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To: AmishDude
Class is perhaps the most taboo subject in America, more so even than race and ethnicity -- although ethnicity and class are more closely bound than most people will admit.

Actuall, when I spoke of minority groups conforming to the values of the primarily Anglo-Saxon middle and upper middle classes, I had in mind the early 20th century experience of the Irish, Germans and Italians as well as the more recent experiences of Jews, Asians and now blacks and hispanics.

Yes, lumpenproletariat is a German word, a lovely one originating in Marxist/socialist writings in the late 19th century and used to distinguish the real dregs of society from the 'authentic' working class proletariat. Likewise lumpenintellectual.

Your comment on the different educational expectations of the various classes is apt and well-taken. When I was in high school, I was astonished that there were kids (other than the obvious thugs and their molls) who were not planning to go to college, let alone graduate school! In my own family, though we were hardly wealthy, college and professional education was taken for granted in one or more branches on both sides for hundreds of years. I had a good friend in grad school who was finishing his PhD, he was not only the first one in his family to go to college, but the first to finish high schoool. What a different perspective! How he valued his education!

55 posted on 05/30/2002 11:34:17 AM PDT by CatoRenasci
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To: CatoRenasci
I have a question, as you seem much more familiar with the humanities than I. What was supposed to happen to the "real dregs" of society when the proletariat took over and brought paradise on earth?
56 posted on 05/30/2002 11:41:17 AM PDT by AmishDude
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