ABSTRACT
Working-class people are the core members of Karl Marx’s proletariat, the workers who do not own the means of production and are the principal victims of the capitalist order. The racial character of the working class is likely to keep changing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and trends in interracial rates of college completion, the majority of the working class, namely individuals with less than a bachelor’s degree, will consist of people of color by 2032. Members of the American working class are part of “a profoundly individualistic social order” and have generally not thought of themselves as belonging to a social class. Social reproduction is a prominent force in the working class, just as it is in other social classes. Its members often have fewer valued resources, both financial and nonfinancial, than their middle-class counterparts. Working-class childrearing is like the military, Alfred Lubrano suggested, with the parents barking orders. Children are seldom encouraged to express themselves.
