Social Inequities

In this weeks reading we read about the history of social classes in the US. We looked at possible causes of the division of classes. Some of these being, education, wealth, and ancestry. The part of ch. 5 that I found most interesting; however, was when it talked about how public schooling actually was helping to lessen the negative feelings about social classes by emphasizing that people are rewarded for hard work. Therefore, the book states,  people in the lower classes internalize their failures and blame themselves for not working hard enough. HUH!?! In my experience, alot, not all, the people that I would consider to be in the lower class bracket not only blame the government for their position but want the government to fix it. In the section of the book that talks about Marxists theorist it also states that schools are helping to lessen the hard feeling of social class distinctions by helping students accept that the position they achieve is the highest they are capable of. If this is the case then why have these Marxist and critical theorist not fought tooth and nail to change that in the school system. We are supposed to be helping the students actually do the best they can not giving them a reason to not try.

Next, I would like to touch on cultural capital. This is the idea that their are ways of acting, talking, dressing, etc. that disstinguish one social class from another. This idea, I think, is a little scetchy. For example, say I am a high class lawyer in Tennessee, born and raised here. I have all the mannerisms and accents of someone from the deep south. Now, I go on vacation with my family to New York. I am wearing comfortable cloths and I enter a nice restaurant that I usually eat at in the south, but because I am in New York, talk like a southerner, and am dressed like a tourist, I am refused service. I am the same class that the people who eat at this restaurant but because I do not fit their “cultural capital” I am turned away. Does this mean that when I am in New York I am not high class but when I am in the south I am?

I do believe social classes exist, but I do not think they are as easy to categorize as the book states. I also think that you can move up as easily as you can move down the social latter. In this day and age the lines and distinctions are becoming less apparent unless you really get to know someone, as to what social class they may be in.

Moving on, just a note before I get started on chapter 7. I think the term “race” should be erased from our vocabulary. Race as a scientific term has never been proven. What we consider different races do not differ in their genetic structure. I belive using the term race, because sometime in the past the term was linked with science, makes racists feel that people of different ethnic backgrounds are genetically different from them and somehow that makes them being a racist okay, because the people really are different. Okay, I am off my soap box.

Chapter 7 talks about ethnic minorities and how they are disadvantaged in our society because of racists and school opportunities. It discusses the history of racism and segregation and how they both still play a part in society today. The part of the chapter that I was most intrigued by was affirmative action. I grew up in Oklahoma but went to school in Texas. I was not happy when I found out that kids from TX in the top ten% of their class were automatically accepted into any tx college. I was in the top ten of my class but it was hard for me to get in. I did not think this was fair at all. But after reading in this chapter that when minority students are given the same opportunities that they will succeed, but that they may not get that opportunity because their schooling had not helped them achieve the scores they needed to be accepted. This was novel to me b/c I just assumed that if they did not make the SAT scored to be accepted then tough, they had the same opportunity that I did, but now I realize that they didn’t. Although, I find this book somewhat extreme in its idea, it has opened my eye a little more to the inequalities in the school systems around the country.  As for affirmative action in hiring in school, again my eyes were opened when they discussed how students learn differently because of their culture and how when they learn in the same style that they are used to they excel more. This I believe is the best argument for affirmative action in schools to get teacher with the same background and learning styles to help the students. However, this also has the potential to be problematic. These children most likely will not always be in a situation where just their culture is practiced, therefore they still need that knowledge of the mainstream cultural styles to excel when they leave the comfort of their culture.