Race vs. Social Class Essay - 847 Words

Race vs. Social Class THESIS: Race differences in identity and social position were, and are, more important than class differences in American society. Events in the nineteenth century made it abundantly and irrefutably clear that race as a concept sui generis superseded social class as the dominant mechanism of social division and stratification in North America. (Smedley 219) For many decades people have been using race as a way to classify humans into different social categories. Lower, Middle, and Upper classes were created to divide humans into appropriate categories using their individual lifestyles, financial income, residence, and occupation. People decided to ignore this classifying system and classify one another,†¦show more content†¦These conditions in turn lead to the way individuals perform at work. It also affects their views of each other as well as those considered to be above or below them. So, racial discrimination happens at the work level, as well as, the dividing of social classes. Racial discrimination dominated over social classes creating an unfair way to divide people. In all areas of life, Americans were persuaded that the major races - black, Indian, Asian, and white - could not and should not live or work together and certainly not as equals. (Smedley 221) All other races were homogenized, regardless of education, skills, language, religion, income, or place of origin, into one simple category. Class separation was temporary and situational, as so many Americans were quick to uncover. White Americans believed that anyone who succeeded in business, politics, entertainment, or their professions automatically improved their class status and eliminated the barriers to upper class institutions. Class barriers can be surpassed; race barriers can not. The social class has two major approaches to the study in the scholarly literature. The first one is ethnographic and descriptive, and the other is Marxism, which offers a range of perspectives. Smedley describes Marxism as identifying social classes as groups standing in different relationships to the mode of production andShow MoreRelatedWhite Privilege : Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack1455 Words   |  6 Pageseducation in K-12 public schools, and (3) United States legislation which disadvantages the minor races as a means for the dominate race to maintain power and control. Thus, this exploration organizes each area of significant course discovery, which a hybrid of class sources and readings relating to each area of learning supports. 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