Middle Class Reflection

Improved Essays
My family represented the lower middle class of the social hierarchy. Specifically, we were part of the working class of society. My mother worked as a nurse’s aide at Flushing Hospital for many years while my father worked as an attendant for a BP gas station in Fresh Meadows. Both working positions did not pay much. My mother was being paid 10 dollars and hour while my father was being paid 9 dollars an hour. The total income my mother and my father made was relatively low. In addition, the amount of wealth my family possessed was extremely low. My family was living on paycheck to paycheck. All of our income were used for bills, food, and, other living necessities. The primary source of income in which my family possessed was work wages.
Together, with my mother, my father, and my step brother, we lived as a family within an apartment building located on Colden Street in Flushing. The
…show more content…
By becoming a medical assistant, my mother possessed a higher wage thus translating a higher income and a higher position in terms of social class. Our status changed from a lower middle class status into a middle class. This was due to how my mother received a wage of 17 dollars an hour. At the same time, there was a house for sale in another neighborhood 12 blocks away from Colden Street. The vacant house was located in a neighborhood that didn 't possess the features of the seemingly dangerous environment we previously inhabited. The timing of both opportunities occurring was divine and unreal. My mother had the desire to take advantage of the opportunity. As we achieved social mobility, we were able to live in an environment that met the new social status we possessed and the new social class we were apart of. Following the separation between my mother and my father, were able to improve our social class because of the promotion my mother

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Tamar Lewin's Analysis

    • 776 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Tamar Lewin’s article, Up from the Holler: Living in two worlds, at Home in Neither, is an account of the ascent of a young girl named Della Mae Justice from lower class to middle class as she grows up to become a successful lawyer. Justice comes from a poor family with minimal life chances for favorable living conditions and a better future with opportunities for advancement. Her family lived in a small house located in East Kentucky. Her mother was mentally ill and her step father was a truck driver. Her lower social class accounted for her poor living conditions and thus, she ended up in foster care for 9 months.…

    • 776 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Ain 'T No Makin' It Analysis

    • 2387 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Synopsis In 1987, Jay MacLeod brought the housing project of Clarendon Heights to our attention with his initial publishing of Ain’t No Makin’ It. With the first edition, we meet two distinct groups of boys: the Hallway Hangers and the Brothers. Eight years after introducing us to these two distinct groups, Jay Macleod makes his way back to Clarendon Heights. With the coming of the second edition, we are updated on the lives of the Hallway Hangers and the Brothers.…

    • 2387 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In conclusion, I was placed into the Upper Social Class Ladder, which I think I will stay in the same social class in the future. I would like to walk into the financial sector in my future career and the Working Poor, Capitalist, Upper Middle Class have huge influences towards myself, which affect my future aspiration on the social class and career path…

    • 1013 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Dangerous Consequences of Growing Inequality by Chuck Collins argues that the burgeoning gap between the upper and lower classes has strenuous personal and economic ramifications. He summarizes the pressures facing households and the economic inequalities that undermine the security of families, threaten our democratic institutions and economy, deteriorate our public health as well as breaking down our social cohesion. The ever so important middle class has been vanishing right before our eyes, there is a strain on relationships between ourselves and our neighbors, families and co-workers which prevents our society from uniting and striving for greatness. As a greedy and power hungry society we completely forgot what is most important, our fellow citizens and their well-being. Collins’ essay is an effective argument for social justice because he shows that even though our economy has thrived throughout the decades those profits have not trickled down to the working class…

    • 1125 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    To a lot of people, economic class runs almost everything in your life. It decides what you can buy and what you can’t buy, which in turn, decides how you live and how much you enjoy that time living. Well, to me, economic class in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird affects the story substantially. Just like in the real world, economic class in the story decides how characters live and the conditions they live. To begin, one family greatly affected by their economic class are the Cunningham family.…

