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 …show more content…
Everybody of every nationality who is living in poverty need to come together and unite to fight a battle everyone struggles with; cost of living. In the grand scheme of our world and society, color of one's skin does not matter in any circumstance. We are all the same, but yet we still manage to let our status and the money we make dictate how we act and live. The prejudices and attitudes that stem off of classism cause havoc amongst our population. In order to become part of the solution, the majority and minority must take a stand and advocate for equality. The wealthy cannot control the direction of where this country we'll go because they have a great influence in our society. The rich keep getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer. While it may not be evident by the clothes people wear, the outcry of wealth distribution speaks for itself when people are being degraded causing our society to be divided in terms of class, race, gender, etc. Through personal experiences, friends, family members, and the readings, classism is an issue that needs to be tackled. If we as people are not fighting for a wider distribution of wealth and more security in everyone’s lives, then we are not fighting for equality. Classism enables other issues such as racism and sexism. Perhaps if we can get rid of classism and truly become a “classless” society, then maybe we can defeat prejudices, stereotypes, and most importantly
with names like Deepwoods, Burgundy Oaks, or Chase Circle has virtually no crime at all.
We are always trying to figure out where we are in this world, or how we got where we are today. Obviously you have no choice of parents or where your born and these are two major contributing factors of who am I today. Being born white and a male society has immediately granted social advantages or white privileges. But, how privileged was I really? Being born in a highly populated city to first generations Americans without high school diplomas. I did have some advantages and I realized them growing up around my non-white friends. But compared to other white people I didn’t see my self privileged in many ways.
The readings examined how classism has negatively affected economics in the United States, how oppression manifests in taking financial advantage of groups of people who cannot advance financially, and systemic issues contributing to low wage and inability to move out of one’s social class. I was struck by the idea that most people in the United States are disadvantaged financially based on the way the country has set up its economic policies. From the beginning, black people have been oppressed by the inability to attain wealth, which continued through the end of WWII. I unnecessarily read a chapter speaking about financial companies targeting poor people, particularly people of color, with money schemes so they are losing their hard-earned money to fees and interest rates. This scheme continues to keep people in debt and living paycheck to paycheck. I related to the reading about college loans creating a paradox that students with degrees enter the workforce unable to find a job in their their field of study. Then the added paradox of not being able to find work making
Society has always needed to take a certain initiative; to put an halt or at least tone down a certain persisting enduring. An example of such is the imbalance in power. For long since, into the very depths of history, there has been a issue in power distribution. This is true for numerous civilizations that date back all the way to the B.C time period. A example, in specific, is the reformation. Classism was too, reflected during the Reformation. The reformation was an instance in time where a man by the name of Martin Luther, proceeded to put forth opposition toward the Catholic ideology. He wished to remove the catholic church, so he organized an organization to take down the church. Whilst the war waged on, it could be noted that some degree of classism was apparent. As said before, classism is a major, recurring issue.
Many of us have seen the small suffix “ism” on the end of many nouns. Some of them denoting action or practice like – “baptism”; state or quality like – “criticism”. Other nouns representing a system or ideological movement like - “communism” or “capitalism.” Also, this suffix is indicating a pathological condition like – “alcoholism”. However, the important definition that will help us to better understand our topic is that suffix “ism” denoting a basis for prejudice or discrimination. For example, there are many nouns such as: sexism, ageism, chauvinism, ethnocentrism, and racism that demonstrate some level of prejudice or discrimination. Thus, the word “classism”
An inequality in society, economy, wealth distribution, and political corruption and the influence in cooperation of government led to
White privilege has been identified as the unspoken and often unseen advantages that white people benefit from in various aspects of everyday life, based on nothing more than the colour of their skin (Robbins et al. 2014:98). White privilege creates a social hierarchy in American society, in which white is normative, and at the top of the hierarchy, and anything else is deviant (Gallagher 2003:25). This paper will demonstrate how white privilege serves as a visual barrier for white people, through which they are blind to the everyday struggles of people of colour. Most people who live with white privilege remain blind to the ways in which their privilege both helps them, and harms others. The experience of Jennifer Cramblett and Amanda Zinkon,
Social class is defined as 'people having the same social or economic status' (Wordnet). In contemporary American society, social class is based on the amount of money and property you have and also prestige. Prestige is given to a person through the line of work or the family that they come from. For example, upper-upper class member Jennifer Lopez reeks of prestige not only because she has millions of dollars in her bank account, but she has very expensive luxuries, cars, and houses.
