There are many aspects to our identities, individually, as communities, and as a nation. Some are much more visible than others. We have discussed race and ethnicity which has been used to identify, separate and discriminate in various ways through American history. Often people are identified in ways other than how they would identify themselves and other times people from marginalized communities have attempted to “pass” as those in a favored group. Among many aspects of our identities, class is central, but is less obvious to many. However our class inequalities as a society are just as stark. First remind yourself what income levels fall under the institutionally constructed definition of “poverty” here. Next explore some statistics from the U.S. Census breaking down the numbers and percentages of those in poverty by age, race, and Hispanic origin here: Table 3. Poverty Status of People, by Age, Race, and Hispanic Origin. Pay careful attention to the percentage of those under 18 are growing up in poverty and how those numbers vary by race.
There are shocking correlations between race, ethnicity, and class, however, extreme poverty along with those living above the poverty line but still struggling mightily to provide for their families affects people living all around the country, regardless of race, national origin, or ethnicity. And it impacts our politics, policies, and political views in many ways. Some have read Hillbilly Elegy for other classes which talk about this phenomenon at length.
I am interested to hear your thoughts about class inequality, and whether or not the government should play a different, greater, or smaller role in trying to alleviate it. But more important, I am wondering how you have been socialized to think about class:
I am interested to hear your thoughts about class inequality, and whether or not the government should play a different, greater, or smaller role in trying to alleviate it. But more important, I am wondering how you have been socialized to think about class:
- Is it something that has been made visible to you through social groups, your communities, schools, organizations, friends, family, representations on media?
- Have you been socialized to understand the full range of class in America? Or has class remained a largely invisible issue for you.
- How should we think about it in terms of American identity and our relationship with our local, state, or national government?
I feel that class differences is the most visible to you when you live in a diverse community and step out of your neighborhood (which generally neighborhoods are divided by class). However, there is something in our culture that that is enchanted by the upper class, aka celebrities. The longing for the upper class lifestyle and worshipping the "hype beast" allows some people to distinguish themselves from the upper class or have the upper class distinguished from the middle. Then there is the lower class. The lower class isn't always a homeless man begging for food on the street but the lower class can also be a mother living in a car with her child, praying the gas tank survives until she gets her next paycheck. I'm not sure I even understand the full range of class in America, there is probably so much more I am missing and haven't even witnessed. Even though America is a capitalist country, there are still socialist programs that do help the lower class. However, there is a type of culture that surrounds socialist programs in minorities "taking tax dollars" such as the "welfare queen" being undeserving of precious tax dollars. I think in order to create an overall better community in the United States we should also improve the lives of the lower class. This would improve so many more lives, so many more minds and perspectives and different industries, etc.
ReplyDeleteJade Huynh
I think that class inequality is a huge issue and there’s a lot of data to prove it. The differences are definitely most visible in diverse communities and environments. I personally never saw class differences because most people in my neighborhood were white and upper-middle class and while no one really talked about how much money they had, it was no secret that no one was really struggling to get by or even close to that. Despite my lack of direct exposure to class differences and poverty, I always knew it was an issue. Everyone strives to have money because so much attention in our society is given to pop-culture, full of rich celebrities who have expensive cars, clothes, and large houses. This makes people essentially worship the upper-class lifestyle and fuels the obsession with money that our society has which causes a lot of people to forget how many American citizens live below the poverty line. In my high school sociology class, we watched a video that documented the daily life of a mother and her three children who lived below the poverty line. This really opened my eyes to the reality of a lower- class lifestyle. The mother had to make financial choices on a daily basis that I had never made in my life. I had never thought about whether I should buy food or put gas in my car because I, and all the people around me, could always afford to do both. This video really made me think about how big of an issue class inequality is and broadened my perspective on what being “poor” meant. In order to improve America as a whole, we need to reform our welfare system because as long as we have people who live their daily lives fearing that they won’t be able to eat or pay basic housing bills, we cannot consider ourselves a successful society.
ReplyDelete-Anna Starobinets
I think I was raised to understand/see the full range of class in America. I grew up working class, so money was always a topic of conversation in my household. In my high school it was middle class and over 40% of the students lived in economically disadvantaged situations. I find that the people who are unaware about the extent of inequity in America are living a privileged life, all of the people I know struggling economically are hyperaware of class. I think class is not represented in the media, particularly shows and movies. There are very few representations of class struggle/class conflict—which is weird because it is happening all the time. There are people marching for an increased minimum wage, there are teachers striking, and there are politicians moving to more economically populist platforms. All of these are an indication of class struggle that are not being talked about nearly enough.
