The topic of social class in the United States, generally measured by education, income, occupation and wealth, has been gaining increasing attention in recent years. Within this there is debate on whether class is even an issue in the United States—some speculate this is due to the difficulty in reconciling a notion of a “class system” with that of the “land of opportunity”. In addition, we live with such immense wealth that our standard of living far surpasses impoverished countries.
On the other end it is hard to reconcile the federal poverty line, which in 2007 is $17,760 for a family of three, while our nation's top earner's average pay in 2005 was 821 times that of a minimum wage worker ($5.15 an hour). That is to say, these top achievers earn “more before lunchtime on the very first day of work in the year than a minimum-wage worker earns all year” (EPI, 2007).
While a worthy topic, the goal of this feature is not to debate economic disparities, but to establish that a large gap exists and provoke conversations about the social and cultural differences, as well as, similarities that exist between economic groups. The following chart, from A Framework for Understanding Poverty (1998), suggests different motivations in relation to income levels, or Class. Let us know what you think:
|
Poverty |
Middle Class |
Wealth |
Possessions |
People |
Things |
One-of-a-kind objects, legacies, pedigrees |
Money |
To be used, spent |
To be managed |
to be conserved, invested |
Social Emphasis |
Social inclusion of people they like. |
Emphasis is on self governance and self sufficiency. |
Emphasis on social exclusion. |
Food |
Key Question: did you have enough? Quantity important. |
Key question: did you like it? Quality important. |
Key question: was it presented well? Presentation important. |
Time |
Present most important. Decisions made for moment based on feelings or survival. |
Future most important. Decisions made against future ramifications. |
Traditions and history most important. Decisions made partially on basis of tradition and decorum. |
Education |
Valued and revered as abstract but not as reality. |
Crucial for climbing success ladder and making money. |
Necessary tradition for making and maintaining connections. |
World View |
Sees world in terms of local setting. |
Sees world in terms of national setting. |
Sees world in terms of international view. |
Driving Force |
Survival, relationships, entertainment. |
Work, achievement. |
Financial, political. Social connections. |
Calendar of Events
Upcoming events:
July 11-27 The Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication's (SIIC) new schedule is up for registration. View this summer's schedule at: www.intercultural.org/.
- Session I: July 11-13
- Session II: July 16-20
- Session III: July 23-27
July 4th US Independence Day (US) For the European Americans of 1776, July 4th was a day when representatives of the 13 colonies gathered to sign the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming their autonomy from England. This Independence day is celebrated, as in many countries around the world, with family and community gatherings and large displays of fireworks.
August 6th Hiroshima Day (US, Canada) Commemorates the day the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb in 1945. People gather to not only remember the dead but to declare a commitment to never use atomic weapons on human beings again. According to one source: “Some 70,000 people probably died as a result of initial blast, heat, and radiation effects. This included about twenty American airmen being held as prisoners in the city. By the end of 1945, because of the lingering effects of radioactive fallout and other after effects, the Hiroshima death toll was probably over 100,000. The five-year death total may have reached or even exceeded 200,000, as cancer and other long-term effects took hold.” The US would drop a second bomb on Nagasaki days later.
New at EDS
A Soul Has No Gender: A Mother's Journey In September EDS will sponsor our first ever speaker on diversity and inclusion issues: A Soul Has No Gender is the story of one woman's experience as a mother of fraternal twins who are both sexual minorities. One twin is lesbian and the other is female-to-male trans gender. Based on her doctoral work the presenter shares the process she went through in coming to accept their sexual and gender identities and how this process has transformed her view of gender and sex and her relationship with her children, her family, herself and others.
It is the presenter's hope that sharing her experience in coming to accept her children's sexual and gender identities will help generate awareness about the significant challenges these young people face and will serve to challenge other parents, educators, as well as the agencies and service providers who come in contact with these youth to respond more empathically.
The talk will be held Thursday, September 6, 6:00-9:00 PM, at the Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center in Seattle, WA . For more information contact us at (206) 224-9293.
Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC), here we come! Elmer and Donna are headed to SIIC in July. This year Donna is facilitating and co-facilitating the following:
- Foundations of Intercultural Communication This workshop is a sophisticated introduction to concepts of intercultural communication and their application to a wide range of professional contexts. (Andy Reynolds and Dr. Donna Stringer)
- A sample of SIIC: Training Methods for exploring values This session will examine the impact of contrasting values that potentially lead to misunderstanding and conflict across cultures. Using exercises from her book, 52 Activities for Exploring Values Differences , the workshop will focus on the training application of this information to differences across gender culture, generational culture, national culture, and ethnic culture. (Dr. Donna Stringer)
- Diversity as Culture Change: A Strategic Approach Gaining maximum advantage from diversity requires much more than training. Diversity can best provide a strategic advantage when it is dealt with as a long-term organizational change process. This workshop will help participants grapple with the seven steps necessary to achieve meaningful culture change and make progress toward developing a strategy that creates a culture of inclusion and is suitable and relevant to each participant's unique organization. (Dr. Anita Rowe and Dr. Donna Stringer)
- Exploring Multi-racial families an evening program. (Dr. Garfield DeBardelaben and Dr. Donna Stringer)
Gauw tot ziens!* After returning from a much deserved vacation where she traveled to Germany, Chek Republik, Russia, Poland, Austria, Croatia and Hungary, Donna Stringer is off to work in Holland, UK, Spain, Greece before her August travels to Mexico and Costa Rica! (*See you soon!)
Congratulations! Our resource manager, Tera, is having a commitment ceremony with her partner on July 28th; friends for 13 years and partnered for the last 6 years, congratulations to them both!