    • 465 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Lydia Samson The Vanishing Middle Class Analysis Government, politics, and the death of the “American Dream” are just a few of the topics discussed in The Vanishing Middle Class, a recent nonfiction account of the inequalities of the American economic system by economist Peter Temin. Temin describes the economic inequality of the current class system as grouped into the top 1% who hold 99% of the nation’s wealth, the poorer, lower income class, and the titled “vanishing” middle class. The problems within the economic class systems arise in that those in financial prosperity are experiencing a steady growth in their yearly income, the population of lower class people is only growing, meaning that the American middle class is rapidly shrinking.…

    • 277 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The documentary People Like Us: Social Class in America points out the existence of several cultural levels among our population. Moreover, the film provides a detailed look at the lives of families in each of these levels and what they represent. Featured families range from one living in a small trailer with no running water to the other with its members riding through The Hamptons while in the backseat of a convertible. Naturally, each of these groups possess the qualities and manners pertinent to their subculture. One of the points stresses the fact that a person cannot change their social class and that they are permanently locked-in right where they were born.…

    • 532 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    However, In Michael Oher’s case, his hopes were simply to find a warm place to sleep at night. By chance, he was pummeled into high class, or dare I say, hyper high class, overnight. Upward social mobility is defined as movement up the social class ladder (Henslin,10.4). Oher experienced upward social mobility faster than the average individual experiences, unless say someone win’s the lottery. His life changed from sleeping in the gym, on benches, to his own bedroom with his own bed, which he stated he had never had one before, and was 17 years old.…

    • 1800 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When I thought about this class the first person that came to my mind was Richard Rodriguez because his story was unique. He came from a Mexican immigrant family and used that to set his goals. He was not going to let his background limit him; that is an example of how a middle class thinks. When Richard grew up he understood at a young age what being poor was and what it meant deep down to be poor and he did not like that. He wanted to steer clear from being classified as an immigrant or poor because he knew there was more to life then to be stereotyped.…

    • 621 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As a consequence, economic expansion provided a pathway for individuals to move up the ladder; however it didn’t address the tensions between families as those social problems were ignored in favor of strengthening the status…

    • 504 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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.…

    • 1146 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dumb Luck Research Paper

    • 890 Words
    • 4 Pages

    With a steady income, I paid off my debt. I also had access to insurance and other benefits. I had already surpassed my family in terms of achievement, but I knew that I could do…

    • 890 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lloyd Warner identified six social classes in the United States; which consist of: upper-upper class, the blueblood of America; lower-upper class, individuals who possess more money than others in the upper-upper class; the upper-middle class, the white-collar professionals; the lower-middle class, the white-collar residue; the upper-lower class, the blue-collar residue; and the lower-lower class, the jobless. Based on these social classes, I would put myself in the lower-middle class because of my personal experience of working with my brain and my hands to complete certain types of challenges of my daily life. From the information gathered from the six social classes, my personal experiences have influenced me to being part of the lower-middle…

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Classism In America

    • 990 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Classism In America, “class can accurately predict chances for both survival and success” (Mantsios, 2013, p. 155). However, the myth of a classless society exists in America (2013), and this myth perpetuates the ideology of the American Dream (Leondar-Wright & Yeskel, 2007). The American Dream is that anyone can attain enough income to own a home and secure a future for their family if they work hard, (2007) sacrifice, and persevere (Mantsios, 2013). Americans “are trained to identify up the class spectrum and fantasize about getting there” (Collins, Yeskel, & United for a Fair Economy and Class Action, 2013, p. 164). Although there is some class fluidity over the lifetime of many individuals, the reality is many Americans work hard and do…

    • 990 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout Tammy’s Story, the poverty level of the family is clearly shown. In the beginning, Tammy lived in a trailer park with her two sons without a car. Without her car, Tammy had to walk to her job at Burger King. While watching this video, this family did not have a lot of social mobility, as social mobility is the “movement of individuals or groups from one position in a society’s stratification system to another” (Schaefer, 195). Tammy held an intragenerational horizontal social mobility, whereas one son held intergenerational vertical and the other held intergenerational horizontal.…

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays