People like Us: Social Class in America

People Like Us is a funny and provocative look at the ways Americans constantly evaluate and categorise each others' social status. For three years, the producers crisscrossed the country, shuttling between glittery hangouts like New York's Hamptons summer colony, where name-dropping, Armani-clad nouveau riches frolic, and down-home events like Georgia's Redneck Games, where blue-collar folk entertain themselves by bobbing for pigs' feet and flopping in mud pits. The belief that there is no class system in America may be the bedrock of its national self-image, but People Like Us shows that this piece of conventional wisdom is largely a myth. Peeking into dozens of ordinary American lives, the documentary discovers a society tightly stratified by income, education, geography, taste, and attitudes. From discreet charity benefits on pedigree Long-Island estates to decrepit trailer parks in Appalachia, from the manicured suburban lawns of the black middle class to the gritty workingmen's taverns of East Baltimore, People Like Us goes behind the scenes to illustrate a disturbing truth: that despite America's professed equality and diversity, Americans all tend to surround themselves with people very much like themselves and consciously or unconsciously exclude those not of their 'tribe'.