Social Classes
Social class is divided into six ladder rungs with the wealthiest on the top rung and poorest on the bottom rung, according to Joseph Kahl and Dennis Gilbert. This means that the wealthiest are the most powerful because they have money and the poorest or underclass has no chance of advancement up the ladder. There are truths to this picture of social class but looking at social class this way gives little hope to the parts of society that are in poverty of ever moving up the ladder (Henslin, 2014).
“Today, the richest one percent of Americans earns nearly a quarter of the country’s income and control 40 percent of its wealth” (Wikibooks, 2015). People in this upper class have inherited their money from their relatives and have
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The population is made up of 15 percent of the working poor. Some have high school diploma but most of them are high school dropouts. A lot of this class is on food stamps just to survive and to feed their families. It is easy for this class to become the underclass and to become homeless. They work hard but never seem to get ahead without an education (Henslin, 2014).
The last rung on the ladder is the underclass. They are unemployed, work part-time or are on government assistance. They are high school drop outs and have little education making it hard to find a decent job. This class has little hopefulness of climbing the social ladder. “About 5 percent of the population falls into this class” (Henslin, 2014). The population of homeless people is in this class, unskilled labor is not needed in this day and age.
Income, education, wealth and occupation play a big role in how classes in society are made up. If you are in the elite upper-class then you are born with money and never have to worry about the lower classes. The lower classes struggle to survive every day and are worried how they are going to continue to survive. I feel that this is an issue that society needs to solve so that everyone has an equal opportunity to live a decent life and not have to worry where their next meal is going to come
Mantisos in his article, The Class America, talks about how people avoid speaking about social class, describes the economic spectrum, the lifestyles of Americans, and power and oppression. The only class America likes to talk about is the middle class and whether they think it exists or not. People avoid the subject of class because they like to think it does not matter. The trust is it most definitely does and there are so many advantages to being in a higher class than others. The economic spectrum in which we live in is described in depth by Mantisos.
The issue is that adults are being taught Payne’s framework, not children. There are more than three social classes, and adults should realize this when learning about the different forms of poverty. For example, Dennis Gilbert discussed all of these different types of classes that Payne does not discuss the working poor, working class, and upper middle class (Miseducating p. 2503).The lack of discussion into how the classes interact does
Have you ever wanted to chase the American dream? It might be more impossible than people realize. Gregory Mantsios writes “Class in America-2012” about the growing and obvious class divide in America, yet no one wants to talk about the situation and the effects on the people. I will be analyzing the text and explaining the effects it has on the reader. Throughout the article Mantsios stays consistent with his opinion by providing multiple charts and graphs to back his point.
In this society, working class are valued due to their hard work ethic, especially those working class who made a living by their sweat equity without a college education, because they struggled economically which also means not every working class can have that success . On the other hand working class are known as lazy people, failures, uneducated people. In American popular culture, according documentary Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class, by “Leistyna” working-class people are often portrayed as losers, however the documentary focus mostly on under-representation of working class people and their concerns and stereotypes use to portray their intersectional identities. If you go to work and do your job then go home, and have no or little control or authority of your work, you belong to working class,
A democracy is a form of government that is ruled by the people and controlled by the people. For example, here in the United states which is a democracy, everyone is allowed to vote and have land. Also, everyone is allowed to practice a religion of their choice. Athens was truly democratic because everyone had the equal justice, people were voted into office, and one’s social class did not determine what a person could become.
The largest if not only factor of class is wealth; how much income a family gets. To disprove the myths many more realities are listed. The first being, “There are enormous differences in economic status of American citizens. ”(334). Perhaps the most important reality states, “From cradle to grave, class standing has a significant impact on our chances of survival.
Class Stereotypes Stereotypes are seen as overgeneralized ideas, images, or beliefs of a person based on a group of people. Stereotypes can either be taken or said in a negative or positive way but mostly seen in a negative way. Stereotypes are formed on a life experience, idea or a belief a person may have towards one person based on the person’s gender, race, religion or social class. The most common stereotypes are of the social classes which are the: upper, middle and lower class.
That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing.” (Noah 190 online) If people stuck in the lower class were given the opportunity to learn and get an education, then they would be able to move up in the classes. The poverty cycle continues going on forever. Go to work, get paid, pay the bill,
There is lower, middle, and upper class, but there are also subcategories that fill the gaps in between, like the impoverished and the top one percenters. “Class in America”, written by Gregory Mantsios, addresses the myths and realities about socioeconomic class in America and how they affect American lives. His article highlights the unequal divide that has persisted over the course of history and will continue to manifest in the future. To introduce the existence of this issue, Mantsios states that this country’s citizens “don’t like to talk about class...or class privileges, or class oppression, or the class nature of society” (Mantsios 378). This is the case in America today because people are neglecting to acknowledge the existence of these elusive
In James W. Loewen’s “The Land of Opportunity,” he states that social class affects the way children are raised. He discusses the inequality in today’s society and how the textbooks in high school do not give any social class information. The students in today’s time are not taught everything they should be taught. He states that your family’s wealth is what makes up your future. Loewen discusses that people with more money can study for the SATs more productively and get a better score than someone who has less money.
The American dream is a dream of a land in which one can prosper with ambition and hard work. This idea has created many illusions for some because in reality the American dream is proven to be something that is rarely achieved. No individual is guaranteed success or destined for failure, but it is apparent that women, people of color, and those born into poverty will face greater obstacles than others, despite being a greater part of the American population. An author that tackles the issue of class in the United States is Gregory Mantsios. In his essay, “Class in America-2009”, Mantsios aims to prove that class affects people’s lives in drastic ways.
Many Americans believe in a simple class system which includes the rich, middle, and poor. People are ranked in social classes based on their yearly income and wages. The “upper class” are the star-bellied sneetches who have prestige. High class people think they are more superior over the working and lower classes. They have more power to control a person’s decision.
The lower class works for their living and spends what money they have on things they need. Whereas the upper class, usually has a higher education and better paying jobs than the other classes in America. Thus, heritage plays a big part in reasons of social classes.
This chapter provides a main implication of social class and how the concept of class is defined by different theories of different ages, emphasizing its importance in social division despite that class has been affected by social policy to reduce some inequalities between classes and promote mobility across classes. One key argument of social class is that class division is not constant or fixed, which is explained by giving several examples. In addition, the chapter also suggest that membership of social classes is changing. That is to say, individuals, families or groups may move up and down between classes.
Social classes are a form of social stratification that refers to the existence of structured inequalities between individuals and groups in society. A social class is a group of people of comparable status, power and wealth which are usually classified as upper class, middle class, and lower class. For each class, there are some specific opportunities available that influence their social life. We can understand about the particularity of the chances through unequal distribution of these opportunities between individuals in social classes. In here belonging to a social class seems to be an obstacle for some individuals to obtain equal opportunity, unlike upper class people.