C Kahn, you gave me what I was looking for. But first let's make clear who said what:
1) I never said that anybody is born to push a broom. That is Charles' idea, and I oppose it (see my next post to him, if you like).
2) I assume this was understood already. To make sure: I did not say that Charles is part of an elite (nor that I feel that I am). When I told Charles that he seems to be an elitist, this was a (low-tone) accusation of him, not an appraisal.
Now to the point: The (different ?) handling of social class in the US and in Europe - this is a very interesting question for me. However, how can any answer be explored?
When I try to do it on personal experiences, I will run into the trouble of limited environments' experience, of unfounded generalizations. E.g. me:
For Europe I can talk, if at all, only about Germany. I have never been to the US. I cannot (and do not) assume that what I say about the US is definitely true. I try to make myself a picture about the US by printed, filmed, televised sources. Some of them are up to date, some are 'classical', some are simply 'old', and most probably many are additionally misunderstood by me. And I do not research them systematically or professionally. Only in nowadays' world I couldn't help, even if I wished to do so, and stop a constant influx of information about the US. So, one day I thought I should make something constructive out of the situation.
How problematic judging by media is, was clear to me before I first entered this forum. Actually I did it because I wanted to find out what some Americans DO think about the Kosovo crisis, after the media pictures I got were in some way disturbingly contradictory. I found out that it helps a lot to have a direct contact.
I think your friend is most probably the best source that would exist at all to comparatively judge the two different societies. After all she had the real experience of both.
Otoh she, too, can have only the limited experience of her - more or less - immediate environment at both sides, with an additional 'bias' because she has surely changed herself according to her experiences in the US. We will never know (and of course we don't really want to find that out) whether she could have climbed the career ladder back in Germany if she simply had dared the same projects here, that she felt capable of in the US, or if she had returned when she was half-way up.
I do not dispute the fact that the 'social mobility' is bigger in the US than in Germany, which makes stories like your friend's more likely to happen in the US than here. Broad-base sociological studies have shown that people will climb the social ladder in the US faster, and more often during their lifetimes, than in Germany. The same is true for falling down from that ladder, too. Additionally to that 'vertical social mobility' there is a lag of Germany behind the US in what they call 'horizontal social mobility', that is, moving. People in Germany seem to have a bigger tendency to stay, e.g. near their parents and relatives, instead of moving to a different place because of a better job than US citizens.
However it is not true that in Germany it is all-over impossible to have a career like your friend did in the US. E.g. I know somebody (now in his sixties) who was the eighth son of a railroad worker and retired a full-fledged university professor. All but one of his living siblings have done university studies also, and become teachers, or doctors. Three had been lost in WWII ...
I think the situation of WWII and the first years afterwards was decisive for nowadays Germany. E.g., after war, something like 20% of Western Germans were displaced people, this means, most of them had come from far away Eastern places. Their typical situation was that they had what they could have carried walking in winter 1944, some of them even bare-foot. Many fathers were still in Russian POW camps -or dead-, many women had been raped by Russian soldiers, but even if neither was the case, the families were in most cases in desperate psychologic conditions.
Those people weren't especially welcome in the places they came to. They needed help, they carried illnesses, they had some typical extra deficiencies, they often spoke dialects that were not directly understood by the locals. However, the Germans had to start all over again. And, I believe, the internal normalization of Germany was only possible because the parent's situation was NOT taken as so important as you believe is typical of Germany, and at least in that generation, social class was NOT so much considered as crucial.
America was seen as a good example, and a genuine helper (e.g. my father still sometimes talks about CARE packages). I think Germany was a good pupil, as compared to some other European countries. But actually I don't know that ... A complete imitation however, was surely not intended, nor possible.
About the talk about the interactions of language and society I should add that I do not know whether what I said (I have learned about it at school, some 15 years ago) related to the US as well or only to Britain. Also I tried to make clear that it is more important how the possibilities and side-effects of language are used in any specific society / environment than what they could be in principle. So I think what I said is in several ways reconcilable with what you expressed about German and American society.
BTW 'class' is in German a word that is not used if not in talk that is clearly indicating a marxist background of the speaker, or after additional definitions. The same is true of 'bourgeois' (which restriction sometimes makes communication with French based English speakers like GJ difficult). Strong restrictions apply to the use of 'race' on one hand, and 'fascist' on the other.
Best regards MNI |
