Alanna Herskowitz
SOCI-1113-06
Dr. C. Bosch
10/19/17
Experienced Social Inequality
When I was born to a loving mother and family in May of 1998, I was living in a beautiful home in Southbury, CT, set back in the woods, handcrafted by my grandfather himself. A few years later, we decided to sell it and relocate to the beautiful Morris Cove. We lived in another beautiful home that overlooked the water. I also lived right up the street from my grade and middle school, which happened to be a private Catholic school, and was fortunate enough to attend school at just age three. Along with the blessings of being able to live in nice places, I was always going on vacations and given nice gifts such as clothes and toys, even when there was no holiday around.
With all of this being said, I was no stranger to what it meant to ‘have money,’ but by no means were we rich. The thought never even crossed my mind, seeing as though every other family around us did the same for their children. My family never flaunted it, never bragged, and never publicized it. We kept our business to ourselves and enjoyed living our lives. My family always put me in the best positions they could to get me to be as smart and compassionate as possible. In middle school, I became a representative for three years, and vice president for 1 year on my student council. I was also the captain of soccer teams and basketball teams. I tried every sport at least once, and took guitar lessons. My family was determined to get me immersed in all the world had to offer.
When it came time to graduate from middle school, I, unlike many of my peers, decided to go to a public high school, despite the money in scholarships I was given. I chose to go to a public school because I wanted to be able to be around people who were different than me. I wanted to see what other people believed, looked like, and how they acted (I also wanted to ditch the dress code)! My aunt and I made the move to Branford, another ‘rich’ area, and I began to get so excited about attending Branford High School.
One of the first things you do at the start of the school year is introduce yourself. In my classes we went around the room to state our names, and the new kids also said where they came from before attending Branford High. When it got to me, I answered “Saint Bernadette’s School.” The kids and teachers all inquired about where that was and what type of school it was. To that I replied “It’s in New Haven. It’s a private Catholic School.” I thought nothing of that statement, I was just stating facts and answering questions, but to everyone else in the room it signified a very different meaning.
The fact that I was sent to a private Catholic school automatically got me labeled as ‘the rich girl.’ I had money. I must also be stuck up, and a prude, because who else would attend and graduate from a school like that? I did not understand why my classmates regarded me in that manner, especially because Branford is considered to be a wealthy town. I noticed through the years of being at my high school that my friends would make plans with me and expect me to pay because I ‘had money.’ I was teased everyday and called a ‘rich bitch.’ I had done absolutely nothing to flaunt my wealth and wore the same types of clothes everyone else was wearing. I did not have a BMW sitting in the driveway ready for my 16th birthday, nor did I even live in a real house in Branford! Some of the people who were teasing me were living well above my means, and that baffled me, and made me feel like an outsider.
Having to do this paper for class and explore topics such as inequality prompted me to put research into the distribution of private schools in the United States. I found that there are “33,619 private schools in the United States, serving 5.4 million PK-12 students. Private schools account for 25 percent of the nation’s schools and enroll 10 percent of all PK-12 students” (Council for American Private Education). Those numbers seem extremely substantial, but when put into context, you’ll find that the US Census Bureau collects economic data on what types of children attend which types of schools. In October of 2015, the Census found that “out of the 9.6 million families with children in grades K-12 with annual incomes of $75,000 or more, 87 percent have children only in public schools and 11 percent have children only in private schools. Three percent have children in both types of schools” (Council for American Private Education).
I also found that the median household income in Branford, CT is about $71,058 (Sperling’s Best Places). That means that most of my classmates had a very similar familial income to myself. I also knew that some of the kids that went to private middle schools in Branford but then attended the public high school were not criticized and picked on like I was. What made me different when we were all fairly the same?
In Lynn Weber’s work, she emphasizes six main points of social inequality as follows; it is contextual, socially constructed, there are systems of power relationships, can be analyzed in a social structural (macro) way and social psychological (micro) way, it is simultaneously expressed, and there is an interdependence of knowledge and activism.
