Thinking About Race, Class, and Gender Essay Example

Thinking About Race, Class, and Gender

According to Naomi Zack a social class “is a group in society that has a distinctive

status and experience, economically, politically and socially”. I believe that a social class

is just another way to categorize the people that live within society. It is also another way

to create boundaries between people and to create a illusion that everyone is not created

equal. These boundaries pull the people in our society apart, in a way it is like a cold war

within our social system.

Speaking about social class is a touchy subject for many, never the less it is one that

has to be brought to light. There are many different opinions and thoughts about the

divisions of social classes and what constitutes a specific class. Personally I don’t see

how someone can define what another person is; only that person can define themselves.

Unfortunately our social class system is that of unfairness, for there to be rich there must

be the poor.

I believe the poor are there due to the system, our social system is set up in a way that

there has to be winners and losers to keep the sides balanced. The rich get rich off the

labors of the poor, and the poor are poor because the rich exploit the Poor’s weakness,

which is the lack of power. Many people see the poor as the uptime of our culture, most

say that they are poor because they have no respect for our society or they want to be lazy

and take advantage of the system by collecting welfare. Although in some cases this is

true, for the most part the poor were just born into it, or their life was created by

unfortunate decisions from corporations like General motors. Take Flint, Michigan for

example; they were the home for the general motors company. They pretty much created

that city and supported most of the people there. About ten years ago when General

Motors had the bright idea of moving sects of the company to Mexico