White Trash: The 400-Year Untold history of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg (2016)
Equality as an ideal, in the abstract, serves as the theme of American democracy. It is false, of course, as a reality.
Rich white men never willingly gave any power, money, or anything else to anyone unless they were forced to do so. Married women were denied legal existence being subsumed upon marriage only as a adjunct to the husband. And were legally chattel back in the day.
Americans are not and have never been living in a “classless society.”