The first lens I could scrutinize my situation under was her proposed theme of social inequality being a social construct. Weber says that social class in the United States is viewed as “a continuous ladder of income and resources, where people can slide up and down based on their own efforts and abilities” (Weber). I agree with what Weber wrote, and have seen people go from one spot to another in terms of income and where that lands them on a social hierarchy. However, wouldn’t people who are on the same ‘level’ as me accept me over the people who did not? Why did the people of my same class act as if I was not on their level? Why were my efforts and abilities not seen as equal to theirs? To this I propose one answer: perhaps it is because I was not from their town to begin with and that played into how my accomplishments or ‘status’ could not be comparable to theirs which is evidenced when Weber concludes her social construct theme, “they [race, class, gender, and sexuality] are however, deeply embedded in the practices and beliefs that make up our major social institutions. The permanence and persuasiveness they exhibit illustrate their significance as major organizing principles of society and personal identity” (Weber).
Weber’s proposal of power relationships also helps to clarify social inequality. Weber writes that power relationships are based solely upon history, and as we all know, history repeats itself. In school, the lower-class friends I made would tease me as much as they would ask me to help them out with money. Weber makes note of how power relationships “do not merely represent different lifestyle preferences or cultural beliefs, values, and practices. They are power hierarchies in which one group exerts control over another, securing its position of dominance in the system, and in which substantial material and nonmaterial resources— such as wealth, income, or access to healthcare or education— are at stake” (Weber). Weber says that sexuality, gender, race, and class are power relationships themselves, because we are able to use them to enforce control over other groups. This use of power to gain from others below us is done by the dominant group, and the people being oppressed are the subordinate group. This power is engraved into the foundations of of our major social institutions. They have the means to shape personal identity and are ever changing.
Here, I began to realize that perhaps I was teased by my lower class classmates because they were jealous of me and wanted to try to use the fact that they lived here longer than I had as leverage to try and throw me beneath them in the battle of the classes. In this situation, I am both part of the dominant group and the subordinate group because I am still ‘privileged,’ but I am also being socially oppressed. Just because I came from a wealthier home than some people did not mean that I was there to make them feel below me, or not try to branch out and meet people of all classes, religions, and races, but maybe the treatment of them by their wealthier peers from their same town led them to believe that it would happen with anyone of a higher economic class than them.
Usually in a society, those with wealth prosper over the people who do not have extra money to spare. Using Weber’s proposal that the powers of race, class, gender, and sexuality are embedded within social institutions, we can observe that she is correct. As long as you are of a high and respected social class, your wealth will be enough to carry you through life. Race is used to set boundaries for who is allowed to do and be what. In Michelle Alexander’s ‘The New Jim Crow,’ Alexander focuses heavily on race being used as a way to keep the minorities incarcerated, thus striping them of basic American rights, and delegitimizing their credibility and rights to be treated as equals to their lighter-skinned counterparts. Gender has been a central theme when it comes to equal pay, seeing as though women typically do not make as much as men do. Finally, sexuality has been a factor when it comes to equal rights such as marriage, which was outlawed up until recently. The one thing all of these powers holds in common is their widespread use by major social institutions.
I also connected with what Weber wrote about mixed race people, seeing as though I identify as a mixed race person. She noted that mixed race people cannot totally fit into the provided schemas about what race and class you can belong to. Weber writes that each person is given one single point for each category, and the criteria for that category is strict and exclusive. This promotes the idea of being stagnant in your category, unable to move or change. As Weber writes, “it cannot grasp the relational character, the historical specificity, or the conflicting meanings that arise in everyday life” (Omi and Winant).