ReplyDeleteAlexandra Stamatis
DeleteI think I have always had the topic of class brought into my courses, especially in college. I think after looking at the video in class, I was truly able to see how class, income, and wealth are played out in America. I totally agree with what you are saying. I went to a public high school in Lincoln Park and experienced the same thing. I was in such a diverse environment, that I was able to talk to and see people from all types of economic classes. I agree with the point you made about being unaware meaning that you are living a privileged life- I think that is so true. We have looked at articles that talk about this “unacknowledged privilege” and it think that can be interconnected to the ways in which someone looks at class as well. I think the class system has been made visible to me, personally, through communities here in Chicago. The differences in neighborhoods are so apparent- the North side is so different from the South side etc. You can literally see this the second you step out of one neighborhood and into another one. This puts certain people at a higher advantage than others, providing more opportunities for them overall.
Tiana Petricevic
ReplyDeleteI’ve had the privilege to grow up in a place where I didn’t have to think about class that much. I lived and went to school in a predominantly white community where most people were middle class or higher. It was something me and my peers didn’t have to think much about because we were mostly in the same boat when it came to class and race. It wasn’t something I was completely disconnected from however. I grew up with a lot of refugees and immigrants from Yugoslavia who escaped from the war with nothing, and I saw how much they had to struggle to get entry level positions at places. It was never something that quite touched home, but it was something that I was aware of. I never knew the full range of class in America until I moved to Chicago and started to take political science classes. I will 100% admit that I don’t know everything, but I’m willing to learn about it because it was something that I had the privilege to not be too concerned with growing up.
I feel when it comes to class in America it has been made visible though representation of media. From tv entertainment to news media, the gaps between each class comes to fruition through these outlets. I have been somewhat socialized to understand the range of class in this country. I mean, we all know that their a more poor people in this country than middle class people, but I feel that there is more to understand when it comes to the economic hierarchal system. This connects to our national identity by our ignorance of not knowing how wealth is distributed in this country and to our government by knowing that the wealth gap is more of a state and local issue than a national issue. - Egerton Abulu
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can remember, classes have been made visible through all of the above. We learn about these topics as young adolescents coincidently through norms taught to us by our loved ones and especially the media for better or worse it is important to see these topics for what they are( positive or negative). In addition, I believe that the way I was brought up coincidentaly taught me to understand class, we see perfect examples on television with our even knowing what information were taking in. Depending on political affiliation, we will see this issue as an important one or not. Clearly our local governemnt says they favor the issues in respect to class(or so I believe they do). Since their agenda is in line more with their constituents than the federal government, but little progress has been made for those in poverty. It just seems that the rich are getting richer as the poor dig a deeper hole.
ReplyDeleteI think class has been visible through all of those outlets but specifically through school and representations of the media. I grew up in a working-class family and only knew about that type of class until I got to high school where class difference became more visible. I went to a diverse public high school that exposed me to different economic environments. I think I have been socialized to understand the full range of class in America because of my high school experience. While I believe many people who were never exposed to anything other to what they belong to have not seen the class difference America faces. In terms of our American identity and relationship with the government, I think in reality class difference is so unequal compared to our perception of how it is. I think our government needs to do a greater job of trying to alleviate class inequality.
ReplyDeleteI feel as if class has been made visible to me through all of these outlets, especially through school and my community. There was a diverse range of annual incomes in my community and that could be seen in my high school based off of what resources students had. I feel as if the media tries to represent class, but mostly upper-middle class families are represented through television shows and movies. I believe I have been socialized to understand the full range of class in America because of my families’ background. My father grew up in a working poor family and was able to a higher-class status, which is a point of pride for him. Class directly relates to an American’s view on government and how much they trust or rely on government agencies.-Hannah Rhodes
ReplyDeleteI think class has been made pretty visible to me in the community I grew up in, and the community I live in now. I saw the amount of wealth in the school I went to and how it compared to my own life. My family did not have the same wealth level as a lot of my fellow classmates and I was lucky to go to the school I did. It was very classist and you could feel the levels of money through the popularity chain.
ReplyDeleteMy parents both grew up in households with tighter budgets because they definitely had to work a lot harder to get by. My mom was raised with her two siblings by a single mother, so she has been very clear about the value of money. I think class has a lot to do with American identity as well, wealth is very respected, and it is the American dream to make it big and also have money, or some sort of wealth. It's interesting that it's so valued, when so few actually have the wealth desired, and economic inequality is so high.
