3 - Achieving Class

Summary

Chapter 3 describes the emergence of merit as a store of value. For professionals, merit was first earned and demonstrated in educational contexts, then ‘cashed in’ for access to professional pathways. There, further merit was accumulated doing virtuous work, and rapidly reinvested in advancement upwards. Each step on the career ladder was ‘earned’ by demonstrating one’s increasing merit, and directly translated into material and social benefits. Merit was built from conceptions of virtue that were already deeply gendered and which were becoming entangled with emerging ideas about race. As merit became the currency with which the professional class purchased and managed their influence, this systematized multiple, intersecting forms of inequality. As they structured career ladders, the professional class also built a ladder through society, so that each person’s class and financial status, from the rich and powerful to the poorest and most marginalized, seemed to be earned. This opened the opportunity for the professional class to extract moral and financial value from women, people of colour, and the working class, bolstering their own status and class identity.