Tuesday, November 22, 2022
Monday, November 21, 2022
9.1.1: Race: Reality and Myth
9.1.1: Race: Reality and Myth As humans spread throughout the world, their adaptations to diverse climates and other living conditions, combined with genetic mutations, added distinct characteristics to the peoples of the globe.
Humans show remarkable diversity. Shown here is just one example—He Pingping, from China, who at 2 feet 4 inches, was the world’s shortest man, and Svetlana Pankratova, from Russia, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is the woman with the longest legs. Race–ethnicity shows similar diversity. Credit: John Stillwell/PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo The Reality of Human Variety With its more than 7 billion people, the world offers a fascinating variety of human shapes and colors. Skin colors come in all shades between black and white, heightened by reddish and yellowish hues. Eyes come in shades of blue, brown, and green. Lips are thick and thin. Hair is straight, curly, kinky, black, blonde, red—and, of course, all shades of brown. In this sense, the concept of race—a group of people with inherited physical characteristics that distinguish it from another group—is a reality. Humans do, indeed, come in a variety of colors and shapes. The Myth of Pure Races Humans show such a mixture of physical characteristics that there are no “pure” races. Instead of falling into distinct types that are clearly separate from one another, human characteristics—skin color, hair texture, nose shape, head shape, eye color, and so on—flow endlessly together. The mapping of the human genome system shows how similar humans around the world are, and how little biological variation, even at the molecular level, there is in what are called racial groups (Torres 2019). As you can see from the example of Tiger Woods, discussed in the following Cultural Diversity in the United States, these minute gradations among humans make any attempt to draw lines of pure race purely arbitrary. Cultural Diversity in the United States Tiger Woods: Mapping the Changing Ethnic Terrain Tiger Woods, perhaps the top golfer of all time, calls himself Cablinasian. Woods invented this term as a boy to try to explain to himself just who he was—a combination of Caucasian, Black, Indian, and Asian (Leland and Beals 1997; McKibbin 2014). Woods wanted to embrace all sides of his family. Like many of us, Tiger Woods’ heritage is difficult to specify. Analysts who like to quantify ethnic heritage put Woods at one-quarter Thai, one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter white, an eighth Native American, and an eighth African American. From this chapter, you know how ridiculous such computations are, but the sociological question is why many people consider Tiger Woods to be African American. The U.S. racial scene is indeed complex, but a good part of the reason is that Woods has dark skin, and this is the label the media placed on him. The attitude seems to be “Everyone has to fit somewhere.” And for Tiger Woods, the media chose African American. Tiger Woods as he answers questions at a news conference. Credit: Steve Helber/AP Images The United States once had a firm “color line”—barriers between racial–ethnic groups that you didn’t dare cross, especially in dating or marriage. This barrier has broken down, and today such marriages are common (Statistical Abstract 2019:Table 60). Children born in these marriages have a difficult time figuring out how to classify themselves. To help them make an adjustment in college, some colleges have interracial student organizations. As we enter unfamiliar ethnic terrain, our classifications are bursting at the seams. Here is how Kwame Anthony Appiah, of Harvard’s Philosophy and Afro-American Studies Departments, described his situation: My mother is English; my father is Ghanaian. My sisters are married to a Nigerian and a Norwegian. I have nephews who range from blond-haired kids to very black kids. They are all first cousins. Now according to the American scheme of things, they’re all black—even the guy with blond hair who skis in Oslo. (Wright 1994) I marvel at what racial experts the U.S. census takers once were. When they took the national census, which is done every 10 years, they looked at people and assigned them a race. At various points, the census contained these categories: mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, Negro, black, Mexican, white, Indian, Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, and Hindu. Quadroon (one-fourth black and three-fourths white) and octoroon (one-eighth black and seven-eighths white) proved too difficult to “measure,” and these categories were used only in 1890. Mulatto appeared in the 1850 census and lasted until 1920. The Mexican government complained about Mexicans being treated as a race, and this category was used only in 1930. I don’t know whose idea it was to make Hindu a race, but it appeared in 1930 and 1940 (Edmonston 2019). In the 2010 census, we were first asked to declare whether we were or were not “Spanish/Hispanic/Latino.” After this, we were asked to check “one or more races” that we “consider ourselves to be.” We could choose from White; Black, African American, or Negro; American Indian or Alaska Native; and Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorro, or Samoan. There were boxes for Other Asian and Other Pacific Islander, with examples that listed Hmong, Pakistani, and Fijian as races. If these didn’t do it, we could check a box called “Some Other Race” and then write whatever we wanted. Perhaps the census should list Cablinasian, after all. We could also have ANGEL for African-Norwegian-German-English-Latino Americans, DEVIL for those of Danish-English-Vietnamese-Italian-Lebanese descent, and STUDENT for Swedish-Turkish-Uruguayan-Danish-English-Norwegian-Thai Americans. As you read farther in this chapter, you will see why these terms make as much sense as the categories we currently use. For Your Consideration Perhaps you can use the materials in this chapter to answer these questions: → Why do we count people by “race”? → Why not eliminate race from the U.S. census? (Race became a factor in 1790 during the first census. To determine the number of representatives from each state, a slave was counted as three-fifths of a person!) → Why is race so important to some people? 266 The Myth of a Fixed Number of Races Although large groupings of people can be classified by blood type and gene frequencies, even these classifications do not uncover “race.” Rather, the term is so arbitrary that biologists and anthropologists cannot even agree on how many “races” there are (Anderson 2019). Ashley Montagu (1964, 1999), a physical anthropologist, pointed out that some scientists have classified humans into only two “races,” while others have found as many as two thousand. Montagu (1960) himself classified humans into forty “racial” groups. “Race” is so fluid that even a plane ride can change someone’s race. If you want to see how, read the following Down-to-Earth Sociology. Down-to-Earth Sociology Can a Plane Ride Change Your Race? At the beginning of this text, I mentioned that common sense and sociology often differ. This is especially so when it comes to race. According to common sense, our racial classifications represent biological differences between people. Sociologists, in contrast, stress that what we call races are social classifications, not biological categories. Sociologists point out that our “race” depends more on the society in which we live than on our biology. For example, the racial categories common in the United States are only one of numerous ways by which people around the world classify physical appearances (Rocha 2019). Although various groups use different categories, each group assumes that its categories are natural, merely a response to visible biology. To better understand this essential sociological point—that race is more social than it is biological—consider this: In the United States, children born to the same parents are all of the same race. “What could be more natural?” Americans assume. But in Brazil, children born to the same parents may be of different races—if their appearances differ. “What could be more natural?” assume Brazilians. What “race” are these two Brazilians? Is the child’s “race” different from her mother’s “race”? The text explains why “race” is such an unreliable concept that it changes even with geography. Credit: GoGo Images Corporation/Alamy Stock Photo Consider how Americans usually classify a child born to a “black” mother and a “white” father. Why do they usually say that the child is “black”? Wouldn’t it be equally as logical to classify the child as “white”? Similarly, if a child has one grandmother who is “black,” but all her other ancestors are “white,” the child is often considered “black.” Yet she has much more “white blood” than “black blood.” Why, then, is she considered “black”? Certainly not because of biology. Such thinking is a legacy of slavery. In an attempt to preserve the “purity” of their “race” in the face of the many children whose fathers were white slave masters and whose mothers were black slaves, whites classified anyone with even a “drop of black blood” as black. They actually called this the “one-drop” rule. Even a plane trip can change a person’s race. In the city of Salvador in Brazil, people classify one another by color of skin and eyes, breadth of nose and lips, and color and curliness of hair. They use at least seven terms for what we call white and black. Consider again a U.S. child who has “white” and “black” parents. If she flies to Brazil, she is no longer “black”; she now belongs to one of their several “whiter” categories (Fish 1995). If the girl makes such a flight, would her “race” actually change? Our common sense revolts at this, I know, but it actually would. We want to argue that because her biological characteristics remain unchanged, her race remains unchanged. This is because we think of race as biological, when race is actually a label we use to describe perceived biological characteristics. Simply put, the race we “are” depends on our social location—on who is doing the classifying. “Racial” classifications are also fluid, not fixed. Even now, you can see change occurring in U.S. classifications. The category “multiracial,” for example, indicates changing thought and perception. For Your Consideration → How would you explain to someone that race is more a social classification than a biological one? Can you come up with any arguments to refute this statement? 267 The Myth of Racial Superiority Regardless of what anthropologists, biologists, and sociologists say, however, people do divide one another into races, and we are stuck with this term. People also tend to see some races (mostly their own) as superior and others as inferior. As with language, however, no race is better than another. All races have their geniuses—and their idiots. Yet the myth of racial superiority abounds, a myth that is particularly dangerous. Adolf Hitler, for example, believed that the Aryans were a superior race, destined to establish an advanced culture and a new world order. This destiny required them to avoid the “racial contamination” that would come from breeding with inferior races. The Aryans, then, had a “cultural duty” to isolate or destroy races that threatened their racial purity and culture. The reason I selected these photos is to illustrate how seriously we must take all preaching of hatred and of racial supremacy, even though it seems to come from harmless or even humorous sources. The strange looking person with his hands on his hips, who is wearing lederhosen, traditional clothing of Bavaria, Germany, is Adolf Hitler. His actions led to the concentration camps. This is just one small pile of bodies found when the U.S. Army liberated Buchenwald. Credit: Time Life Pictures/National Archives/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images; AP Images Hearing from the Author: The Holocaust Listen to the Audio 268 Hitler’s views, put into practice, were appalling. The Nazis slaughtered those they deemed inferior: Jews, Slavs, gypsies, homosexuals, and people with mental and physical disabilities. Horrific images of gas ovens and emaciated bodies stacked like cordwood have haunted the world’s nations. At Nuremberg, the Allies, flush with victory, put the top Nazis on trial, exposing their heinous deeds to a shocked world. Their public executions, everyone assumed, marked the end of such grisly acts. Obviously, they didn’t. Fifty years after the Nazis, a mother in Rwanda was told: “Which one of your seven children are you going to throw into this grave?” the men asked the woman. “If you refuse to tell us, they’ll all be buried alive.” (Isaacs 2014) Over 100 days in 1994, Hutus slaughtered about 900,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus—mostly with machetes (Totten 2018). That same decade, Serbian leaders in Bosnia massacred Muslims, giving the world the term ethnic cleansing. In North Korea today, prisoners deemed genetically inferior—defiling the “sacred Korean race”—are tortured, raped, and starved to death (Eberstadt 2014b). As these events sadly attest, genocide—the attempt to destroy a group of people because of their presumed race or ethnicity—remains alive and well. Although more recent killings are not accompanied by swastikas and gas ovens, the perpetrators’ goal is the same. The Myth Continues The idea of race, of course, is far from a myth. Firmly embedded in our culture, it is a powerful force in our everyday lives. That no race is superior and that even biologists cannot decide how people should be classified into races is not what counts. “I know what I see, and you can’t tell me any different” seems to be the common attitude. As was noted in Chapter 4, sociologists W. I. and D. S. Thomas (1928) observed, “If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” In other words, people act on perceptions and beliefs, not facts. As a result, we will always have people like Hitler and, as illustrated in our opening vignette, calloused bureaucrats like those in the U.S. Public Health Service who thought that it was fine to experiment with people whom they deemed inferior. Although few hold such extreme views, most people appear to be ethnocentric enough to believe that their own race is—at least just a little—superior to others.
9.1 Laying the Sociological Foundation
Laying the Sociological Foundation 9.1 Contrast the myth and reality of race; compare race and ethnicity and minority and dominant groups; discuss ethnic work. As unlikely as it seems, this is a true story. Rarely do racial–ethnic relations degenerate to this point, but reports of troubled race relations surprise none of us. Today’s newspapers, TV, and Internet regularly report on racial problems. Sociology can contribute greatly to our understanding of this aspect of social life—and this chapter may be an eye-opener for you. For example, could race be a myth? Let’s find out.
9: Race and Ethnicity.2: Sociological Models of Social Class
Three North American Indians, ca. 1836, George Catlin (oil on canvas)
Credit: Bridgeman Art Library/SuperStock Imagine that you are an African American man living in Macon County, Alabama, during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Your home is a little country shack with a dirt floor. You have no electricity or running water.
You never finished grade school, and you make a living, such as it is, by doing odd jobs.
You haven’t been feeling too good lately, but you can’t afford a doctor. Then you hear incredible news.
You rub your eyes in disbelief. It is just like winning the lottery! If you join Miss Rivers’ Lodge (and it is free to join), you will get free physical examinations at Tuskegee University for life.
You will even get free rides to and from the clinic, hot meals on examination days, and a lifetime of free treatment for minor ailments.
You eagerly join Miss Rivers’ Lodge.
After your first physical examination, the doctor gives you the bad news.
“You’ve got bad blood,” he says. “That’s why you’ve been feeling bad.
Miss Rivers will give you some medicine and schedule you for your next exam.
I’ve got to warn you, though. If you go to another doctor, there’s no more free exams or medicine.”
You can’t afford another doctor anyway.
You are thankful for your treatment, take your medicine, and look forward to the next trip to the university.
What has really happened?
You have just become part of what is surely slated to go down in history as one of the most callous experiments of all time, outside of the infamous World War II Nazi and Japanese experiments.
With heartless disregard for human life, the U.S. Public Health Service told 399 African American men that they had joined a social club and burial society called Miss Rivers’ Lodge.
What the men were not told was that they had syphilis, that there was no real Miss Rivers’ Lodge, that the doctors were just using this term so they could study what happened when syphilis went untreated.
For 40 years, even after penicillin was used to treat syphilis, the “U.S. Public Health Service” allowed these men to go without treatment—and kept testing them each year—to study the progress of the disease.
The “U.S. public health” officials even had a control group of 201 men who were free of the disease (Jones 1993; Hall 2019). 265 By the way, the men did receive a benefit from “Miss Rivers’ Lodge,” a free autopsy to determine the ravages of syphilis on their bodies.
8.8-Summary and Review What Determines Social Class?
Summary and Review What Determines Social Class?