I feel that growing up in the Saint Louis area made class divisions very apparent. You could drive for 5 minutes and enter into a completely different socioeconomic class, area, or neighborhood. I know that although I attended a public school we had a very strict, almost uniform-like dress code to help combat the clear separation in students economic standing. The education board focused very hard to allow every student equal opportunity to succeed and did so through a dress code. I am not, however, saying they were effective in their efforts, but it did place the topic of class on my radar as it was a very important topic of discussion at my school. In regard to American identity and individual’s relationships with their government, some who are in lower socioeconomic classes work multiple jobs to simply support their family and therefore do not have the time or energy to care about politics. This overall effects their political efficacy as they do not believe the government protects them because they see the never-ending cycle of the wealthy only gaining more wealth while they remain stagnant.
ReplyDeleteMorgan Triefenbach
I think in every aspect of my life class has been made visible and highly desirable. I don’t know if I really understand the full range of class but I have been taught to strive for or try to pass as having an upper-class life style. I see this all the time by the importance of showing off brands and designers to show were we stack up in the class system. It seems we have been taught to associate some of our self-worth with our wealth. I think part of the reason America has an obsession with class is because our country was founded on not having titles and a nobility rank like England so instead we developed a class system based off wealth. The idea was anyone could move above their rank if they acquired enough wealth but our wealth ranks are so disproportionate that we still ended up with a class system. I think our government should be responsible for managing the class inequality since the laws that have made this gap wider has been done by our own government.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up in a diverse school and a pretty segregated city, class has always been made visible to me. Little Rock is blatantly segregated by the highways built by the city. Depending on which side you’re on, it’s either an area plagued by poverty or an affluent neighborhood. This has been something I’ve noticed from a young age, and it is something that is obvious to most everyone who lives in Little Rock. I think that the schools someone attends and the neighborhood someone grows up in will be the key players that influence how people think about and are exposed to class. In my experience, the government has a lot to do with constructing these class identities and more importantly separating them. People and the media also play a major role in constructing the way people view poverty though the rhetoric that is used. The idea that people experiencing poverty are just too lazy to find a job is crazy. There are so many institutionalized factors that play into why people can’t get out of this poverty cycle.
ReplyDeleteClass was made visible to me, but it wasn’t until much later in life. I went to a predominantly upper-middle class white and jewish elementary school. I then went to an east coast prep school. When I came home and started entering the social ecosystem of the city of Chicago, I really started to actually understand social class. I had an interesting bunch of friends, mostly people who my bewt friend hung out when he was attending Lincoln park high. They all came from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds, from actual poverty, all the way to the 1%. It really takes firsthand exposure in order for anyone to truly understand the variety of types of people along the wealth spectrum. Now, class is always something I consider and think about all the time, including when I give my political opinions or just keep them to myself.
ReplyDeleteFor me I think class has always been made visible in my community. It is really disheartening to say but most of the south side looks like a completely different city than the north side. On the south side potholes seem to be deeper, the number of vacant lots increase, and most garages seems to have gang related graffiti. I went to high school on the north side and to my friends and I that commuted from the south side it seemed like a whole new world. It was obvious that there was greater income in comparison to our neighborhood. There were flourishing businesses, with beautiful homes and even people with fancier dogs. There are hubs of wealth on the south side like Kenwood and Hyde Park but they are very limited and very distinguishable from the rest of the south side. I understand how some people might not be aware of class because if everyone around them looks like them and has the same items as them then they assume that the rest of the world is like them. An example of this is Ivanka Trump. Ivanka Trump just recently went on Fox News to inform the American people that they should be strictly against the green new deal because the American people want to work for higher wages. That the population of American workers do not want handouts. I think this goes beyond wanting to shut down partisan legislation as the new green deal is a progressive idea. She is clearly tone deaf to the economic situation millions of Americans are going through.
