Celine Huang- Social Class Discrimination

Social Class Discrimination Within America

by Celine Huang

    Social class discrimination is based on the prejudice or discrimination within a country, not just America, on the basis of social class. It includes individual attitudes, behaviors, systems of policies and practices that are set up to benefit the upper class at the expense of the lower class. Ever since the eighteenth century, class discrimination, or classism, has existed in the practice between the nobles and the peasants, the higher and lower class. Back then, America was the land of hope and freedom to start a new life but as many people travelled to America, many discrimination and inequalities followed. Now in the 21st century, America still have the same existing problem within our systems that started to arise, or was there but grew in bigger difference than we have expected. 

    According to Dennis Gilbert's book, "The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality", she talks about the class structure in America, talking about different factors like; wealth, social class, education, poverty, inequalities, and political power. widening gap between the middle-to-lower class and the upper-middle class. Right at the beginning of her book, she mentions the movie, Titanic, talking about the different class of passengers were on the ship and how many survived when the ship sank. With Titanic as the example and using Mac Weber's term life chances, those who were to to survive and those who were lucky to be alive were mostly women, children, and the first-class passengers. According to Gilbert's statistics, " Among those who lost their lives were 40 percent first-class passengers, 58 percent second-class passengers, and 75 third-class passengers" (Gilbert 2017). Based on the statistics given about the lives of the people on Titanic, more lives were lost within the second-class and third-class passengers while many first-class passengers survived, on the assumption that they had priority on lifeboats along with some women and children. Another study that the book covers was by Walt and Lunt (1941), where they had several years worth of research from dozens of researchers on the declared classes within the class structure; Upper-Upper Class (1.4 percent), Lower-Upper Class (1.6 percent), Upper-Middle Class (10.2 percent), Lower-Middle Class (28.1 percent), and Lower-Lower Class (25.2 percent). As shown within the conclusion of the study, it shows that while the Upper-Upper Class and Lower-Upper Class is the minority of all, the problem of this structure is the high percentage of both the Lower-Middle Class and Lower-Lower Class. With both of the classes combined, it makes more than half (53.3 percent) of the studied families. This shows that within the 1940s, social class discrimination was clearly shown as many families and people were poor and had to work hard while the minority of the studied population were getting served by many of these lower-classed workers. 

    Now looking at the present situation in the 21st century, the upper class seems to be getting richer while the lower to middle class seems to struggle to be financially stable. When COVID-19 has been declared on March 11, 2020, many countries like America had to shut down businesses to avoid any spread and start a lockdown with social distancing. In a Forbes article on July 22, 2020, by Jack Kelly, "The Rich Are Getting Richer During The Pandemic", he covers the effect of the pandemic on both lower, middle, and upper class. According to Kelly's source, Bloomberg, "On Monday, when millions of unemployed Americans poured their cups of coffee and started searching for jobs online, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos saw his net worth grow by 13 billion dollars," (Kelly, 2020). Many other wealthy and huge corporation owners had a huge increase on their wealth from the pandemic while over 22 million jobs were lost (MarketWatch, Bartash, 2020) and many families (around 10 million) lost their home due to the unstable financial income. Many middle-class business owners also have to force close due to the pandemic which leads them to not make any income while companies like Amazon still hires people online, the business owners and stockholders continue to make huge profit from consumers buying their essentials without going outside. 

    This social issue is very important to many people because we cannot have the upper class comfortably sit while their income is so high while the middle and lower classes are working super hard to barely make their income stable. With such high expectations of what America should've been, equality is something we need to know and actively discuss about. There are many people who are born into a high class family and some make their way up to the top, but for lower and some middle class, it can be difficult to even start that dream. Simple things like education and having a home is increasing in price to even afford which already sets a disadvantage compared to the higher class who can easily afford those. While millions of people suffer to find a job and become homeless, the high classmen are relaxing in their million dollar homes while getting a high income into their banks. Tax is also another thing that people address about but rarely put into action; the upper class's tax should be risen if the middle class's tax are increased. The middle class has paid more taxes than the upper class and nothing has ever been done within the government. 

   From my own personal experience, my family is within the middle class but slowly falling into the lower class as my parents are struggling to earn money to financially support us. As for me, with college tuition being more expensive and is online, I am limited to when i work and with COVID-19, I am limited to where I work. My mom currently works two part-time jobs on accounting/ book-keeping so she can usually work from home while my dad's job mainly focuses on food delivery to restaurants. Sadly with COVID -19, many restaurants have shut down and he barely makes any income due to that. Aside from my own experience, people I know had to move out of their homes because they could not pay the bills or the rent, so they are currently sleeping with friends or relatives. There also a huge increase from the lower-class that I've heard about but realized not many people want to talk about it, so that was one of the other reasons why I wanted to talk about social class discrimination. 

Works Cited:

Bartash, Jeffry. “The U.S. Has Only Regained 42% of the 22 Million Jobs Lost in the Pandemic. Here's Where They Are.” MarketWatch, MarketWatch, 7 Aug. 2020, www.marketwatch.com/story/restaurants-and-retailers-have-regained-the-most-jobs-since-the-coronavirus-crisis-but-theres-a-catch-2020-08-07.

Gilbert, Dennis L. The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality. Sage, 2021.

Kelly, Jack. “The Rich Are Getting Richer During The Pandemic.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 22 July 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/07/22/the-rich-are-getting-richer-during-the-pandemic/?sh=361a359f5c7e.