A Class Act

Jennifer Ladd and Felice Yeskel

June 23, 2005

Felice Yeskel, Ed.D, and Jennifer Ladd, Ed.D, are founders and co-directors of Class Action, a national organization working to bridge the class divide. Yeskel is co-author of Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Growing Inequality and Insecurity. See their web site www.classism.org for more information and links to the two series described in this article.

In the last month, two of our country’s most elite newspapers published a series of unprecedented articles about social class in America. On May 13, 2005, The Wall Street Journal published part one of “Moving Up: The Challenges to the American Dream”, a series chronicling declining mobility and opportunity in the United States. Two days later, The New York Times began their “Class Matters” series, declaring “class is still a powerful force in American life.” The month-long series examined class disparities in marriage, educational opportunities, religious life and comparative immigration experiences. Although these articles address an often-taboo subject, they overlook a crucial element: potential ways to remedy the flaws in the current system.