Have you ever really analyzed your class background? And by class I don’t mean school...I mean the social rank according to income, wealth, status and power. Well, today we had to complete a “Class Background Inventory” sheet and once finished we had to compare it to the woman who was seated next to us. So quietly I read the first question, prepared to answer it. “When you were growing up, what was your family’s source(s) of income?”Oh man, maybe I wasn’t so eager to answer these questions, they all seemed so deep and kind of personal, but I gave it a shot. After answering all 8 questions I felt overwhelmed and kind of depressed, because I realized that even though my parents did everything they could while both me and my brother were growing up, we were just barely getting by...basically we were living a life of pay check to pay check. At first I wasn’t so keen on sharing my class background with the woman sitting next to me, I felt a little ashamed of it all. However, after we both had spoke about the first question I realized that, we were kinda in the same boat; which I was very relieved to have found out. We both grew up in the same financial situation, we had all the “cool stuff” even though our parents couldn’t really afford it, both our families rented houses rather than owning them and many of our family values were very similar. This was almost a moment of an epiphany, I shouldn’t feel ashamed for the way that I was brought up, my parents did the best they could given the situation. Society makes it quite difficult for many people to be a part of higher classes, even if you may be white and privileged. It’s a hard concept for me to understand, why there has to be this division between the different socio-economic ranks, because leading from the different classes comes many forms of oppression. As I read in an article that was assigned to us, “[c]lass is a political and economic structure as well as an ideological one, The other oppressions are the building tools; class is the wall. The other oppressions are cause and effect; class is the resulting structure.” (Bishop, 2002). So it isn’t just as simple as determining which social class you are a part of, but dealing with all the oppressions that come along with it. But should it be like that? I think not. There shouldn’t be any sort of class differences in the first place.
References:
Bishop, A. (2002). Becoming an ally: Breaking the cycle of oppression, 2 Ed. Halifax, N.S.: Fernwood Publishing
This cartoon shows that it is usually the lower class who gets affected from all the tragedies the upper class has made (http://trcs.wikispaces.com/social+classes)
Rebellious guy dreams of becoming a regular guy. (http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/s/social_class.asp)
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