A Changing Definition of Class

“Classes are groups of people of similar economic and social position; people who, for that reason, may share political attitudes, lifestyles, consumption patterns, cultural interests and opportunities to get ahead.” This definition of the class is directly from our honors article this week and I feel gives a fairly good definition in an uncertain society that struggles to define class. One thing that I am glad the honors article mentioned this week, which I found there was a definite lack of during the movie which we watched all week, was that class is extremely complex and that middle class nowadays means nothing. Class is so confusing and complex because is changes literally on a daily basis in so many different ways that we may not even think have anything to do with class. Although the honors article did address the idea that class is changing, it focused way too much on figuring out issues of class by using the past and did not change with the class changes. However, it was in no comparison to as bad and biased as the movie was which depicted (in my opinion) the upper class as always a snotty and uninformed level of class that doesn’t know anything about the lower classes. I disagree with this for the most part but I am forced to agree that yes there are some people that are way up there in the upper class that they are truly uninformed of the people even right below them. I feel that although there are people like that, which are the only upper class people they showed, that most of the upper class is not like this and instead are much more in touch with the classes below them (obviously more in touch with the classes that are closer in level first and then less in touch as you move down each class level). Another thing with the movie that bothered me about the changing ways of social classes was that the school in Texas was continually related to BHS. I will agree that some things between the two are fairly similar such as maybe the education or area. However, Mrs. Castelli even told us a story of how her daughter thought that everyone at BHS was very the same in how they acted and dressed while the students at the school seemed very diverse and different. Finally what bothered me the most about the movie was how fake the people became with their statements and thoughts to obviously just be able to get on camera. I feel that at BHS students would be less likely to talk about some of the things they mentioned in the movie and definitely would be less likely to express false ideas on how we may think class works. All in all I enjoyed the movie and especially the article just because it gave me a better sense of the true division of classes within our country, even though it was a few years out of date it still gave an overall sense.

Marx's Theory Today

Recently in 2^nd Hour Sociology with Mrs. Castelli, we have been learning about what some possible ideas are that determines our social class. The most interesting one to me by far was Karl Marx’s, but it wasn’t because he is the one that wrote the communist manifesto. His theory was interesting to me because he said that social class depends only on the relationship that people have with the means of production. However, that is not what amazes and interests me about his theory. What I find extremely fascinating is that Marx says that factors such as education, clothing, pay, and the material wealth you have are completely irrelevant. As I thought about how this could be possible I thought back to class and how Marx’s theory actually applies well when he created it, but even better nowadays. He noticed that there are really only two classes of people in society. One was the business or factory owner, which have the majority of the wealth and live in constant luxury which he called the bourgeoisie. On the other hand were the proletariats or the ones that work for the bourgeoisie and had very little to none of societies’ wealth even though they worked much harder than the bourgeoisie. All though I don’t necessarily agree with Marx from the standpoint of society only having two classes, I do agree somewhat with the idea that it depends on the person’s position in the means of production. This reminded me of a student at BHS named Emilio Baez who led a walkout last year, and eventually dropped out of school this year to protest with the “99% of America.” He is protesting that “We are the 99%” which says, like Marx’s theory, that only a small amount of the population (the 1%, aka bourgeoisie) own the country’s wealth while Emilio is part of the 99% of the US that is working for these bourgeoisie (aka proletariats). Like Marx predicted, the 99% realized that they are being oppressed by these owners and will eventually rebel against the owners to try to even everything back out because capitalism has created such a divide that is ever increasing, especially in our country and world today which is causing many different problems. These socioeconomic trends are causing these lower class people to be taken advantage of easily and unfortunately this is the case with human trafficking/slavery, which is the topic of our honors article this past week. The article exposes a terrible truth about what is going on around the world and although I feel much more aware than my peers about what’s going on, I am still in shock myself with how we are so ignorant to these things in this country. Much like how high class people like WASPs are ignorant to what’s going on in lower classes, our country’s population is mostly ignorant to other 3^rd world or poor countries and their very serious problems such as human trafficking. Although we have tried to help other countries and their slavery issues via legislation, at the same time we need to take a step back and consider the consequences of it. We have seen many times in history how the US has stepped into someone else’s problem and either made it worse or actually caused new or much more worse problems than there were before. I enjoyed the honors article not necessarily because it was about human trafficking but because of the thought that maybe my fellow classmates will be in shock and be motivated to help put an end to slavery and human trafficking for good.