Our national myth tells of the United States as a classless society with open access to upward social mobility for those who are hardworking and talented, including the potential to rise from rags to riches in a single generation. This si the cultural story we tell, but is it reality? In fact, in the United States ones life chances are heavily influenced by the class position of ones family -- the financial and cultural resources passed from generation to generation. Both quantitative and qualitative research reveal that stratification by class is very real and significantly affects peoples life chances. In fact, class stratification in the U.S. is not new. The Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence and drafted the Constitution were among the richest men in the thirteen colonies at that time. George Washington was one of the largest landholders. As the young nations territories spread westward, opportunities for upward social mobility were plentiful for certain portions of the population, but not for Native Americans, blacks, and most women. Access to wealth, power, prestige, and resources of U.S. society were stratified not only by race and gender but also by class. Income and wealth inequality narrowed after WWII as an economic book spurred a growing middle class but since the mid-1970s, inequality has been increasing as income and wealth have concentrated at the upper end of the economic spectrum. -Kenneth J. Guest ~Cultural Anthropology: A Toolkit for a Global Age (Chapter 11: Class and Inequality) Okay, I love this author. Also, this reminds me of the origin myths about which I learned in a similar course titled Social Stratification. I was also reminded of the following required material for Comparative Politics last Spring: Symbols of nationalism rarely conform to historical realities.
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 05:02:24 +0000
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