In America, your money determines your class.
Or you could ask yourself, if Amanda Knox was anybody but a white American college female, would anyone ever know her name, let alone heatedly argue from thousands of miles away about her innocence?
The tendency is to focus attention on the court system and law enforcement, but pro-rich leniency exhibited in these arenas is a product of societal bias; it doesn’t arise in a vaccuum. Even in the absence of high priced lawyers, we are willing to give white, affluent people the benefit of the doubt. And I say white because that’s an important variable, too.
Well, not entirely, though it’s a big part. I think education plays a pretty huge part. Do people really consider a family living in a trailer park who wins a million dollars to suddenly have changed class?
We’ve drilled that into our kids as well. We put the law firm’s card in my son’s car with similar instructions, but I think we overdid it. When he got his first speeding ticket, he clammed up and insisted on calling the lawyers on the phone. They assured him it was OK to talk to the nice policeman. 
If reality shows are any indication, apparently yes.
Well no, because they won’t still have that million dollars in six months. But if they actually invest it wisely and get into a better situation, then yes, they will have suddenly changed class. You’re right though, education is a huge part of it. Access to resources is another big part of it. We tend to imagine ourselves doing things that are either conceivably within our reach, or else we have wild fantasies that are beyond ludicrous. But the in-between of that, the levers in society that you can pull if you have the cash to get it done, that engenders a different relationship to society than someone who cannot imagine being a consumer of certain products. Things like a lawyer.