8.1 Explain the three components of social class—property, power, and prestige; distinguish between wealth and income; explain how property and income are distributed; and describe the democratic façade, the power elite, and status inconsistency. What is meant by the term social class? Most sociologists have adopted Weber’s definition of social class: a large group of people who rank closely to one another in terms of property (wealth), power, and prestige. Wealth—consisting of the value of property and income—is concentrated in the upper classes. From the 1930s to the 1970s, the trend in the distribution of wealth in the United States was toward greater equality. Since 1970, the trend has been toward greater inequality. Power is the ability to get your way even though others resist. C. Wright Mills coined the term power elite to refer to the small group that holds the reins of power in business, government, and the military. Prestige is linked to occupational status. How does occupational prestige differ around the world? From country to country, people rank occupational prestige similarly. Globally, the occupations that bring greater prestige are those that pay more, require more education and abstract thought, and offer greater independence. What is meant by the term status inconsistency? Status is social position. Most people are status consistent; that is, they rank high or low on all three dimensions of social class. People who rank higher on some dimensions than on others are status inconsistent. The frustrations of status inconsistency tend to produce political radicalism. Sociological Models of Social Class 8.2 Contrast Marx’s and Weber’s models of social class. What models are used to portray the social classes? Erik Wright developed a four-class model based on Marx: (1) capitalists (owners of large businesses), (2) petty bourgeoisie (small business owners), (3) managers, and (4) workers. Kahl and Gilbert developed a six-class model based on Weber. At the top is the capitalist class. In descending order are the upper-middle class, the lower-middle class, the working class, the working poor, and the underclass. Consequences of Social Class 8.3 Summarize the consequences of social class for physical and mental health, family life, education, religion, politics, and the criminal justice system. How does social class affect people’s lives? Social class leaves no aspect of life untouched. It affects our chances of dying early, becoming ill, receiving good health care, and getting divorced. Social class membership also affects child rearing, educational attainment, religious affiliation, political participation, the crimes people commit, and their contact with the criminal justice system. Social Mobility 8.4 Contrast the three types of social mobility, review gender issues in research on social mobility, and explain why social mobility brings pain. What are three types of social mobility? The term intergenerational mobility refers to changes in social class from one generation to the next. Structural mobility refers to changes in society that lead large numbers of people to change their social class. Exchange mobility is the movement of large numbers of people from one social class to another, with the net result that the relative proportions of the population in the classes remain about the same. Poverty 8.5 Explain the problems in drawing the poverty line and how poverty is related to geography, race–ethnicity, education, feminization, and age. Who are the poor? The poverty line, although it has serious consequences, is arbitrary. Poverty is unequally distributed in the United States. Racial–ethnic minorities (except Asian Americans), children, households headed by women, and rural Americans are more likely than others to be poor. The poverty rate of the elderly is less than that of the general population. 8.6 Contrast the dynamics of poverty with the culture of poverty, explain why people are poor and how deferred gratification is related to poverty, and comment on the Horatio Alger myth. Why are people poor? They dynamics of poverty (huge numbers moving into and out of poverty) indicate that the culture of poverty is not generally true. Rather than looking at the characteristics of individuals as the cause of poverty, sociologists stress the structural features of society, such as employment opportunities. There also are poverty triggers. Sociologists generally conclude that life orientations are a consequence, not the cause, of people’s position in the social class structure. 262 How is the Horatio Alger myth functional for society? The Horatio Alger myth—the belief that anyone can get ahead if only he or she tries hard enough—encourages people to strive to get ahead. It also stabilizes society by deflecting blame for failure from society to the individual. 8.7 Discuss the possibility that we are developing a three-tier society. What is meant by a three-tier society? Trends indicate an alarming future. In the top tier of a three-tier society will live a wealthy ruling elite. In the middle tier will be well-compensated people who serve this elite. At the bottom tier will be a large underclass considered dangerous to society. It will be kept under control by welfare, entertainment, drugs, and a militarized police force. Key Terms View Flashcards Key Terms View Flashcards Thinking Critically about Chapter 8 The belief that the United States is the land of opportunity draws millions of legal and illegal immigrants to the United States. How do the materials in this chapter support or undermine this belief? In what three ways is social class having an ongoing impact on your life? What social mobility has your own family experienced? In what ways has this affected your life? What indications do you see that we are or are not developing a three-tier society?
8.7 Peering into the Future:
Peering into the Future: Will We Live in a Three-Tier Society? 8.7 Discuss the possibility that we are developing a three-tier society. Now that we have looked at social class in the United States, you should be much more aware not only of how social class influences your life but also of how the social classes fit together to form the whole that we call American society. Let’s go beyond this and in the following Thinking Critically about Social Life try to peer into the future. We will consider the disturbing possibility that society is being restratified—and that the picture coming into focus is not pleasant. Unfortunately, this will give us a much darker ending to this chapter than I prefer. But let’s go on. Thinking Critically about Social Life The Coming Three-Tier Society and the Militarization of the Police A three-tier society seems to be looming over us. On the top tier will be the wealthy, who will live in luxury behind gated fortresses, protected from the prying eyes of the unwashed masses. On the middle tier will be the technically trained, an army of servants who will run the essential affairs of society. They will maintain the computers that control the financial system, the infrastructure of utilities, and the government surveillance. There will also be the teachers, the elite ones for the children of the elite and the regular ones whose task is to indoctrinate and control the children of the poor. These technical servants of society’s controllers will be backed up by a police force that has come to look more like the military than the police. And the third tier? This one will consist of the jobless poor. The need for unskilled work is drying up. We still need some fruit pickers and some house cleaners, and an occasional someone to hold up flags when a road is being constructed. But there is little of this kind of work. And most of what there is pays little. Enter one of today’s new factories, and you will be struck by the absence of people. You will see untiring robots that never complain, don’t take coffee breaks, and need neither vacations nor retirement pay. With each passing year, we need fewer human workers. Widespread joblessness will trigger hopelessness and deep despair in some, resentment and hostility in others. To keep the lid on violence as long as possible, two solutions will be followed. The first will be to pacify the jobless through food stamps, subsidized housing, entertainment, and drugs. Videos and television will divert most of the “dangerous poor” from seeking political solutions. Drugs will be tolerated because the poor who flee into them to escape their misery do not threaten the top tier by agitating for political change. Not all will be hopeless: Powerball—with its illusions—will remain. The second solution, coexisting with the first, is the militarization of the police. That the police are beginning to look like the military is not coincidental. This is preparation for the armed force that will be necessary to control the impoverished masses of the third tier. The media have been willing handmaidens of the elite, preparing the public for the militarization of the police by stoking constant fears of “terrorists.” This comes not without a plan from the controllers. The hostile elements of society—the masses left behind with little future, the resentful ones who still possess some hope and who do not choose to escape into drugs or television—pose a threat to the first tier. For most of the jobless poor, welfare food, televised sports, and the stream of “latest revelations” about vaunted celebrities provide escape adequate to keep them in line. But if what the Romans called food and circus fail to keep minds numb and wills weak, the militarized police with their powerful new weapons, armored vehicles, and trained snipers stand ready to take care of the rest. For Your Consideration This is not a pleasant picture of the future, but your author sees it as a looming possibility. → Do you think the three-tier society is our likely destiny? Why or why not? → What do you think we can do to produce a better future than the three-tier society?
https://quizlet.com/287291744/sociology-ch-9-10-flash-cards/
Three groups Europeans divided people into:
1. nobility: the wealthy families who ruled the country.
2. clergy: owned vast amounts of land and collected taxes from everyone who lived within the boundaries of a parish
3. commoners (serfs): they belonged to the land.
People were born into one of these groups and died within it, too.
1. nobility: the wealthy families who ruled the country.
2. clergy: owned vast amounts of land and collected taxes from everyone who lived within the boundaries of a parish
3. commoners (serfs): they belonged to the land.
