Examples Of Intergenerational Class Location

Over the past century, the United States has changed dramatically. In a social view, we have made changes such as abolishing slavery all the way to electing our first black president. However, we are still facing the issues of intergenerational class location and class mobility. Intergenerational class location can be defined as the social movement of family members from generation to generation. Class mobility can be defined as the upwards or downwards movement of one’s status in categories such as occupations, wealth, and education. With acts such as racial discrimination / prejudice posing major problems for communities with people of color, this raises the problem broad spectrum of social inequality. To explore this further, I interviewed …show more content…
James was born in Oakland, California in 1929 and attended UC Berkeley for his undergraduate degree and later attended Andover Newton School of Theology and Berkeley Baptist Divinity School to receive his PhD. Marie was born in China and came over to the United States when she was five. She later went on to attend Stanford School of Nursing but later stopped working in 1955 to take care of her children. She did not return to work until her youngest son, who was born in 1960, turned eight and stopped working once her mom moved into their apartment in 1968. Besides my father, my grandparents had three other children, two girls and one boy, all who shared one small room in an apartment in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Furthermore, they had their uncle living with them in the apartment, so they had a total of seven people in a crowded condition, but it was considered, “the norm.” On a regular basis, my father’s family used reused grocery bags as “lunch boxes” and took public transportation to school because they did not own a car. When my father’s grandmother moved in with them, they decided to move out of the apartment and buy a house in the Sunset District of San Francisco. This came at a price because, “we emptied the bank accounts, cashed in the children’s savings bonds…and we had $300.00 left and had to spend it on a new fridge when the old one broke during the move.” During this time, my dad told me …show more content…
When he talked about his family growing up, he also thought they were middle-class. What this shows is that the definition of the middle-class is a large range. Based off this interview, I think the main differences between the lower-middle class and the upper-middle class is the ability to have purchases that luxuries or not necessary such as vacations. As my dad mentioned before, he never felt poor because he had a home, clothes, and food when it was needed. In comparison to my immediate family and my dad’s family, I would say that we both had good social mobility because both families gave their children the opportunities to receive a higher education at a college /