A Recognizable Mold: Analyzing the Urban Class Experience
Critique of ethnographic work by Elijah Anderson and Richard Florida
	
      Within the urban context one comes in contact with an array of social classes, communities and experiences. ÒCity lifeÓ for any one person may be vastly different from another person in the same area, at the same time. The modern city, however, is by definition an immense conglomeration of individualsÕ experience, traceable in the interactions between various people groups. The works of Elijah Anderson and Richard Florida paint a vivid juxtaposition of these definitions through illustrations of economics and values so that we can become a more cognoscente urban whole. To comprehend the groups in which people sort themselves, one must dig deep the very definition of these classes, so often written by the people themselves.
      First and foremost, one must understand Elijah Anderson and Richard FloridaÕs vastly different spheres of investigation. Elijah AndersonÕs ethnographical study of African American urban communities led him to characterize people in two ways: as a Òstreet familyÓ or a Òdescent family (134).Ó The ÒCode of the Street,Ó an understood expectation for public behavior and violence, held great meaning for both of these types, but in contrasting ways. For Òstreet families,Ó it is the means by which they obtain and retain respect from their family and community, as well as a means of physical and psychological control in a world that seems against them (135). Their counterparts are the Òdescent families,Ó who Anderson characterizes as people striving to make something of themselves in the world beyond the street through sacrifices for their children. They characteristically share many middle class values while maintaining a working knowledge of the code of the street (134). 
      The work of Richard Florida, however, exists in what might seem an entirely different end of the spectrum.  Florida highlights a new Creative Class who has managed to move beyond concerns of physical property and are now defined by their Òknowledge-intensiveÓ contributions to the economy (165). Centered upon profession-driven features, they also share values of individuality, meritocracy, diversity and openness (167). This diversity and openness, though, can also contrast with elite traits common in the Creative Class, often times excluding African Americans (169). Therefore, the opposing visions of Anderson and Florida are not mutually exclusive, but complement each other by completing a picture of the broader urban landscape.
      Both Florida and Anderson and Florida display an understanding that to exist in the city is to live in enhanced awareness of the economy, and likewise frame their classes as a kind of economic category. On the top of the economic ladder is the Creative Class, which Florida reports makes an average salary of $48,752, in comparison with incomes well under $30,000 for Working and Service Class members (167). By highlighting this wealth differential, Florida acknowledges that in a capitalist nation, money is power. 
      Not only is creativity economically prized, Òfirms and organizations value it for the results that it can produce and individuals value it as a route to self-expression and job satisfaction (166).Ó By reinforcing a new generational expectation of work to be personally fulfilling rather than merely provisionary, Florida creates a subtle second hierarchy beyond that of wage, where attaining ÒsuccessÓ must include high-earnings and fulfillment. In multiple instances, Florida lauds the potential for people in the second-tier creative professions to Òmove upÓ into the Super-Creative Core (165) and cheers on his hairdresser and housekeeper who Òrelish creative pursuitsÓ as Òprime candidates for reclassification.Ó Florida insists that to reach higher in the economic strata, a low-end service worker should merely tap into their creative essences. Yet mobility looks much easier viewing from the top down than, as Anderson evaluates, from the bottom up. 
      ÒCreativity,Ó the currency of post-industrial advancement, is a luxury which descent and street families cannot afford according to Elijah Anderson. It is a secondary concern to descent families striving to provide the opportunity they could not have to their children. Typically parents both work one or more low-paying job each in order to keep the dream alive (135). Street families, in even more dire economic circumstances, lack understanding or desire to conform to professional functions outside of the street code. What little salary they do acquire is often squandered on pleasures including but not limited to liquor, cigarettes and drugs, rather than advancing their skills or opportunities (136). Furthermore, Florida admits that creativity is not the lower classÕs saving grace because many are being Òleft behind because they do not have the background and training to be part of this new system (166).Ó Even as Florida plainly states the vast difference in Working and Creative Class wages, he seems to wonder at how African American families are poorer on average and their children will then have difficulty accessing the same level of technological fluency and high degree of formal education necessary to offer Creative services (169). On first glance, Florida presents the Creative Class as the class of mobility and a new point of entry to the American Dream Ð if you can work hard (or think grandly), you will succeed. Upon including the realities of AndersonÕs communities of study, that economic-rose-colored-glass is just not the case. Here the views of the writers seem to come into stark contrast, Florida viewing economic class as fluid, able to be altered, while Anderson understands the law of economic inertia: it is very difficult to transverse the boarders of class. 
      Beyond the binding ties of material circumstance, these classes also have varying values when it comes to achievement. In the creative class, much like our modern system of test-based acceptance to colleges, merit is the key to getting what you want (168). Hard work and challenging oneself to get ahead are keys to gaining merit, which creates great societal gain but pits every man for himself.  In contrast, value in descent families is placed upon responsibility and sacrifice to rise to your potential. The self is the main driver for this means of achievement, but is motivated by social consciousness of the people around them and their children, who are the ultimate recipient of their success. However, in the world of the street, Òmight makes right (137)Ó and one gets what they need by gaining control over the situation and by being smart enough to overcome whatever obstacles are placed in your way. It has been observed by Anderson and a host of other casual observers that this base idea of achievement leads to violence and confrontation in public situations that breeds fear in the Ògood peopleÓ might receive their Òmight.Ó Yet, Anderson lays out their way of thinking in a fair light of comparison, rather than decrying, as many city dwellers do, its negative, fear-inducing effect on our collective urban experience. 
      The most critical contrast between class values in this case would be their relationship to the future. At the most desperate level, street families approach life as an obstacle to be overcome often because of a built up bitterness and lack of hope for the future. Decent families, while still under critical struggle in their present circumstance, afford themselves Òa certain amount of hopeÓ Ð a vision of what is yet to be for themselves and for their children beyond them (135). They are driven by the future, but have not yet attained the ability to tap into its practical value. New visions for the future, however, is the bread-and-butter of the Creative Class. This class professionally markets and derives economic value from new ideas for what is yet to be, or, put more plainly, hope. Hope, in these urban communities, is revealed to have a value beyond Òmorale.Ó Its presence is the doorway to success and the lack of it drains a people of their capability for meaningful societal contribution. 
      Class and culture will always play a part in our urban and national story. Our current political climate displays the continuing conflict for power between classes. As the frustrations of the working class and the arguably politically ignorant rise up against the better judgment of the media, the liberal elite and other cultural opinion makers, the power of the Creative Class becomes less certain than it may have seemed at the time of these writings. In a time of shifting sands, it is all the more crucial to grasp the situation and motivation of the groups at play. Elijah Anderson and Richard FloridaÕs portraits of street and descent families and the Creative Class shed light on how our complex urban interactions are tied to perceptions and realities of class life both in financial circumstance and value conflicts. As individuals of an ever-growing host of classes, races, ethnicities and communities, it is our responsibility to approach all groups with an eye of understanding, acknowledging their own complex identity and beliefs.



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