Coming from my position in life, I often find challenge in analyzing, interpreting, and discussing social class. It weighs on me that I likely bring unfair biases and predispositions to this topic. I am a white, American, educated, athletic male from a family with both parents still together and without many financial troubles. Aside from perhaps a degree from a prestigious University or boat loads of cash, I do not think that I could be more privileged. Although my privilege might sway my ideas on the matter of social class, I am working to remove these biases in order to truly recognize the ways in which the social construct of social class influences the individuals, communities, and institutions that I come in contact with in everyday life.
…show more content…
The most vivid example of this comes with the character Tammy Crabtree and her son Matt in the section titled “Tammy’s Story.” The documentary portrays Tammy as an impoverished working-class mother who lives in a rundown trailer home with her sons. Tammy’s son, Matt, is portrayed in the documentary as trying to transcend his social class. Matt speaks of impressing his friends, graduating high school, and going on to college. Unfortunately, Matt seems condemned to staying in the same class as his mother. In a follow up with the family, viewers learn that Matt ended up dropping out of high school just before finishing. Although it seemed possible for Matt to work toward escaping poverty, it becomes clear that social class and its implications – lack of role models, access to resources, etc. - made it more challenging for him to do so. Matt wanted to become a higher class than the one he was born into, but social class seems to have grasped his life in ways he did not conceive of when we met him as a teenage in the first …show more content…
In the section titled, “BOURGEOIS BLUES,” the film makers give insight to how minorities – in this case African Americans – experience social class in more complicated ways than white persons might. In the documentary, a group of people are talking about their social class and they speak of being middle class. Another person interjects and agrees that they are, indeed, middle class; however, they are black middle class. This relationship between race and class continues to play out during this section. One person comments on how some persons of black skin are becoming “the oppressor” and they use the derogatory term “Bougie” (slang for bourgeoisie) to talk down to affluent African-Americans. Rather than celebrating perceived success and wealth, some African Americans choose to degrade other African Americans who are reaching out of the lower-middle class. I found this intriguing because I previously imagined that all persons would want to work to make themselves more successful, but it seems that becoming upper class may not always be perceived as a good
The most vivid example of this comes with the character Tammy Crabtree and her son Matt in the section titled “Tammy’s Story.” The documentary portrays Tammy as an impoverished working-class mother who lives in a rundown trailer home with her sons. Tammy’s son, Matt, is portrayed in the documentary as trying to transcend his social class. Matt speaks of impressing his friends, graduating high school, and going on to college. Unfortunately, Matt seems condemned to staying in the same class as his mother. In a follow up with the family, viewers learn that Matt ended up dropping out of high school just before finishing. Although it seemed possible for Matt to work toward escaping poverty, it becomes clear that social class and its implications – lack of role models, access to resources, etc. - made it more challenging for him to do so. Matt wanted to become a higher class than the one he was born into, but social class seems to have grasped his life in ways he did not conceive of when we met him as a teenage in the first …show more content…
In the section titled, “BOURGEOIS BLUES,” the film makers give insight to how minorities – in this case African Americans – experience social class in more complicated ways than white persons might. In the documentary, a group of people are talking about their social class and they speak of being middle class. Another person interjects and agrees that they are, indeed, middle class; however, they are black middle class. This relationship between race and class continues to play out during this section. One person comments on how some persons of black skin are becoming “the oppressor” and they use the derogatory term “Bougie” (slang for bourgeoisie) to talk down to affluent African-Americans. Rather than celebrating perceived success and wealth, some African Americans choose to degrade other African Americans who are reaching out of the lower-middle class. I found this intriguing because I previously imagined that all persons would want to work to make themselves more successful, but it seems that becoming upper class may not always be perceived as a good