People were born into one of these groups and died within it, too.
Marx believes there are two social classes: bourgeoisie (capitalists), those who own the means of production, and the proletariat (workers), those who work for the owners
•concluded that social class depends on a single factor: people's relationship to the means of production—the tools, factories, land, and investment capital used to produce wealth.
•concluded that social class depends on a single factor: people's relationship to the means of production—the tools, factories, land, and investment capital used to produce wealth.
8.6.3: Where Is Horatio Alger?
8.6.3: Where Is Horatio Alger? The Social Functions of a Myth In the late 1800s, Horatio Alger was one of the country’s most popular authors. The rags-to-riches exploits of his fictional boy heroes and their amazing successes in overcoming severe odds motivated thousands of boys of that period. Although Alger’s characters have disappeared from U.S. literature, they remain alive and well in the psyche of Americans. From real-life examples of people of humble origin who climbed the social class ladder, Americans generally believe that anyone who really tries can get ahead. The accuracy of the Horatio Alger myth is less important than the belief that surrounds it—that limitless possibilities exist. Functionalists would stress that this belief is functional for society. On the one hand, it encourages people to compete for higher positions, or, as the song says, “to reach for the highest star.” On the other hand, it places blame for failure squarely on the individual. If you don’t make it—in the face of ample opportunities to get ahead—the fault must be your own. The Horatio Alger myth helps to stabilize society: Because the fault is viewed as the individual’s, not society’s, current social arrangements can be regarded as satisfactory. This reduces pressures to change the system. A society’s dominant ideologies are reinforced throughout the society, including its literature. Horatio Alger provided inspirational heroes for thousands of boys. The central theme of these many novels, immensely popular in their time, was rags to riches. Through rugged determination and self-sacrifice, a boy could overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles to reach the pinnacle of success. (Girls did not strive for financial success, but were dependent on fathers and husbands.) Credit: James M. Henslin As Marx and Weber pointed out, social class penetrates our consciousness, shaping our ideas of life and our “proper” place in society. When the rich look at the world around them, they sense superiority and anticipate control over their own destiny. When the poor look around them, they are more likely to sense defeat and to anticipate that unpredictable forces will batter their lives. Both rich and poor know the dominant ideology: The reasons for success—or failure—lie solely with the self. Like fish that don’t notice the water, people tend not to perceive the effects of social class on their own lives.
8.6.2: Deferred Gratification
8.6.2: Deferred Gratification Not all poverty is short, and about 12 percent of Americans are poor for ten years or longer (Rank and Hirschi 2015). One consequence of a life of deprivation punctuated by emergencies—and of viewing the future as promising more of the same—is a lack of deferred gratification, giving up things in the present for the sake of greater gains in the future. It is difficult to practice this middle-class virtue of deferring gratification if you do not have a middle-class surplus—or middle-class hope. 258 In a classic 1967 study of black street-corner men, sociologist Elliot Liebow noted that the men did not defer gratification. Their jobs were low-paying and insecure, their lives pitted with emergencies. With the future looking exactly like the present and any savings they did manage gobbled up by emergencies, it seemed pointless to save for the future. The only thing that made sense from their perspective was to enjoy what they could at the moment. Immediate gratification, then, was not the cause of their poverty but, rather, its consequence. Cause and consequence loop together, however: Their immediate gratification helped perpetuate their poverty. For another look at this “looping,” see the following Down-to-Earth Sociology, in which I share my personal experience with poverty. Down-to-Earth Sociology Poverty: A Personal Journey I was born in poverty. My parents, who could not afford to rent either a house or an apartment, rented the tiny office in their minister’s house. This is where I was born. My father, who had only a seventh-grade education, began to slowly climb the social class ladder. His fitful odyssey took him from laborer to truck driver to the owner of a series of small businesses (tire repair shop, bar, hotel), and from there to vacuum cleaner salesman, and back to bar owner. He converted a garage into a house. Although it had no indoor plumbing, it was a start. Later, he bought a house, and then he built a new home. After that we moved into a trailer, and then back to a house. Although he always had a low income, poverty eventually became a distant memory for him. My social class took a leap—from working class to upper-middle class—when, after attending college and graduate school, I became a university professor. I entered a world that was unknown to my parents, one much more pampered and privileged. I had opportunities to do research, to publish, and to travel to exotic places. My reading centered on sociological research, and I read books in Spanish as well as in English. My father, in contrast, never read a book in his life, and my mother read only detective stories and romance paperbacks. One set of experiences isn’t “better” than the other, just significantly different in determining what windows of perception it opens onto the world. My interest in poverty, rooted in my own childhood experiences, stayed with me. I traveled to a dozen or so skid rows across the United States and Canada, talking to homeless people and staying in their shelters. In my own town, I spent considerable time with people on welfare, observing how they lived. I constantly marveled at the connections between structural causes of poverty (low education, low skills, low pay, the irregularity of unskilled jobs, undependable transportation) and personal causes (the culture of poverty—alcohol and drug abuse, multiple out-of-wedlock births, frivolous spending, all-night partying, domestic violence, criminal involvement, and a seeming incapacity to keep appointments—except to pick up the welfare check). Sociologists haven’t unraveled this connection, and as much as we might like for only structural causes to apply, both are at work (Freeman et al. 2019). The situation can be illustrated by looking at the perennial health problems I observed among the poor—the constant colds, runny noses, backaches, and injuries. The health problems stem from the social structure (less access to medical care, less capable physicians, drafty houses, little knowledge about nutrition, and more dangerous jobs). At the same time, personal characteristics—hygiene, eating habits, drug and alcohol abuse—cause health problems. Which is the cause and which the effect? Both, of course: One loops into the other. The medical problems (which are based on both personal and structural causes) feed into the poverty these people experience, making them less able to perform their jobs successfully—or even to show up at work regularly. What an intricate puzzle for sociologists! Hearing from the Author: Poverty: A Personal Journey Listen to the Audio If both structural and personal causes are at work, why do sociologists emphasize the structural explanation?
Reverse the situation for a moment. Suppose that members of the middle class drove old cars that broke down, faced threats from the utility company to shut off the electricity and heat, and had to make a choice between paying the rent or buying medicine and food and diapers.
How long would they practice deferred gratification? Their orientations to life would likely make a sharp U-turn.
Sociologists, then, do not view the behaviors of the poor as the cause of their poverty but, rather, as the result of their poverty.
Poor people would welcome the middle-class opportunities that would allow them the chance to practice the middle-class virtue of deferred gratification. Without those opportunities, though, they just can’t afford it.
8.6.1: Why Are People Poor?
8.6.1: Why Are People Poor? Two explanations for poverty compete for our attention. The first, which sociologists prefer, focuses on social structure. Sociologists stress that features of society deny some people access to education or training in job skills. They emphasize racial–ethnic, age, and gender discrimination, as well as changes in the job market—fewer unskilled jobs, businesses closing, and manufacturing jobs moving overseas. In short, some people find their escape route from poverty blocked. A competing explanation focuses on the characteristics of individuals. Sociologists reject explanations, such as laziness and lack of intelligence, viewing these as worthless stereotypes. Individualistic explanations that sociologists reluctantly acknowledge include dropping out of school and bearing children in the teen years. Most sociologists are reluctant to speak of such factors in this context because they appear to blame the victim, something that sociologists bend over backward not to do. A third explanation is the poverty triggers that were just mentioned, the unexpected events in life that push people into poverty. Watch What Causes Poverty and Can it Be Fixed? Play WatchWhat Causes Poverty and Can it Be Fixed?
