Class Matters Sociology

The is the movie analysis of “A Class Divided” with topics discussed in class. The movie is a documentary dealing with the “Blue eyes/Green Eyes Experiment” conducted in 1968 by Mrs. Jane Elliott in her elementary school class. The experiment has been used in schools, government/business institutions, and correctional facilities to introduce the subject of racism and discrimination. This documentary provides evidence of a sociological theory demonstrated in Beverly Daniel Tatum’s essay “What Is Racism Anyway?”: Understanding the Basics of Racism and Prejudice.

Social class is a “tag” to define your status in a community. One of the main requirements you must have to be in the Upper class, is to have wealth and power. That is basically it, and obviously the absence of those characteristics could mean you are in a Middle or even in the Lower class. Sports are an activity that people do for pleasure that requires physical activity and sometimes has rules for the players to follow in order to play the game. It is most commonly played outdoors. It can improve your cardio, health, and physical condition. For example, it can prevent things like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer or even mental illnesses like depression.

As a white male in today’s society, I never put much thought into how privileged I am already without even having to work for it necessarily. One of the reasons why I have never felt this way was due to being in a lower middle class family. As I have grown up, I have started to notice all the disparities in today’s societies between people of a different race, gender, and class. However, noticing the magnitude of the problems regarding race, gender, and class did not catch my attention until I was in high school, partly due to the fact that I became more mature in my metacognitive and observational skills. I started to notice what people were going through by the stories they told and sometimes by the clothes they wore, although I was never

The accomplice of behavior and attitudes towards the way society is functioning and changing creates the use of the term, “sociology.” Sociology is defined, in Sociology Matters by Richard T. Schaefer, as, “The scientific study of social behavior and human groups.” Merriam-Webster defines Sociology to be,”The study of society, social institutions, and social relationships.” Given the two clear definitions, sociology involves studying humans within the surrounding society posses.

Social class is defined by your economical standpoint in our society. There are around 6 social classes in the United States; Upper class, new money, middle class, working class, working poor, and poverty level. The upper class is at the top of the United States, it also makes up about one percent of the U.S. New money falls in line behind the upper class, this refers to people whose wealth has accumulated recently or has only been around for a generation or two. New money makes up about fifteen percent of the society. Middle class includes about thirty-four percent of the population; the members of middle class are mostly in professional jobs. These people could include managers, doctors, lawyers, professors and teachers; It’s likely that

Class has changed in the way Americans understand class. The upper class was seen as people who vacationed in Europe and worshiped God. The middle class drove Fords and enlisted as company men. The working class voted as Democratic and didn’t take cruises. Now, it’s harder for Americans to tell what social class people are in. It’s harder to guess peoples class based on clothing, votes, religion, the cars they drive, and the color of skin. Health and in some cases education is getting harder to tell class with financial help.

“ I got to figure.  We all got to figure.  There’s some way to stop this.  It’s not like lightening or earthquakes.  We’ve got a bad thing made by man, and by God that’s something we can change.” John Steinbeck. This excerpt from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath is talking about the ‘bad things’ that we deal with in our society. Two bad things that are extremely pressing in society today are the growing gap in the social class system and gender inequality. Both social class problems and gender inequality affect the way members of our society live their daily lives but are commonly overlooked or underestimated.

Being mistreated by a medical practitioner reminded me of how important race and capitalism are in American society. My mistreatment mirrored both the past and present injustices that people of color continue to endure in the United States. In the United States, race and capitalism are structural issues that are difficult to remove because they have been ingrained into the system since its conception. The mere freedom on which the United States was founded is the reason why capitalism continues to thrive. Nevertheless, that freedom is also a curse because it provides the opportunity for greed/inequality to surface. Thus, wealthy individuals like President Donald Trump can direct focus on the macro level. On the other hand, the same scenario can happen at a micro level. My past ordeal is a representation of how class shapes American society.

According to Schwartz-Nobel, America will lose as much as 130 billion in future productive capacity for every year that 14.5 American children continue to live in poverty (Koppelman and Goodhart, 2007). Sadly the seriousness of poverty is still often clouded by myths and misunderstandings by society at large. This essay studies the issue of poverty and classism in today's society.

People might live in certain areas for jobs,food,and water. Someone might move to a place for better jobs food and water than what they had before. They also might move to have more of those things or less of them.

Have you ever seen yourself “above” or better off than someone else? Of course you have, we all have. It could have been that homeless man on the street you saw while driving home, or even a student that you had to tutor because you just seem to understand the concept a little better than they did. That doesn’t make you a bad person does it? I mean someone has to be in charge and someone has to follow. Many of people believe this concept for different reasons. In America, many people think this about their social class. The more money you make, the higher in rank you are in your social class, which could mean the more opportunities you can be a part of or even more doors than can be open to you. Many believe that we still believe in the “necessary

On the surface, high school sports are represented as extracurricular activities that provide positive opportunities and experiences for students involved. People often don’t think of high school sport beyond this and are either blind or choose to ignore how socioeconomic status can affect students’ opportunities to be involved in these activities. This choice to ignore how class plays a role in high school sports is often tied to ideological beliefs. Ideologies are basic ideas and beliefs that are used in society that most commonly benefit people with power and wealth by justifying why they have the experiences and opportunities that they do. As well as benefiting the powerful and wealthy, those with lower economic status often buy into

People Like Us takes a closer look on how class really works in America, examining how class affects people’s understanding of race and gender, investigating the exclusion of class from the national debate, and probing the ways in which class differences shape daily life. It takes a sprawling look at the class system in the United States, ranging from WASP elegance to trailer-park desperation, with lots of other stuff in between. In the film class is define through socio-economic status. Class is defined through the collection of many different elements such as, how much money an individual have, how educated an individual is, how an individual act, etc. It is difficult for Americans to talk about class because culturally Americans are very

This essay will be discussing the extent to which social class and poverty affects health and illness. Firstly, what is social class? Each person’s perception of social class can be different; is social class defined by a person’s accent, the area they live in, or something as simple as their income? Project Britain describes social class as “The grouping of people by occupations and lifestyle”. (Cress, 2014). To find social class Sociologists group people according to common factors, they compare people and various criteria can be conveniently used to place people in social groups or classes. Next we ask the question what determines a person’s health, the NHS defines health as “Physical and mental, it is the absence of disease”. (NHS 2017).

Class is important as it can determine various aspects that will have a significant impact and influence on how people’s lives are shaped. Feminists have argued for other things to be included such as social divisions to show how they intersect with class. Economic inequalities can have an impact on class as they can determine a person’s status, wealth, income and lifestyle. Class is important as social inequalities exists amongst the rich and poor. Important social factors include poverty, health and education. A person’s identity is just as important as their class. People may face discrimination due to their identity, whether that may be due to their gender, age, ethnicity or disability. Social mobility is where people are in a different social class now from which they were brought up in. However sociologists argue that class is less important in contemporary society today than it once used to be.