1. Making it by Faking it
Many times when people are experiencing a transition from one culture to another individuals have a hard time identifying themselves that they end up pretending to be someone they are not.
Robert Granfield explains this in the article, “Making It By Faking It.”

2. STIGMA A status that grants you disrespect “Scarlet Letter”
Stigmatized Attitudes/Behaviors: LGBT, Low Class, Single Motherhood, Unmarried with Kids, Smoking, AIDS, Previous prison sentences, Drugs, Physical Disability, Mental Illness

3. Study
Granfield performs an experiment during the late twentieth century where he examines the psychological challenges being bicultural carries in bicultural identities.

4. Bicultural Identities
Having an identity from two cultures
You may experience something along these lines when you go to America…
Being both part of American culture as a Chinese student

5. Participants
The author studies the transition of a group of working-class students attending an elite law school.

6. Setting and Methods
Data collected as part of a larger project with law school socialization
Prestigious law school in Eastern US
There’s a lot of them out there
Students attending the university were white and middle class
Trinagulated research design was used to collect data

7. Triangulated Design 1st phase: Extensive Field Work
2nd Phase: In depth interviews
3rd Phase: Survey of 50% of the 1540 students attending the law school
For this article a subset of working class students was selected for extensive analysis

8. Results
The working-class students feel forced to acquire the norms of the elite and many decide to leave their own norms and values behind in pursuance of recognition and approval.
In order to gain respect, the working class students had to dress in formal clothes, use higher level vocabulary, and pretend to be someone they were not: an upper-class elite student.

9. Feeling out of Place
Working class students entered with a great deal of pride
Entered with the intent of helping downtrodden
Suggests they identified with other working class
But they soon became ashamed of their background and felt out of place

10. Feeling Out of Place
“It makes me self conscious when I use the wrong word or tense. I feel that if I had grown up in the middle class, I wouldn’t have lapses. I have difficulty expressing thoughts while most other people here don’t.”

11. Feeling out of place
I had a real problem because legal education is based on upper class values…debates had to do with profit maximation. I rememeber we were talking about landlors respnbility to maintain decent housing in rental apartments. Some people were saying that there were good reasons not to do this. Well I think that’s bullshit because I grew up with people who lived in apartments with rats, leaks, and roaches. I feel really different because I didn’t grow up in suburbia.”

12. Feeling out of place
“I remember him saying, “Youre all pretty much familiar with this because of your family background.” I remember thinking, doesn’t he think there’s any people in this law school who come from a working class background?”

13. Hidden Inner Injury of Class
This eager to be socially accepted caused in them what Granfield calls a “hidden inner injury of class, [which] comes from a lack of confidence, [causing] a psychological burden that working-class students experienced as they came to acquire the ‘identity beliefs’ associated with middle-class society” (Granfield 149).

14. HAD TO FIND WAYS OF ADJUSTING OR HIDING WORKING CLASS BACKGROUND, CHANGING IDENTITY

15. Faking it
Students from middle class workers found they were able to imitate their more privileged counterparts

16. Ambivalence
Working class students had difficulty transcending their previous identities
Became more alienated in their own minds

17. Resolving Ambivalence
Many students became deliberate role models, immersing themselves in high social classes for that specific purpose
Had to reap the rewards – jobs, friends, professional contacts, experiences, all depended on hiding class background
Some choose to become what they at first were going to fight against
Decided that they couldn’t help lower classes directly, had to become important elites

18. Analysis
Being bicultural for these working class students was a barrier from achieving group affiliation, acceptance, and even life chances.
All due to their lower class status, physical appearance, and average vocabulary.

19. Conclusion
Students interpret and experience their social class from the perspective of stigma
The stigma of being a member of the lower classes Is thought to be just upwardly mobile working class students frequently construct identities in which they seek escape from their past.

20. Implications
One can see how being bicultural can be harmful to an individual’s self-esteem.
When a bicultural person is not comfortable with themselves because of society’s high expectations, it can generate lack of confidence and stress in the individual.