8.6 The Dynamics of Poverty versus the Culture of Poverty
The Dynamics of Poverty versus the Culture of Poverty 8.6
Contrast the dynamics of poverty with the culture of poverty, explain why people are poor and how deferred gratification is related to poverty, and comment on the Horatio Alger myth.
Some have suggested that the poor get trapped in a culture of poverty (Lewis 1966a; Ray and Tillman 2019). This term generally refers to the poor having values and behaviors that make them different from other Americans that hold them down, and keep them from getting out of poverty. Lurking behind this concept is the idea that the poor are lazy people who bring poverty on themselves. Certainly, some individuals and families do match this stereotype—many of us have known them. But is a self-perpetuating culture—one that poor people transmit across generations and that locks them in poverty—the basic reason for U.S. poverty? Contrary to the stereotype of lazy people who sit back sucking welfare, poverty is dynamic. Many people live on the edge of poverty, managing, but barely, to keep their heads above poverty. But then comes some dramatic life change, such as a divorce, an accident, an illness, or the loss of a job. This poverty trigger pushes them over the ledge they were holding on to by their fingertips, and they find themselves in the poverty they fiercely had been trying to avoid. With people moving in and out of poverty, most poverty is short-lived, lasting less than a year. Yet from one year to the next, the number of poor people remains about the same. This means that the people who move out of poverty are replaced by people who move into poverty.
Most of these newly poor will also move out of poverty within a year. Some people even bounce back and forth, never quite making it securely out of poverty (Rank and Hirschi 2015).
Few poor people enjoy poverty—and they do what they can to avoid being poor. In the end, though, poverty touches a lot more people than the annual totals indicate.
Although 15 percent of Americans may be poor at any one time, before they turn 65, about 60 percent of the U.S. population will experience a year of poverty (Rank and Hirschi 2015).
8.5.3: Children of Poverty
8.5.3: Children of Poverty 256 In Figure 8.15, you can see the high poverty rate of U.S. children. High childhood poverty holds true regardless of race–ethnicity, but from this figure you can see how much greater poverty is among Latino and African American children. That millions of U.S. children are reared in poverty is shocking when one considers the wealth of this country and our supposed concern for the well-being of children. This tragic aspect of poverty is the topic of the following Thinking Critically about Social Life. Thinking Critically about Social Life The Nation’s Shame: Children in Poverty One of the most startling statistics in sociology is shown in Figure 8.15. For Asian Americans, one of nine children is poor; for whites, one of six or seven; for Latinos, an astounding one of four; and for African Americans, an even higher total, with almost one of every three children living in poverty. These percentages translate into incredible numbers—approximately 13 million children. Why do so many U.S. children live in poverty? A major reason is the large number of births to women who are not married, about 1.6 million a year. This number has increased sharply, going from one of twenty in 1960 to eight of twenty today. With the total jumping eight times, single women now account for 40 percent of all U.S. births (Statistical Abstract 2019:Tables 91, 94). But do births to single women actually cause poverty? Consider the obvious: Children born to wealthy single women don’t live in poverty. Then consider this: In some countries, such as Sweden, single women are more likely to give birth than are single women in the United States, yet their rate of child poverty is lower than ours (OECD 2019). The reason for this is because their governments provide extensive support for rearing these children—from providing day care to health checkups. Why, then, can’t we point to the lack of government support for children as the cause of the poverty of children born to single women? Now look at Figure 8.16. You can see that the less education that single women have, the more likely they are to bear children. Since women with less education have less income, you can also see that the single women who can least afford children are those most likely to give birth. Their children face severe obstacles to building a satisfying life. They are more likely to go hungry, to be malnourished, to have health problems, even to die in infancy. They also are more likely to drop out of school, to become involved in crime, and to have children while still in their teens—perpetuating a cycle of poverty. Figure 8.16 How Does Education Influence Births to Single Women? Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau, 2019. Published annually. Table 94. Above the graph the text reads: Of women with this education who give birth, what percentages are single or married? The vertical axis represents the education levels among single women as listed below. The horizontal axis represents the percentages from 0 to 40%, in increments of 20%. The details are as follows: Among Unmarried women: High school dropout, 58%; High school graduate, 51%; Some college, or Associate’s degree, 41%; Bachelor’s degree, 12%; Graduate or professional degree: 5%. Among Married women: High school dropout, 42%; High school graduate, 49%; Some college, or Associate’s degree, 59%; Bachelor’s degree, 88%; Graduate or professional degree: 95%. For Your Consideration Here are two questions for you to grapple with. In answering these two questions, be specific and practical. → What programs would you suggest to help women attain more education? → What other ways would you suggest to reduce child poverty?
8.5.2: Who Are the Poor?
8.5: Poverty.2: Sociological Models of Social Class PT 253 8.5.2: Who Are the Poor? To better understand American society, it is important to understand poverty. Let’s start by exploring a myth. Breaking a Myth A common idea is that most of the poor in the United States are African Americans who crowd the welfare rolls. Look at Figure 8.10. You can see that there are more poor white Americans than poor Americans of any other racial–ethnic group. The reason is that there are so many more white Americans than those of any other racial–ethnic group. With this in mind, let’s turn to the geography of poverty, how the poor are distributed in the country. Figure 8.10 An Overview of Poverty in the United States The following interactive is not accessible to keyboard and screen reader users. What follows is an explanation of what appears on the screen. A pie chart presents the share of various groups among the U.S. poor: African Americans: 21 percent, White Americans: 43 percent, Asian Americans: 5 percent, Latinos: 26 percent, and two or more races: 0.4. The Geography of Poverty From the following Social Map, you can see how poverty varies by region. The striking clustering of poverty in the South has prevailed for more than 150 years. Figure 8.11 Patterns of Poverty Loading... Source: Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2017:Table 734. The following interactive is not accessible to keyboard and screen reader users. What follows is an explanation of what appears on the screen. A U.S. state map presents the pattern of poverty in different states of the United States, with the data "Lowest poverty: New Hampshire (7.3 percent); Hawaii (9.3); Maryland (9.7 percent) and "Highest Poverty: Mississippi (20.8 percent); Louisiana (20.2 percent); New Mexico (19.8 percent)."The data for percentage of the population in poverty in different states of the U.S. is categorized under the following three categories as