2. I live in Crown Heights, off the 2/3/4/5 Franklin Avenue station. Based on the concepts from Reading 4.1 (“What Determines How Americans Perceive Their Social Class?” by Robert Bird and Frank Newport), the majority of my neighbors would be working or middle class, whether judged on income or education level. What’s notable to me is the gentrification apparent in my neighborhood. The newer residents trend higher in both income and education than the lifelong or long-term residents of the neighborhood, and may by themselves lean toward middle or even upper-middle class status, though most would not place themselves in the upper-middle category.

What I’m surprised by in the reading is what seems to be a desire to be perceived as “in the middle” with a large number of respondents declaring themselves “working” or “middle” class whether on the high or low end of the given scales. Why participants would do this is open to conjecture, but I think it demonstrates a major flaw in this economic/educational class structure as a subjective measurement.