Also – Fussell seems to overlook this – the working class can also be subdivided racially/ethnically. Among other things Marx got wrong, a social class is not merely a set of people of the same economic status or economic function. It is also a sociological entity. People of the same class do not just work at the same kinds of jobs or earn the same level of income, they live in the same kinds of neighborhoods, go to the same schools, socialize with each other, marry each other, and absorb a similar outlook growing up. The white and black working classes are really two different social classes, and will remain so until socialization and neighborhood and intermarriage between them is a great deal more common than it is now. It’s not that either is above the other (except that the whites probably provide most of the high-proles as Fussell defines them); they’re like two halves of the same layer of the cake. Or thirds, or whatever, because the Latino working class is separate from both, etc.