instructions. That, in turn, affects how they socialise their children. Children of the working-class are brought up in a home in which conformity, obedience and intolerance for back talk are the norm — the same characteristics that make a good factory worker.
According to the passage, which of the following statements about 'cultural capital' is NOT true?
Show Hint
- It socializes children early into the norms of middle class institutions.
- It helps them learn the language of universities and corporations.
- It creates a sense of enlightenment in middle-class children.
- It develops bright kids into Straddlers.
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
According to the passage, the patterns of socialization of working-class children make them most suited for jobs that require
Show Hint
- diplomacy.
- compliance with orders.
- enterprise and initiative.
- high risk-taking.
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
When Straddlers enter white collar jobs, they get lost because
Show Hint
- they are thrown into an alien value system.
- their families have not read the rules in corporate manuals.
- they have no one to guide them through the corporate maze.
- they miss the ‘mom and pop orthodoxy.’
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
What does the author’s statement, “My father wasn’t interested in Thucydides, and I wasn’t up on arches,” illustrate?
Show Hint
- Evolving social transformation
- Professional arrogance and social distance
- Organic cultural capital
- Breakdown of family relationships
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
The author is a student at Columbia while his father lays bricks on a campus building. Neither knows the other’s world: the father is not interested in Thucydides and the son is not up on arches. Right after this the author says, "Related by blood, we’re separated by class."
Step 2: Decide what it illustrates:
The son has moved from a blue-collar background to a white-collar one in a single generation, so the two now live in different social worlds. This shows a changing social position across generations, that is, an evolving social transformation.
Step 3: Check the other options:
Option (3): "organic" cultural capital belongs to people raised in middle-class, educated homes; the author calls his own culture "ill-gotten", so this is not it. Option (2): there is no arrogance in the tone; the remark is wistful. Option (4): the author speaks of a class gap, not of a breakdown in the relationship.
Final Answer:
The correct option is (1): Evolving social transformation
Which of the following statements about Straddlers does the passage NOT support explicitly?
Show Hint
- Their food preferences may not match those of their parents.
- They may not keep up some central religious practices of their parents.
- Their political ideologies may differ from those of their parents.
- They are at home neither in the middle class nor in the working-class.
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
The passage says limbo folk "may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brie to Kraft slices", so food preferences can differ. Supported.
Step 2: Option (2):
"They might not be in church on Sunday" supports this. Supported.
Step 3: Option (4):
"People like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life." Supported.
Step 4: Option (3):
The passage speaks of ideas and values in general, but nowhere mentions political ideology. This is not supported explicitly.
Final Answer:
The correct option is (3): Their political ideologies may differ from those of their parents.
Top CAT Questions
- Compare and contrast between Portia and Jessica characters in Merchant of Venice.
- In a triangle ABC,AB=AC=8cm. A circle drawn with BC as diameter passes through A. Another circle drawn with center at A passes through B and C. Then the area,in sq.cm,of the overlapping region between the two circles is
- The simple interest accrued on an amount of Rs.25,000 at the end of three years is Rs.7,500. What would be the compound interest accrued on the same amount at the same rate in the same period?
- What is the sum of all roots of the equation \(|x+4|^2–10|x+4|=24\)?
- A solid metal sphere is melted and smaller spheres of equal radii are formed. 10% of the volume of the sphere is lost in the process. The smaller spheres have a radius which is \(\frac{1}{9}\text{th}\) the larger sphere. If 10 litres of paint were needed to paint the larger sphere,how many litres are needed to paint all the smaller spheres?