I feel that my exploration of the social class system in the United States has been fascinating. I began this project by studying how people of different social classes navigate our complex society in order to achieve their goals. For me, social class seems to dictate how one might experience the American Dream. I suspect that many other people feel the same way. When you think about it, the notion of the American Dream is something very unusual. Nowhere else in the world do the citizens of a country so closely align each individual’s idea of personal destiny with the promise of a national standard of living. Therefore, the manifestation of distinct social classes in our purportedly meritocratic society is antithetical to the notion that our country is “the land of opportunity.” However, these classes do indeed exist, and they have substantial obstacles near the boundaries whether they are visible or not. For example, the “glass ceiling.”
I drew on my first-hand experience and knowledge gained in the liberal arts program to inform my examination of social class in America. As I stated in previous posts, I grew up without access to higher social stratifications. I was intimately familiar with the lower stratifications and the values, norms, and mores that govern this end of the spectrum. Therefore, I spent considerable effort and time studying quote the “other half” including reading Bobos in Paradise by David Brooks. Brooks describes his humorous and lighthearted examination of America's new upper class as “comic sociology.” I must admit I found this read quite enjoyable. Nearly 20 years have passed since Brooks wrote BOBOs, yet it is surprisingly relevant. The term BOBO comes from the first two letters of both bourgeoisie and bohemian. The thesis of this book is really that these two opposite classes of people have become indistinguishable in our society. The bohemian counterculture of the 1960s has blurred with the capitalist fervor of the 1980s. In addition to coining the term bobo, he describes new kinds of social class problems among the well-to-do. He describes the phenomenon of SID which stands for status-income disequilibrium. This occurs when one’s high ranking status doesn't match the income that they earn. For example, a tenured intellectual who provides expert commentary on television May clean her own apartment while her social peers earn millions of dollars per year in the tech sector. They attend the same parties but drive to opposite sides of town at the end of the night. The tech CEO may live in a mansion in a wealthy area and the intellectual may rent an apartment in a less fashionable neighborhood.
Several documentaries have been exceptional resources in my quest to understand class. People Like Us is a documentary that surveys the wide spectrum of class in America. It is an interesting and authoritative resource as the contributors were experts on class. They include David Brooks, Paul Fussel, R. Cori Hay, Benilde Little, and Lang Phipps. However, the most important and enlightening documentary I used was called Class Dismissed. This documentary examines how television frames the working class. This film was based on a book by Dr. Pepi Leistyna, professor of applied linguistics at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. It focuses on how class is portrayed on television and how the shows that reflect our culture often overlook the important economic realities that underlie American life. I posted links to these videos as well as other multimedia resources I thought would benefit my audience. These books, articles, films, and other resources greatly increased my own personal knowledge and thereby my account of how class functions in America. I used this knowledge combined with what I have learned from the MALA program to gain a deeper understanding which ultimately allows me to ask better questions in the future.
The liberal arts discipline has informed my studies on social class in America in several different ways. First, I found this topic to be interesting while studying sociolinguistics. I originally thought of this topic in terms of how people use different dialects, vernacular, and other linguistic characteristics depending on their native region of the country. I was advised that this could make a good topic for my master’s thesis, but I ultimately decided this should be packaged in a creative outlet as a capstone project. Second, while studying human geography and inequality I found that there were many customs, folkways, and other invisible or unspoken rules of social order that cause great inequality. Third, the theme of my liberal arts foundations classes was community and a lot of the challenges we face in relating to each other as a community depend on social class interactions. Fourth, the issues of racial equality in this country are quite complicated and often confounded by adherence to social class norms. Lastly, I have often questioned where I fit in the great scheme of things. I feel that we are all searching for truth in some way. Studying philosophy, identity and truth as part of the liberal arts has informed my understanding of the world in new ways and helped me to know myself better than before. Right now, my search for truth has led me to examine the social class structure in America. This has helped me understand how people from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds navigate our society’s challenges in order to mitigate or transcend them. Having a well-rounded understanding of different class values than my own will enable me to more adeptly do the same. Looking forward, there is still much research to be done in this area. I will be exploring other important topics as they relate to physiological characteristics and social class, such as the link between lower social class and obesity, why there is a correlation between ADHD and income disparity, and why mental illness presents differently among social classes.
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Thursday, December 5, 2019
Thoughts on Education and Class
Thoughts
on Education and Class
Education is one important ingredient
in the mix that determines a person's social class position. The overwhelming
majority of Americans are educated through the public school system. There is a
huge disparity between the funding, resources, and ultimate outcomes of the
richest and poorest schools. Clear and overwhelming research supports this fact
but most people in this country know this instinctively or from personal
experience. As I continue my study on social class in America, I draw from my
own personal experience in the public education system. I was born in
Washington, D.C. and lived in a suburb not far outside the city. My single mother
worked at The Pentagon and sent me to a private preschool for two years then on
to public kindergarten through first grade in the town of Annandale. This is
part of Fairfax County, Virginia which according to my research (IES, 2016), is
one of the wealthiest school districts in the country. I showed promise and I
believe this had a major impact on my early development.
However, these privileges were
short-lived. We had to move down South after the passing of my grandmother and subsequent
loss of income and childcare that she provided. This was a complete culture
shock for me, and I began to genuinely hate school. To further complicate
things, my mother lost the government job she held for twenty-one years for reasons
that were no fault of her own, chief among them being lack of adequate childcare.
We were forced to rely on government assistance in the form of welfare, food
stamps, and Section 8 HUD housing for several years.