ReplyDelete-Karen Marin
My high school and community seemed pretty diverse in regard to income distribution. It wasn't necessarily high-income or low-income, but rather a mix of the two as there are houses that are considerably more expensive than others in my community. This was also visible to me in my high school by the availability of programs such as free and reduced lunch and being waived of registration fees, but they weren't necessarily equally accessible for everyone. In order to qualify for those programs, your household income had to fall considerably lower than the average household income of the rest of the high school/community. The media tends to represent the middle class more than the upper and lower classes, because that is the most prevalent class in society today. The upper class is only the upper few percent, and the same goes for the lower class. Additionally, the middle class is most often more represented because it applies to most Americans' situations. Class has generally more to do with politics and how people are represented (more money = better chance to get farther in an election/get elected), but less to do with our national identity. I feel like class is less important to our national identity than other things such as our ethnicity, language, culture, religion, but it's not something that we put much pride in as compared to the other things. When somebody asks you what you are, you don't say "I'm a white middle-class American". You mention the other things that define you, but leave your wealth/class status out of it because we don't really pride ourself in it (unless you're in the upper 1%).
ReplyDeleteIt is very evident that the income inequality is greater in the United States than any other democracy and it continues to grow. Growing up in the Northwest suburbs made class very apparent for me. It also made me realize how prevalent it is. During my middle school years I went to school in a town called Mundelein which was known for being a town with middle class families. But my school district was split into five different high schools, so when I got to highschool I got to experience a whole new different environment. The kids who went to my highschool all came from extremely wealthy families who had parents with prestigious jobs. It blows my mind that these two neighborhoods are within a seven mile radius of each other yet they are both so different in terms of socioeconomic status.
ReplyDeleteHi Megan, I had a similar experience to you and class officially became visible to me in high school too. Like you, my neighborhood was diverse but the location in that neighborhood determined what high school you went to. I got to go to a pretty diverse high school but some of my closest friends went to a high school known to be the school "where the rich white kids go." After befriending some of those kids and learning more about them I realized the drastic class differences between both schools. My school was mainly middle class although it was diverse in many other ways and the high school one town over primarily consisted of middle and high class families.
DeleteClass differences have been made visible to me through a wide array of experiences with friends, school, and my family. I would say that I have been socialized to understand class through my family until high school or so, and then in high school, that's when I began to be socialized through school and I continue to be socialized through college.
ReplyDeleteI personally do not think class differences will go away anytime soon. But in terms of how we should think about class as it relates to the American identity, I believe we should recognize how class affects people's ability to influence society. With wealth comes more opportunity. I think our local, state, and federal governments should do a better job of making sure members of our society don't fall through the cracks and creating systems that aid social advancement by incentivizing and rewarding hard work. Our income inequality gap is detrimental for everyone.
Class differences have always been apparent to me as I went to a pretty diverse high school. But i would say that i was primarily socialized through family. Both my parents are immigrants and would remind me growing up that class differences exist and how fortunate me and my brothers are. When i went to high school these differences became more visible. I believe that there is a how each class perceives the other. The differences in class stop people from seeing other viewpoints.
ReplyDelete-Emmanuel Valtierrez
Class differences have always been made visible to me, but I don't think they became as distinctly apparent to me until I came to Chicago. Living in Minnesota, which is a very well off state economically, most everyone is middle class and those that are upper class tend to be in very specific neighborhoods that are isolated in themselves in a very distinct way. Here in Chicago you have about the same amount of people in the 30 sq miles of the Chicago city area as you do in the entire state of Minnesota, so the amount of wealth is far more pronounced and accumulated and the poverty is far more severe with less slack. I always lived in that very middle class area and had friends with lots of money, so I benefited from the role that the government played at the time fairly well. However, examining the wealth distribution in the country now as well as after comparing the tax brackets and percentages under presidents such as Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon compared to those under Reagan, Bush, Obama, and Trump, I would say there is a far greater role that the government could be playing in help regulate our country's wealth distribution through fiscal policy alone.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up I was surrounded by people of the same class (or generally close to our class). From a cultural standpoint we were also all very similar: Italian, works in construction, same class. My parents did a great job of always reminding my siblings and myself about how fortunate we are. Also that there will always be people who are richer and poorer than you and regardless of one’s class, you must show everyone respect and worth. So I always knew there were people living at higher and lower classes than myself, but It wasn’t until taking classes at DePaul that my mind was truly open to the class inequality (in respects to statistics and actual numbers). Yes I have been socialized to understand class in America, but to say that I understand the full range of class in America, would be a lie. I think class inequality is a historically relevant issue in our country. Both Democrats and Republicans need to be more active in trying to solve the problem. We should encourage lower income earners to learn a new trade or earn any type of higher-level educational degree. Whatever it is, I think it starts with more funds being allocated to lower income communities.
