Our view of underclass is someone being lazy, and someone who is not a hard worker with anything. Growing up in a middle class home meant that times were difficult. Being one of seven children taught her that poverty was no disgrace. As Hook began college, she noticed that almost everyone portrayed the poor as sneaky, lazy, and dishonest. If items went missing in the dorms, the black and Hispanic
One of the most significant observations noted by the authors, was that working class people often assume personal responsibility for their social position. The plumbers, electricians, shop foremen, janitors and so on, all viewed their social position as a result of personal inadequacies. Consequently, despite their material success, some of the workers continued to experience low self-esteem and stigma
These African American slave workers at the time of 1865 were displaced from their current jobs and quickly became unemployed. Many of the wealthy southern landowners could not afford to pay their slaves a living wage (Williams 21). This caused an influx of African Americans to migrate to the north to seek employment and shelter (Williams 25). However, due to industrial revolution and arguably discrimination many of these African American were unable to find proper shelters and jobs to support their families. Many of such African Americans started to live on the streets and created “ghettos” which are still present today in parts of northern America like Harlem, Brooklyn, and Chicago (Williams 28).
The formation of the New Upper Class and the New Lower Class in America are due to the behavioral changes in the people of society. Class system has existed throughout history and has been a major cause of many historic events. Whether those events have impact upon human societies or not, the class system continues to exist in the modern world. In America, there has been a formation of additional classes in the society due to the rise of corporatism and modernization. Specifically, modernization has allowed people of middle class to form the New Upper Class and the people of lowest class has form the New Lower Class.
The Civil Rights Movement was seen as the beginning of racial integration. In 1948, President Truman abolished racial discrimination in the Armed Forces when Executive Order 9981 was issued. Key figures like Civil rights activist Rosa Parks spurred a city-wide boycott that led to the segregation laws to be lifted. With the various laws lifted and rights of the minorities restored, this levels the playing ground for both the blacks and whites in trying to achieve the American Dream. Thus, the American Dream indirectly contributed to racial integration, first by stopping segregation, removing unjust laws and policies in place that were basically unfavourable to the blacks.
You feel like “well I don’t hate black people so I’m not a racist,” but you benefit from racism. Just by the merit, the color of your skin. The opportunities that you have, you’re privileged in ways that you might not even realize because you haven’t been deprived of certain things. We need to talk about these things in order for them to change. B. PYO on the history of institutionalized racism under capitalism.
Furthermore, white people in the 1950’s discriminated against race according to racial discrimination and Class-based bias. Which came from the perspective that “all black migrants were lower skilled, low-income workers who did not fit into
Albert Cohen, argued that “working-class delinquents’ success comes not from achieving material wealth as Merton suggested but in gaining status” (1955). As middle-class youths fail to live up to the “middle-class measuring rod” these youths are left with the frustration of not obtaining the middle-class status. Meaning, that regardless of the wealth, family structure and status these young individual unit together in search of individual status with the group. Cohen, explains such behavior as non-utilitarian delinquency. “Middle-class measurement rod - term used to describe the middle-class expectations that exist in schools, which lower-class people cannot measure up to and therefore deviate, status and respect, dominant values of hard work and deferred gratification individual responsibility.” Albert Cohen, 1955
Racism & The Great Migration In 1920s, racism was big in the south. Blacks weren’t allowed any of the rights whites had due to segregation and all the laws preventing them from being equal. The Great Migration affected the location of racism because when blacks moved north, racism followed. Blacks moved north to escape poverty caused by sharecropping and Jim Crow laws. When slavery was abolished, whites rented land to blacks to grow crops in return for a percentage of the crop.
The caste and class concept was still living on for a while until small stuff got changed like having more rights for blacks and many more stuff. All these cases sparked a Civil Rights movement that got the government's attention of how bad the racism was in the