Race and Class at Age 30: Ongoing Struggles and Successes
The study is an age 30 follow-up of four groups of students (affluent black, affluent white, lower-income black, lower-income white) from the class of 2009 who attended an elite college with a diverse student body. During college these students had participated in a longitudinal study about the race and class challenges they faced on campus and their learning from diversity. At age 30, 45 participants (80% of the original sample) were interviewed and filled out online surveys. Lower-income participants reported acquiring more elite forms of cultural and social capital and higher aspirations during college, and had attained upward mobility. No race or class differences were found in participants’ educational and occupational attainment or income. Fifty-five percent of the lower-income participants reported a struggle bridging the two different worlds of their home and current communities, a cost of upward mobility. Seventy-one percent of black participants reported confronting racial bias, discrimination and/or exclusion by colleagues at work, and almost half perceived a career ceiling due to race. Few race or class differences existed in participants’ hopes and fears about the future. The data speak strongly to the benefits of learning from being part of a racially and socioeconomically diverse student body. At age 30, 81% of participants reported having learned about race during college through interactions with peers of another race, and 79% attributed learning about social class to interactions with peers of another social class.