Class and its Impact

            As Americans we are taught that if you work hard enough it will not matter where you come from you will be able to achieve the American dream of a well paying job, a house, two cars and 2.5 children.  In school children are taught that everyone is equal and that each person can achieve this dream with the same amount of hard work.  I will admit that I was a sucker for this romantic version of how America worked until I went to high school and learned a little more about the inequalities of life.  Even still it was not until I met my husband, from the city, that I even came close to having my rose colored glasses taken off.

            Despite what I was taught in school I realize that each person comes with their own unique struggles and inequalities depending on who their parents are, where they live, and even the color of their skin.  Most importantly though despite race and economic background a person can be disadvantaged the most by their class status.  Class is what our functioning world is based upon.  Class allows access to better schools, better friends, and better situations.  And, while a person can achieve a better class status in their lifetime it is a rare occurrence which in my opinion should not be as hard to achieve; I would like to note here that despite my rosy hopes most Americans are sliding backwards while trying to move forward in these current economic times.   

            It is important as Americans to understand class and all that comes with it in order to understand basic human necessities.  Some of these necessities include access to public or private health care, access to a well trained police force, access to good nutritional values, and political clout.  Each of these issues is either taken for granted or striven for based on a person class status in the United States. 

            Conservatives in the United States will argue that systems have been put into place to better the lives of the working class; it is their fault that they have not taken advantage of these opportunities.  Unfortunately the systems being referred to are the trickle-down theory and such ineffective economic strategies which only allow the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer.  I believe that the author of “Geese, Golden Eggs, and Traps” has it right when he says that “shifting money from the high-saving rich to the high-spending rest of us, and not the other way around, will spur investment and growth.” He backs this up by stating that in countries with equally distributed land and money the economies grow faster than in the United States.  One reason for this is that inequality breads social conflict which works against advancement as we have seen in the many riots worldwide and in our own back yards as the poor get poorer.

            A conservative viewpoint such as the one mentioned above would be easier for the majority of America to fight against if class status was clearly defined and understood by more Americans.  By obtaining a class understanding Americans would be able to “understand how the economy works and the place of working people within it, and… [help] clarify the way power works in our society.” This understanding is important to a prosperous and well balanced life.  As Americans we are taught to blame the poor for all of the problems our nation faces.  If you look through a class lens, however, it is clear that the greedy rich are just as much to blame!

            A perfect example of this would be the destruction in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  For generations the rich in Louisiana, the political voice, had been fighting against federal control of Louisiana’s lands and political issues.  When they were forced to Louisiana requested Federal aid in the form of flood prevention but were denied this due to the power structure that they helped put into place.  Due to the Republican values of the Louisiana political structure damage beyond the imagination was created when Hurricane Katrina made landfall.  This damage was confined to mostly low-income black neighborhoods resulting from a long ago established class structure which pushed black Americans to the bottom of the totem pole without a voice and without resources.  This structure, in place since slavery, is a clear class issue, one that white Americans would like swept under the rug.  Class in Louisiana has been clearly defined and segregated due to discriminatory practices and generations of acceptance.  It is now the hope that New Orleans can be re-built in a new class structure made up of a smaller, whiter, more affluent community than what existed before.  This may be possible due to the fact that while the rich of New Orleans were willing to ask for help before the storm, they are now not willing to ask for help to bring back their citizens from the cities that they were displaced to around the country.

            One has to ask if class structure were apparent in our society and Americans were more aware of the differences facing each class would we stand for people being pushed from their homes and not being allowed to return? Would we stand for the rich receiving benefits that the poor do not? Would we stand for electricity to be turned back on in Gillette Stadium before Foxborough residents regained power? Or, would Americans go on like we have been accepting that there is nothing that can be done, nothing that can change?