Social Stratification And Impression Analysis

One inherent quality in humans is the need to categorize things. We need order and in order to achieve order, we put things in categories. It is not even always conscious, but it is and has always been present both socially and institutionally in our society. As a society, we classify people in a process called stratification by race, class, and gender. By understanding human’s innate need to classify people through symbolic interactionism, we can develop a deeper understanding of the manifestations of social stratification in society and use that in order to make it known that this need to classify does not need to elevate some people and disparage others.
The root of this societal system that arranges people into sections, which is so prevalent …show more content…
By virtue of the lines taken by others, one can create a face, or image of themselves and they, in turn, project and manage impressions that produce favorable outcomes for themselves in a process called impression management. We engage in this behavior constantly in order to construct these favorable outcomes specifically in terms of race, class, and gender. Impressions based on race are very hard to manage, because of stereotypes; so many people try to do this by breaking racial stereotypes. For example, a black man may avoid sports or chicken for fear of being perceived as more black than he already obviously is based on the color of his skin. The Staples article attests to this and includes an example where a black man tries to appear as white as possible to appease his white counterparts. “I whistle melodies from Beethoven and Vivaldi…”(Staples 609). Gender roles are so strict that in order to maintain the image of a functioning person in the population, one must conform to these ideals and restrictions i.e. boys wear blue and girls wear pink. There is no real need for this, but it is in place still. Not only does the problem lie in adhering to these gender roles, but also when people do not fit within this sexual dichotomy i.e. intersex or transsexual individuals, the dissension is even more prominent. When people identify as things that the people in power i.e. white, heterosexual, cisgender, males do not understand, then they do not get any benefits from society. It is when one does not fit into that perfect, model, human that one sees the negative aspects of society and is painfully aware that the system does not work in their favor. Impression management based on class is also standard in that those of middle class constantly try to prove themselves as