Data Dump: Some US fast facts....
On the working poor:
- In 2003 the U.S. Census Bureau defined poor families as those with cash incomes of less than $18,810 for a family of four.
- The average amount by which poor people's incomes fell below the poverty line was greater in 2003 than any other year since recordkeeping began in 1975. The average amount by which the poor fell below the poverty line was $3,018 per person in 2003.
- Although the Nation's poor were primarily children and adults who were not in the labor force, 1 in every 5, or 7.4 million individuals, were classified as “working poor.”
- Working women who maintained families had the highest working-poor rate in 2003 (18.4 percent), more than twice the rate for their male counterparts—8.9 percent.
- Although working full time substantially lowers a person's probability of being poor, 3 in every 5 of the working poor who worked during 2003 usually worked full time.
- The likelihood of being classified as working poor greatly diminishes as workers achieve higher levels of education. In 2003, only 1.7 percent of college graduates were counted among the working poor, compared with 14.1 percent of people with less than a high school diploma.
- Although roughly 7 in every 10 of the working poor were white workers, black and Hispanic or Latino workers continued to be more than twice as likely as their white counterparts to be among the working poor.
On Philanthropy:
- In the United States, as of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, and 20% of the people owned 84%.
- Total amount of giving in 2003 (including corporate, individual, foundation, and bequest giving): $240.7 billion
- Total giving by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller during their lifetimes (in 2003 dollars): $14 billion
- Total federal spending in 1910 (in 2003 dollars): $13 billion
- Total amount given or pledged by Bill and Melinda Gates by 2003: $23 billion
- Total foundation giving in 2003: $26.3 billion
- Total market value of Google at the end of its first day of public trading: $27.2 billion
- Number of foundations in the U.S. in 1982: 23,770
- Number of foundations in the U.S. in 2002: 64,843
- Percentage of all giving to religious organizations (including individual giving) in 2003: 36
- Percentage of all giving to human services(including individual giving) in 2003: 8
- Percentage of all giving to environmental causes(including individual giving) in 2003: 3
Excerps from Looking Out for the Future: An Orientation for Twenty-First Century Philanthropists , by K. Fulton and A. Blau http://www.futureofphilanthropy.org/us_phil.asp
In 2005 the New York Times put out a three week series on class. Possibly more of an exercise to provoke thought or conversation than a tool, we encourage you to visit the below site to review their interactive graphic: Components of Class, How Class breaks down, Income Mobility, and a Nation Wide Poll.
back to top »Quotes to live by...
"We should acknowledge differences, we should greet differences, until difference makes no difference anymore." -- Dr. Adela A. Allen, Educator
"The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on." -- Julia Alvarez
"If men would consider not so much where they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world." -- Joseph Addison, English essayist, poet, and statesman (1672–1719)
"I never doubted my ability, but when you hear all your life you're inferior, it makes you wonder if the other guys have something you've never seen before. If they do, I'm still looking for it." -- Hank Aaron, Baseball Star (1934-)
"People have to feel needed. Frequently, we just offer a job and ‘perks.' We don't always offer people a purpose. When people feel there is a purpose and that they're needed, there's not much else to do except let them do the work." -- Maya Angelou, Novelist and Poet (1928-)
Reel Reviews
Race: The Power of Illusion Coming from a working class family and as the first in my family to attend college, I am acutely aware of my shift from renting a place to live to my desire to invest in a house as a means of generating capital and hopefully a bit of security for my family. In regard to economic status and mobility, I found the third episode of this three part PBS series eye-opening for its piece on the structural manipulation of the housing market to prevent African Americans from accessing real estate investments. If one has any questions of how structural oppression and a history of privilege towards European-Americans played out, here is an excellent example. It is a series that should be a part of every library. The following is an excerpt from for their 3rd film, The House We Live In:
Today, the net worth of the average Black family is about 1/8 that of the average white family. Much of that difference derives from the value of the family's residence. Houses in predominantly white areas sell for much more than those in Black, Hispanic or integrated neighborhoods, and so power, wealth, and advantage - or the lack of it - are passed down from parent to child. Wealth isn't just luxury or profit; it's the starting point for the next generation. (read on)
People like us: As in "middle class," "working class," "upper class."
It's the 800-pound gorilla in American life that most Americans don't think about: how do income, family background, education, attitudes, aspirations, and even appearance mark someone as a member of a particular social class?
Class can be harder to spot than racial or ethnic differences, yet in many ways it's the most important predictor of what kind of financial and educational opportunities someone will have in life.
But class is a hard subject to talk about in a society like ours, where the idea that all people are created equal and that a poor child can become President is enshrined in national legend.
People like us, is a PBS documentary special. Visit them here.
“I CHANGED my thinking about affirmative action. I was against it, and now I'm for it. The agent of change was a mind-opening book – ‘A Hope in the Unseen,' by Ron Suskind. The subtitle is: ‘An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League.'” (Bill Reel, Newsday)
A Hope Unseen by Ron Suskind: is the story of a young African American boy as he transitions out of his senior year at an inner city Washington DC high school to the Ivy League Brown University . A national best seller this biography reads more like a novel.
“At Brown, finding himself far behind most of the other freshmen, Cedric must manage a bewildering array of intellectual and social challenges. Cedric had hoped that at college he would finally find a place to fit in, but he discovers he has little in common with either the white students, many of whom come from privileged backgrounds, or the middle-class blacks. Having traveled too far to turn back, Cedric is left to rely on his faith, his intelligence, and his determination to keep alive his hope in the unseen--a future of acceptance and reward that he struggles, each day, to envision.”
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