follows:States with the least poverty: 7.3 to 11.4 percentNew Hampshire (7.3)Hawaii(9.3)Maryland (9.7)Connecticut (9.8)Alaska (9.9)Minnesota (9.9)Utah (10.2)Massachusetts (10.4)New Jersey (10.4)North Dakota (10.7)Colorado (11)Virginia (11)Washington (11.3)Wyoming (11.3)Nebraska (11.4)Average poverty (11.7 to 14.4)Delaware (11.7)Iowa (11.8)Wisconsin (11.8)Vermont (11.9)Kansas(12.1)Maine(12.5)Rhode Island (12.8)Pennsylvania (12.9)Illinois(13)Montana (13.3)Oregon (13.3)South Dakota(13.3)Nevada (13.8)Missouri (14)Indiana (14.1)California (14.3)Idaho (14.4)(Highest poverty 14.6 to 20.8)Ohio (14.6)Florida(14.7)New York (14.7)Michigan (15)South Carolina (15.3)North Carolina (15.4)Texas (15.6)Tennessee (15.8)Georgia (16)Oklahoma (16.3)Arizona (16.4)Alabama (17.1)Arkansas (17.2)West Virginia (17.9)Kentucky (18.5)District of Columbia (18.6)New Mexico (19.8)Louisiana (20.2)Mississippi (20.8) A second pattern of geography, rural poverty, also goes back a couple of centuries. At 16 percent, rural poverty is higher than the national average of 15 percent. Helping to maintain this higher rate are the lower education of the rural poor and the scarcity of rural jobs. The third aspect of poverty and geography, the suburbanization of poverty, is new. With the extensive migration from cities to suburbs, more of the nation’s poor now live in the suburbs than in the cities (Allard 2019). This major change is not likely to be temporary. 254 In addition to geography, U.S. poverty follows lines of education, family structure, race–ethnicity, and age. Let’s turn to these major patterns. Poverty comes in many forms. Families who go into debt to buy possessions squeak by month after month until a crisis turns their lives upside down. I took this photo of a family in Georgia, parked alongside a highway selling their possessions to survive our economic downturn. Credit: James M. Henslin Hearing from the Author: Poverty Listen to the Audio Listen to the Audio Education You are already aware that education is a vital aspect of poverty, but you may not know just how powerful it is. Look at Figure 8.12. One of every 5 people who drop out of high school is poor, but only 1 of 20 people who finish college end up in poverty. As you can see, the chances that someone will be poor become less with each higher level of education. Although this principle applies regardless of race–ethnicity, you can also see how race–ethnicity makes an impact at every level of education. Figure 8.12 Who Ends Up Poor? Poverty by Education and Race–Ethnicity Loading... The following interactive is not accessible to keyboard and screen reader users. What follows is an explanation of what appears on the screen. A multiple bar graph presents rate of poverty based on education and race-ethnicity.The vertical axis of the graph represents “Percentage in Poverty” ranging from 0 to 40 percent in increments of 5 percent while the horizontal axis represents different race groups. The data presented in the graph is as follows:• All Racial–Ethnic Groupso College graduate: 5o College dropout: 11o High school graduate: 14o High school dropout: 24• White Americanso College graduate: 4o College dropout: 9o High school graduate: 10o High school dropout: 17• Asian Americanso College graduate: 8o College dropout: 13o High school graduate: 13o High school dropout: 20• Latinoso College graduate: 8o College dropout: 13o High school graduate: 17o High school dropout: 27• African Americanso College graduate: 8o College dropout: 17o High school graduate: 25o High school dropout: 36. Family Structure: The Feminization of Poverty Family structure is one of the best indicators of whether or not a family is poor. From Figure 8.13, you can see that the families least likely to be poor are headed by both a mother and father, while those the most likely to be poor are headed by only a mother. The reason for this can be summed up in one statistic: Women average only 74 percent of what men earn. (We’ll review this statistic in detail in the next chapter.) With our high rate of divorce combined with the large number of births to single women, mother-headed families have become more common. Sociologists call this association of poverty with women the feminization of poverty. Figure 8.13 Poverty and Family Structure Loading... The following interactive is not accessible to keyboard and screen reader users. What follows is an explanation of what appears on the screen. A bar graph presents relationship between percentage of poverty and head of the family.The text above the graph reads "Who heads the family?" The vertical axis ranges from 0 to 35 percent in increments of 5 percent. The data presented in the graph indicating percentage of poverty when headed by different members of the family is as follows:A married couple: 5.1 percentA man: 13.1 percentA woman: 26.6 percent Race–Ethnicity One of the strongest factors in poverty is race–ethnicity, as you can see in Figure 8.14. Overall, 10 percent of Asian Americans are poor, followed closely by whites at 11 percent. From there, the poverty rate jumps, with 19 percent of Latinos and 22 percent of African Americans living in poverty. Figure 8.14 Poverty and Race–Ethnicity Loading... The following interactive is not accessible to keyboard and screen reader users. What follows is an explanation of what appears on the screen. A bar graph presents relationship between percentage of poverty in American based on race-ethnicity.The text above the graph reads, Americans is poverty. The vertical axis of the graph ranges from 0 to 30 percent in increments of 5 percent. The data presented in the graph is as follows:National average: 13 percent.White Americans: 11 percent.Asian Americans: 10 percent.Latinos: 19 percent.African Americans: 22 percent. 255 Because whites are, by far, the largest group in the United States, their lower rate of poverty translates into larger numbers. As a result, there are many more poor whites than poor people of any other racial–ethnic group. As you saw in Figure 8.10, 43 percent of all poor people are whites. Age and Poverty Figure 8.15 shows one of the most significant aspects of poverty in the United States. There are several things you should learn from this figure. First, note that the elderly are less likely than the general population to be poor. This is quite a change. It used to be that growing old increased people’s chances of being poor. Elderly poverty was so common that there was a lot of publicity—television programs and newspaper and magazine articles accompanied by photos of “pitiful, suffering old folks.” Then government policies to redistribute income—Social Security and subsidized housing, food stamps, and medical care—slashed the rate of poverty among the elderly. Figure 8.15 Poverty, Age, and Race–Ethnicity Loading... The following interactive is not accessible to keyboard and screen reader users. What follows is an explanation of what appears on the screen. A bar chart presents percentage of poverty of different races based on the category of age.The text above the graph reads, What percentage of these groups is poor? The vertical axis of the graph ranges from 0 to 40 percent in increments of 5 percent. The data presented in the graph is as follows:The elderly age 65 and overo All racial ethnic groups: 9 percent.o White Americans: 8 percent.o Asian Americans: 12 percent.o Latinos: 17 percent.o African Americans: 19 percent.Children under age 18o All racial ethnic groups: 18 percent.o White Americans: 16 percent.o Asian Americans: 11 percent.o Latinos: 27 percent.o African Americans: 31 percent. Figure 8.15 also shows how the prevailing racial–ethnic patterns carry over into old age. You can see how much more likely elderly minorities are to be poor than elderly whites. In the next section, we will focus on a third aspect of Figure 8.15, how common poverty is among children.