Using Weber’s fourth approach, it can be observed that macro sociological trends pose a harder time for those interpreting the data to see how it can really relate to the people behind the numbers. The numbers do not help to provide insight into what ways people go through life. Weber highlights that when looking at families and individual life, the real data can be seen. Weber states that this strategy has began to “identify the ongoing struggles of subordinate groups to resist negative and controlling images of their group– to resist internalizing the limits to self esteem, self-valuation, and collective identity imposed by the dominant group” (Weber), meaning that the dominant group, or those at the top, are the ones who exert control over how people of a lower-class see and value themselves.
In my situation, this offers an explanation as to why my lower-class friends were so mean, and at times, contradictory. The dominant group, whether it be their classmates, or an agent of socialization, has hammered it into their heads that they have x, y, and z traits, which provides a negative identity for that certain group. This in turn creates a struggle for those members, because they now have to battle between their self-image and the image that is assigned to them. This is also extremely hazardous to cooperation and acceptance between the groups/classes, because now, people of a lower standing will already believe that those who are better off than them have a preconceived notion of who they are and what they can amount to, which is not always accurate. Under this approach, I gain more sympathy for those who taunted me, because it provides a logical reason as to why someone would be hostile over class rankings.
It is also important here to recognize the different ways oppression are used. Weber writes that “the barriers of oppression are material and ideological, the resources associated with one’s social location in the matrix of dominance and subordination are both material and psychological” (Weber). Material resources do tend to be harder for the subordinate group to obtain as compared to the dominant group, there is no disputing that, but when it comes to psychological resources such as positive feelings and emotions that stem from their culture. This is a very important discrepancy, because it essentially boils down to your mindset. Your mindset is key when it comes to making decisions for yourself and where you fit in in the social puzzle of life and culture. Hegemonic ideologies will always play a part in controlling people’s social standings, but what is right and proper differs from group to group, culture to culture, and society to society. Not everyone will think the same way about these ideologies, and though they are not the norm and widely accepted, it is not to say that they are wrong. Just not popularized. Though not everything can be changed with a mindset, it is essentially a nod to the ‘American Dream,’ and is a very plausible way of changing your circumstances.
When it gets to how social inequality is simultaneously expressed, Weber makes what is, in my opinion, the best point of the paper. First, Weber communicates that we form our identities and live our lives according to what group we are in… or both. She writes “Almost all of us occupy both dominant and subordinate positions and experience both advantage and disadvantage in these hierarchies means that there are no pure oppressors or oppressed in our society. Thus, race class, gender, and sexuality are not reducible to immutable personality traits or other seemingly permanent characteristics. Instead they are social constructions that often give us power and options in some arenas while restricting our opportunities in another” (Weber).
This point is absolutely astounding to me, and I wish more people could examine social inequality through this lens. I have been in multiple positions where I had the upperhand, and just as many where I had the shorter end of the stick. We all get wronged in life no matter what class, race, gender, or sexuality you claim. When people would say to me “Oh please, you have no reason to feel sad! You have everything you want,” or similar things of that nature, it was extremely invalidating towards my feelings of what I felt I could and could not express. Just because someone does not live your hardships and may be above you in terms of income, does not mean that what they feel and think is not valid simply because they can afford to take a vacation! The idea of wealth being an total problem solver is so wrong that it is laughable. Money does not cure everything, and in my case, people never stopped and thought about what other factors created my identity beyond just distribution of wealth, or lack thereof.
Weber’s last hit on social inequality is the interdependence of knowledge and activism. To comprehend dominance, oppression, hierarchies, social classes, and norms, we must also understand, or at least seek out ways as to how we can change it. Weber calls it the ‘truth value,’ but essentially what she is describing is the quality of the knowledge. It has to be able to reflect back on “social groups [and] their experiences in such a way that they can more effectively define, value, and empower themselves to seek social justice” (Weber). The only way to bring about change is to be socially aware and willing to make a difference. Social inequality and injustice are historically embedded in the frameworks of society, and that is what makes all of this so difficult. However, once in awhile, we get a real leader who conveys strong points, and gains a loyal following, who gets us right on the path of equality and social reform. An example would be Martin Luther King Jr.