Classism is defined as a Relative social rank in terms of income, wealth, education, occupational status, and/or power. But is really is a negative or biased attitude due to the distinctions made between social classes. I believe that classism destroys the world due to the categories that society has invented in our minds. Classism is expressed in numerous amounts of ways; a few examples would be through social class, sexual preference, racism, and the media. The economy easily breaks down people into a certain class to define whether should be known as someone to remember or someone who can easily be forgotten. People who are wealthy are able to take advantage of the class they are put in, which is of course the superior class. They are able
This week in class the focus has been on generational poverty. There are a lot of key factors that lead to poverty. Poverty does not exist because people want it to. Poverty is a way of life for those who don’t know another way and feel that they don’t have a way out. Every day in society people turn their heads or frown up their nose at people who they see living in poverty because they think they are better than them and will not lift a hand to help them out. The big question is why do we do this? In most cases, the poverty line or clash of the classes are based on wealth and there is certainly a variation in the wealth among the population. But classism exists from the beginning of education to death.
For about a year, I worked at a well-known 'high end' teen clothing store at a local mall. I took the job because I needed the money and I assumed that most of my fellow employees would be in a similar situation. However, it soon became clear that most of my colleagues were working at the store because it was a 'socially prestigious' thing to do and because they could get a discount on the expensive clothing, not because they needed the spending money. It was not that the retailer paid any more than similar types of jobs, but because the clothing and the image of the store was trendy, it tended to attract a certain 'class' of teen to work there. When I was very young, I was never particularly conscious of any differences in class between myself and my friends, but over the course of my employment I truly began to comprehend why it is said that America is far from a classless society, only the divisions between social classes are often rendered invisible by the rhetoric of American meritocracy.
Both Julian in Flannery O’ Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge” and Cassio in Shakespeare’s “Othello” have been raised to act and to believe that they are exceptional among their peers. This ingrained belief that they are better than others presents itself in the way they think and speak to those around them, who they choose to associate with, and how their lack of personal awareness negates any good intentions they may have.
At first glance it might appear that a study of first generation students would naturally reflect a racial relationship and race would be the “ism” that is most influential on first generation students’ university attrition. This is especially true when the focus of the study is turned toward historically black colleges and universities. Additionally, a case could be built for the racial “ism” aspect of the study by focusing on the history of HBCU and the large concentration of first generation African Americans that attend predominately Black schools. However, in developing the idea for the proposed research, the “ism” which has the most meaning and connectivity to the topic is classism.
As indicated by Schwartz-Nobel, America will lose as much as 130 billion in the future gainful limit on each year that 14.5 American kids keep on living in neediness. Unfortunately, the earnestness of neediness is still frequently obfuscated by myths and misconceptions by society on the loose. This exposition concentrates on the issue of neediness and classism in today's public.
To begin, I would like to examine the privilege that I inherited when I was born to a white mother and father. It is important, as a white person, to end the silence that so many white people engage in daily, regarding their privilege. It is not common to hear people speaking about the privilege they experience. This may be due to guilt. It may also be because most people wouldn’t want to willingly admit that all they were able to achieve, the stability they feel in their lives, and the pride they feel for the success that they created for themselves, in large part is due to how people in society perceive them as members of a privileged group. This isn’t to say that those who have achieved success have not earned it, but it must be said that skin color has made certain things easier for white people, and that it may have played a large role in their ability to achieve their potential. Of course I worked hard to be where I am today, but I