8.5.1: Drawing the Poverty Line
8.5: Poverty.2: Sociological Models of Social Class PT
8.5.1: Drawing the Poverty Line To determine who is poor, the U.S. government draws a poverty line. This measure was set in the 1960s, when poor people were thought to spend about one-third of their incomes on food. On the basis of this assumption, each year, the government computes a low-cost food budget and multiplies it by 3. Families whose incomes are less than this amount are classified as poor; those whose incomes are higher—even by a dollar—are considered “not poor.” High rates of rural poverty have been a part of the United States from its origin to the present. This 1937 photo shows a 32-year-old woman who had seven children and no food. She was part of a huge migration of people from the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma in search of a new life in California. Credit: Dorothea Lange/Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA[LC-USF34-T01-009095-C] 252 This official measure of poverty is grossly inadequate. Poor people actually spend only about one-fifth of their income on food, so to determine a poverty line, we ought to multiply their food budget by 5 instead of 3 (Chandy and Smith 2014). Another problem is that mothers who work outside the home and have to pay for child care are treated the same as mothers who don’t have this expense. The poverty line is also the same for everyone across the nation, even though the cost of living is much higher in New York than in Alabama. On the other hand, much of the income of the poor is not counted: food stamps, rent assistance, public housing, subsidized child care, and the earned income tax credit (Meyer and Mittag 2019). Despite these many criticisms, the official measure has not changed. Credit: By permission of John L. Hart FLP and Creators Syndicate, Inc. The assistant reads, “The king will now outline his plan to eliminate poverty.” The king says, “In the future, there will be no monetary amount used to define poverty.” One among the people says, “Gee, I feel richer already.” That a change in the poverty line can instantly make millions of people poor—or take away their poverty—would be laughable, if it weren’t so serious. Although this line is arbitrary, because it is the official measure of poverty, we’ll use it to see who in the United States is poor. Before we do this, though, how do you think that your ideas of the poor match up with sociological findings? You can find out in the following Down-to-Earth Sociology. Down-to-Earth Sociology What Do You Know about Poverty? Ten Quick Checks on What You Think You Know Check what you think you know with these answers. Are the following statements true or false? 1. Poverty is unusual. Click me 2. People with less education are more likely to be poor. Click me 3. Most poor people are poor because they do not want to work. Click me 4. Most of the poor are trapped in a cycle of poverty. Click me 5. The percentage of children who are poor is higher than the percentage of adults who are poor. Click me 6. Most children who are born in poverty are poor as adults. Click me 7. Most African Americans are poor. Click me 8. Most of the poor are African Americans. Click me 9. Most of the poor live in the inner city. Click me 10. The poverty rate of urban areas is higher than in rural areas. Click me
8.5: Poverty.
8.5: Poverty.2: Sociological Models of Social Class PT 251 Poverty 8.5 Explain the problems in drawing the poverty line and how poverty is related to geography, race–ethnicity, education, feminization, and age. Many Americans find that the “limitless possibilities” of the American dream are quite elusive. As illustrated in Figure 8.6, the working poor and underclass together form about one-fifth of the U.S. population. This translates into a huge number: more than 60 million people.
Who are these people?
Watch The American Working Class: Voices from Harrisburg, IL Play WatchThe American Working Class: Voices from Harrisburg, IL
8.4.3: The Pain of Social Mobility:
8.4.3: The Pain of Social Mobility: Two Distinct Worlds When you go from working-class to professional-class, almost everything about your old life becomes unfashionable at best or unhealthy at worst. J.D. Vance 2016 You know it would be painful if you were knocked down the social class ladder. But are you aware that it also hurts to climb this ladder? In the preceding quote, you can see that there is a starting point and a destination. The culture of the starting point does not match the culture of the destination.
The old must be shed, to be replaced by new norms, a most uncomfortable process. Individuals who make this transition find themselves caught between two worlds—their old working-class origin and their new middle-class life.
Sociologist Steph Lawler (1999) studied British women who had moved from the working class to the middle class Their mothers, still in the working class, didn’t like their daughters’ “uppity” new ways.
They felt that their daughters thought they were better than they were.
Tensions ran high, as the mothers criticized their daughters’ preferences in furniture and food, their speech, even the way they reared their children.
As you can expect, this didn’t help the mother–daughter relationship.
Both downward and upward social mobility bring challenges that require life adjustments.
An extreme instance is the case of Sly Stone, the front man of the 1970s funk band, Sly and the Family Stone.
His saga includes going from wealth of millions to living in a van. Credit: Mark Weiss/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images When sociologists Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb (1972/1988) studied working-class parents in Boston, they found something similar. So their children could go to college, the fathers had worked two jobs and even postponed medical care.
They expected their children to appreciate their sacrifice. But again, the result was two distinct worlds.
The children’s educated world was so unlike that of their parents that it became awkward for parents and children to even talk to one another.
The parents felt betrayed and bitter: Their sacrifices had ripped their children from them.
Torn from their roots, some of those who make the jump from the working to the middle class never become comfortable with their new social class (Vance 2016). The following Cultural Diversity in the United States discusses other costs that come with the climb up the social class ladder. Cultural Diversity in the United States Social Class and the Upward Social Mobility of African Americans The overview of social class presented in this chapter doesn’t apply equally to all the groups that make up U.S. society.
Consider geography: What constitutes the upper class of a town of 5,000 people will differ from that of a city of a million.
In small towns, which have fewer extremes of wealth and occupation, family background and local reputation are more significant.
So it is with racial–ethnic groups.
All racial–ethnic groups are marked by social class, but what constitutes a particular social class can differ from one group to another—as well as from one historical period to another.
Consider social class among African Americans.
The earliest class divisions can be traced to slavery—to slaves who worked in the fields and those who worked in the “big house” (Andrews 2019).
Those who worked in the slave owner's plantation home were exposed to the customs, manners, and forms of speech of wealthy whites.
Their more privileged position—which brought with it better food and clothing, as well as lighter work—was often based on skin color. Mulattos, lighter-skinned slaves, were often chosen for this more desirable work.
One result was the development of a “mulatto elite,” a segment of the slave population that, proud of its distinctiveness, distanced itself from other slaves.
At this time, there also were free blacks. Not only were they able to own property but in usual cases, some even owned black slaves. After the War between the States (as the Civil War is known in the South), these two groups, the mulatto elite and the free blacks, formed an upper class that distanced itself from other blacks. By the 1870s, just ten or fifteen years after this war, some African
Americans had become millionaires (Graham 1999). After World War II, the black middle class expanded as African Americans entered a wider range of occupations. Today, more than half of all African American adults work at white-collar jobs, about 30 percent at the professional or managerial level (U.S. Census Bureau 2018). An unwelcome cost greets many African Americans who move up the social class ladder: an uncomfortable distancing from their roots, a separation from significant others—parents, siblings, and childhood friends (Lacy 2007; Khare et al. 2014). The upwardly mobile enter a world unknown to those left behind, one that demands not only different appearance and speech, but also different values, aspirations, and ways of viewing the world. These are severe challenges to the self and often rupture relationships with those left behind. Credit: Kablonk/SuperStock An additional cost is a subtle racism that lurks beneath the surface of some work settings, poisoning what could be easy, mutually respectful interaction.
To be aware that white co-workers perceive you as different—as a stranger, an intruder, or “the other”—engenders frustration, dissatisfaction, and cynicism (Harris and Moffitt 2019).
To cope, many nourish their racial identity and stress the “high value of black culture and being black” (Lacy and Harris 2008).
Some move to neighborhoods of upper-middle-class African Americans, where they can live among like-minded people who have similar experiences (Harrell-Levy and Harrell 2019). For Your Consideration → In the Cultural Diversity box on upward social mobility in Chapter 3, we discussed how Latinos face a similar situation. Why do you think this is?
→ What connections do you see among upward mobility, frustration, and racial–ethnic identity?
→ How do you think that the costs of upward mobility of whites differ from those of Latinos and African Americans? Why?
8.4.2: Women in Studies of Social Mobilit
8.4.2: Women in Studies of Social Mobility About half of sons pass their fathers on the social class ladder, about one-third stay at the same level, and about one-sixth fall down the ladder. (Blau and Duncan 1967; Featherman 1979) “Only sons!” protested feminists at that time in response to the research on social mobility. “Do you think it’s good science to ignore daughters? And why do you assign women the class of their husbands? Do you think that wives have no social class position of their own?”
Following the intellectual sexism of the time, the male researchers smugly brushed these objections aside, replying that there were too few women in the labor force to make a difference. Since then, there has been a structural change in the U.S. Labor force, as millions of white-collar jobs and the professions opened up to women.