ReplyDelete-Angelo D'Agostini
I grew up in the Northern suburbs so I would say that the socialization I received from schooling up until I went to DePaul was heavily impacted by the class. A majority of the people in my high school were probably upper middleclass to upper class which created a kind of skewed image of how people fall into classes percentage-wise for me growing up. My high school was also very white, so I didn’t really benefit from a diverse learning environment until coming to DePaul. Anything I knew about class systems was from what I had learned from watching the news and talking about news with my family. I took a sociology class during my first term at DePaul which featured a huge unit on classes so I think that is probably where I got most of my knowledge about classes in America.
ReplyDeleteClass is something I learned from my family when they explained what poverty is. From a very early age my parents told me about poverty, they said I should always be thankful for what I have because many do not have enough to even eat. In my house, wasting food is one of the worst things you can do because of all the people in the world that do not have enough to eat. I have been socialized to understand class as three distinct levels, poor, middle class, and then the wealthy class. We are taught from a young age to not talk about money, so as a society we do not talk a lot about class or income inequality. The United States has one of the highest Gini Indexes compared to other advanced economic countries. The Gini Index is used to measure economic inequality. In the United States, the wealthy are treated better than the middle class and poor. The wealthy are able to donate/ lobby politicians at all levels of Government to get things the want. Class divide says a lot about our society as a whole and the way Government behaves and is used by people.
ReplyDelete- Jeff
Economic class is perhaps on of the most prominent—and adverse—divisions of our nation, right next to race.
ReplyDeleteThe divide of class is virtually everywhere, however the upper-class has the means to avoid the clusters of economic struggle you see in low-income neighborhoods—this especially holds true in concentrated (and isolated) areas of wealth. (Take some of the northern suburbs, for example.) People of means are often completely oblivious to the privileges they have—economically struggling individuals, however, are forced of this awareness in their day-to-day lives.
I was lucky to have gone to a school with such a wide span of talented, capable individuals. I grew up working class, and the majority of my childhood was spent in economic struggle. A good portion of kids at my school that ended up going to college were either first-gen or low-income, however. These talented students, continue to inspire me—seeing some of my friends succeed in the same institutions fundamentally built to work against them is liberating. Many of my peers who came from low-income families now attend top universities on generous scholarships or full rides. Though I don’t believe in the possibility of a true meritocracy in America (not feasible with the current class divide), it’s stories like these that reignite my hope for individuals who can eventually change the system.
Firstly, I do think that the government should have a much larger and direct role in decreasing the deficit of wealth between the classes. According to the video we watched in class, the top 1% have more money than what Americans think the top 20% should have. It is great an all that we have such a prosperous upper class, when the wealth distribution is as skewed as it is in America, then something has to be done. Whether it starts with trying to increase income levels in the lower class or alleviate some of the barriers that they have, or limiting the power and mobility of the extremely wealthy.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, i do not think that i have ever really been socialized to think about class as something that affects on a daily basis or something that is as relevant as other forms of social identity. I would say this due to me having grown up in a very normal, white, middle class family. our family had our struggles early on but never any barriers that fully held us back from being able to move on the socioeconomic spectrum, probably due to the white privilege that i have. -Derek van Thullenar
American identity is centered on individualism, patriotism, and free markets. Yet, it hasn't always been that way. FDR transformed society once the market failed in a big way. He spoke about economic and social rights being just as important to the freedom from government. It feels like that has been lost, but is starting to come back into frame on the democratic side. Since 1980, we've seen a shift to the right in rhetoric and the role of government. Since the 2008 financial crisis, we've seen waves of populism and an awakened left focused on democratic socialism. In comparing the experiences and policies of other nations that have governments that take a more active role in healthcare markets or public transit, public opinion seems to be shifted back to the left. Public opinion polls show high favorability for higher marginal taxes, universal healthcare, and more. I'm curious to see where we go from here, but the levels of inequality in this country is unsustainable.
ReplyDeleteI can't say necessarily that I have had a significant exposure to different classes growing up. It wasn't something discussed growing up, and therefore not something I ever gave a second thought to growing up until I hit college. I'm not sure that the government should really be involved. How exactly could that benefit the situation at all? The whole thing is something I feel very unsure about, because it is truly something I've never had to face until topics have come up in class as such. I do think that it is important to acknowledge what one might define as the unfairness in regard to the class system, but I'm not so sure if anyone is to blame for that or if what there is to be done. I do think the class system can serve as somewhat of an incentive for people to do well, but I also think it is deeply negatively affecting people as well.
ReplyDelete