The financial constraints impacted my
education in various ways. Purchasing school clothes and supplies became more
difficult and the lack of disposable income created problems financing things
like school functions, book fairs, fall festivals, field trips, social
gatherings, birthday presents for other children, and delayed our first purchase
of a home computer and encyclopedia.
As time went on, I became more
acclimated to the Southern school system and I was lucky enough to have a very
caring and brilliant fifth-grade math teacher. Her name was Dr. Nelda Lowrance and
she was the first teacher I ever knew who earned her Ph.D. I loved her class
and I became engaged in learning math under her tutelage. She noticed that I
did very well in some areas and recommended to my mother I be tested for
placement in the gifted program. Looking back, this should have been done much
earlier because of my performance in pre-school. I was happy to be in a smaller
class with more individualized attention while finishing elementary school yet
gifted education for middle and high school fell under the umbrella of special
education and most all available resources went towards meeting the great need
of the developmentally challenged children.
I really appreciate what Dr. Lowrance did to
help me learn and achieve at a higher level. I feel that having such a great
teacher at that formative age allowed me to reach for possibilities above which
my circumstances were trying to ground me. I mean that in a literal sense
because at age sixteen I began taking flying lessons at our local airport. The
economic challenges continued to be oppressive but having that confidence in my
abilities allowed me to do it. When I was nineteen, I enrolled at MTSU. I was
ineligible for loans that would supplement my education and reduce the number
of hours I needed to work. I was one year too old to receive the lottery
scholarship at the time. Thank goodness many things have changed since 2003.
I often explain my early college difficulties
away as immaturity. That lets people know that I am now wise enough to take
personal responsibility for my actions and that I have grown to accept them
rather than blaming society for my own personal failures. Yet, I know that was only a small part of it since
at seventeen years old I was responsible enough to be a night shift manager at Wendy’s
with keys to the building and a solo pilot with the endorsement of a former
full Cornel in the Air Force who logged over 16,000 flight hours in his career.
The real reason I faced such difficulty was directly related to my
socioeconomic problems. I spent many years working and hopping from job to job in
restaurants, at drive-through windows, waiting tables, stocking shelves in
stores, running cash registers, working in factories, driving forklifts,
bartending, and most recently at a car
title pawn shop. I spent years trapped in a cycle of consumer debt.
I tried to go back to college several
times, but each time I found myself unable to juggle work, the hour-long commutes
each way, managing my disabilities, and the coursework. I believed that I was solely
responsible for my failure in college. However, as time went on many structural
and societal things began to change. Technology got better, Middle Tennessee
got access to broadband Internet, the Tennessee lottery scholarship began
applying retroactively to adults, I was classified as an independent rather
than a dependent student for financial aid purposes, D2L was developed, more
online courses became available, I was older and had a car that was paid for, the
disability and access center began offering more comprehensive services, Walker
library was built and offered more services, two on-campus parking garages were
built, an additional math tutoring lab was added, MT one-stop was established, discount
textbooks became available near campus and from Amazon, student health services
was established, campus intersections were replaced with roundabouts alleviating
traffic, the University writing center was established, and I finally had healthcare
insurance with the passing of the Affordable Care Act known colloquially as
Obamacare. Additionally, MTSU now offers academic amnesty for people in similar
situations, however, I already paid out of pocket and repeated many classes before
that program became available.
All of these are great advantages for
students at MTSU, yet I must admit I sometimes think about how I will have to compete
with these better equipped younger graduates in the job market who have
benefited from these changes simply by being in the right place at the right
time.
It is
true that I am older now but what exactly made me a “nontraditional” student? I enrolled at the traditional age. I didn't
choose to start a business, have a family, or some other goal that would take
the place of my goal of earning a college degree. I didn't make any notable life
mistakes. I've never been in trouble with the law or gotten involved with drugs.
According to mtsu.edu, over 40% of students are classified as nontraditional. Is
this simply a way to sugarcoat the fact that there are structural and economic
problems that thwart our ability to compete with so-called traditional students?
We know that there is mutual incomprehension among the diverse
strata of social classes in the United States. The aggregation of barriers to
access in learning communities, traditional norms, and economic factors are
often a result of an inadequate political framework that dominates public
education in the United States.
Conservative approaches to education have been abysmal
lately. According to theatlantic.com, “At the beginning of the 2010s, 58
percent of Republicans believed that colleges and universities had a positive
impact on the course of the country, according to the Pew Research Center. As
the decade nears its close, that number has fallen precipitously: It now sits
at 33 percent, with the majority of the drop occurring from 2015 to 2017.” Therefore,
we must breakdown this morally bankrupt ideology while at the same time working
the system that currently exists.
This has wide-reaching applications outside of the educational
community period when rehabilitating prisoner’s education is the number one way
to reduce recidivism. According to bard.edu, prison inmates who receive college
degrees while incarcerated have a 4% recidivism rate compared to the 50%
recidivism rate that is typical of non-graduates. Education is the key to
escaping poverty and becoming a productive citizen. However, conservatives argue
that these prisoners should not have the opportunity to go to college While
incarcerated in a taxpayer-funded facility.
In conclusion, I feel there are many ways that meet we must
work to deconstruct the current socioeconomic system and replace it with a more
equitable and sustainable system that provides equal opportunity regardless of social
stratification. The 2020 election is quickly approaching, and it seems there
has never been a more important time in history to understand these issues and
work to achieve positive outcomes that will benefit our society and future
generations.
References
Sunday, December 1, 2019
Class Dissmissed by Dr. Pepi Leistyna
Class Dismissed is an excellent documentary film that explores how television frames the working class.
Preview:
Full Film:
Additional Resources:
PEPI LEISTYNA TRIBUTE
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