Almost half of U.S. workers are now women, and in our less sexist environment, sociologists would not consider excluding women from their research. Researchers have found that behind upwardly mobile women are parents who encouraged their daughters to postpone marriage and get an education (Higginbotham and Weber 1992). For upwardly mobile African American women, strong mothers are especially significant (Robinson and Nelson 2010).
Research on women’s mobility has exposed a gender gap: Women are less likely than men to be upwardly mobile, as measured by living in families with higher income than the one in which they grew up (Reeves and Venator 2013).
An extreme gender gap shows up in the top 1 percent of families.
In 19 of 20 of these families, the richest of all, women got into the top 1 percent through the income of men.
In only 1 of 20 was it the woman’s income that got them there (Yavorsky et al. 2019) (Marina 2019).
With research on the social class of women in its infancy, the social mobility of women is going to be a fruitful area of research in coming years.
8.4.1: Three Types of Social Mobility
8.4.1: Three Types of Social Mobility Janice’s mom, a single mother, sold used cars at a Toyota dealership. Janice worked summers and part-time during the school year, earned her BA, and then her MBA. After graduate school, she worked at IBM, but she missed her home town. When her mom’s boss retired, Janice grabbed the chance to put a down payment on the Toyota dealership. She has since paid the business off and has opened another at a second location. When grown-up children like Janice end up on a different rung of the social class ladder from the one occupied by their parents, it is called intergenerational mobility.
You can go up or down, of course. Janice experienced upward social mobility.
If her mother had owned the dealership and Janice had dropped out of college and ended up selling cars, she would have experienced downward social mobility.
We like to think that individual efforts are the reason people move up the class ladder—and their faults the reason they move down. In this example, we can identify intelligence, hard work, and ambition. Although individual factors, such as these, do underlie social mobility, we must place Janice in the context of structural mobility. This second basic type of mobility refers to changes in society that allow large numbers of people to move up or down the class ladder. The term structural mobility refers to changes in society that push large numbers of people either up or down the social class ladder. A remarkable example was the stock market crash of 1929 when thousands of people suddenly lost their wealth. People who once “had it made” found themselves standing on street corners selling apples or, as depicted here, selling their possessions at fire-sale prices. The crash of 2008 brought similar problems to untold numbers of people.
Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images Janice grew up during a boom time of easy credit and business expansion. Opportunities were abundant, and colleges were looking for women from working-class backgrounds. It is far different for people who grow up during an economic bust when opportunities are shrinking. As sociologists point out, in analyzing social mobility, we must always look at structural mobility, how changes in society (its structure) make opportunities plentiful or scarce.
The third type of social mobility is exchange mobility. This occurs when large numbers of people move up and down the social class ladder, but, on balance, the proportions of the social classes remain about the same. Suppose that a million or so working-class people are trained in some new technology, and they move up the class ladder. Suppose also that because of a surge in imports, about a million skilled workers have to take lower-status jobs. Although millions of people change their social class, there is, in effect, an exchange among them. The net result more or less balances out, and the class system remains basically untouched. How much social mobility is there? If you are aiming for success, trying to raise your social class, you should find the following Applying Sociology to Your Life to be quite encouraging. Applying Sociology to Your Life “The American Dream”: Social Mobility Today What is “The American Dream”? For most people, this term means achieving a better life. The sociological definition of the American Dream is similar, but it is more specific: It refers to children being able to pass their parents as they climb the social class ladder. So how much upward mobility is there? Vast Changes Contrary to the many dismal reports of social life today, the American Dream remains vibrant. Let’s look at national research that compares today’s adult children with their parents. From Figure 8.9, you can see that whether children start life at the top of the nation’s income or at the bottom, about the same percentage move from their starting point. Of those who start life at the bottom, 43 percent are still there when they grow up, but most, 57 percent, have moved up.
Four percent even make it to the top fifth of the nation’s income. Now look at those who start life at the top.
When they grow up, 40 percent are still there, but most, 60 percent, have dropped down.
Eight percent have dropped all the way to the bottom (Lopoo and DeLeire 2012)
. Figure 8.9 Income of Adult Children
Compared with That of Their Parents NOTE: To understand this figure, start at the left and read across. The top group is adults whose parents were in the richest fifth of the nation when they were children.
As adults, 4% of them are in the poorest fifth, 14% in the next to the poorest fifth, and so on.
Source: Pursuing the American Dream: Economic Mobility Across Generations, p. 6. © July, 2013 the Pew Charitable Trusts.
The horizontal axis shows the parents’ family income when the children were growing up and the vertical axis of the graph represents “Percent of adult children in each family income quintile” ranging from 0 to 100 in increments of 10.
The data presented in the graph is as follows: Poorest Fifth: Percent of adult children whose income is in the top quintile: 4 percent. Percent of adult children whose income is in the fourth quintile: 9 percent. Percent of adult children whose income is in the third quintile: 17 percent. Percent of adult children whose income is in the second quintile: 27 percent. Percent of adult children whose income is in the bottom quintile: 43 percent. Next to the Poorest Fifth: Percent of adult children whose income is in the top quintile: 14 percent. Percent of adult children whose income is in the fourth quintile: 20 percent. Percent of adult children whose income is in the third quintile: 18 percent. Percent of adult children whose income is in the second quintile: 24 percent. Percent of adult children whose income is in the bottom quintile: 25 percent.
Middle Fifth: Percent of adult children whose income is in the top quintile: 19 percent. Percent of adult children whose income is in the fourth quintile: 24 percent.
Percent of adult children whose income is in the third quintile: 23 percent. Percent of adult children whose income is in the second quintile: 20 percent.
Percent of adult children whose income is in the bottom quintile: 14 percent.
Next to the richest fifth:
Percent of adult children whose income is in the top quintile: 24 percent.
Percent of adult children whose income is in the fourth quintile: 24 percent.
Percent of adult children whose income is in the third quintile: 23 percent.
Percent of adult children whose income is in the second quintile: 20 percent.
Percent of adult children whose income is in the bottom quintile: 9 percent.
Richest Fifth Percent of adult children whose income is in the top quintile: 40 percent.
Percent of adult children whose income is in the fourth quintile: 23 percent.
Percent of adult children whose income is in the third quintile: 19 percent.
Percent of adult children whose income is in the second quintile: 10 percent.
Percent of adult children whose income is in the bottom quintile: 8 percent.
Incomes If we look at incomes, even though the income was not enough to move the adult child into a different quintile, we find something impressive: 84 percent of today’s adults have family incomes higher than their parents had at the same age. (The incomes of the parents and their adult child were adjusted for inflation, so the dollars have the same value.) One of the surprises is that the children most likely to surpass their parents were reared at the bottom of the nation’s income ladder. Of the adult children who started life there, 93 percent have incomes higher than their parents did at the same age. What Do These Findings Mean? People have a lot of things they want to prove, and they like to use statistics to make their point. These data allow you to go either way. You can stress that 43 percent of the very poorest kids never get out of the bottom—or you can point to the 57 percent who do. It is the same with the richest kids: You can stress the 40 percent who stay at the top of the nation’s income or the 60 percent who drop down. No matter what your opinion, any way you look at it this is a lot of social mobility. You could get lost in the details, but don’t lose sight of the broader principle: Children of high-income parents enjoy benefits that tend to keep them afloat, while children of low-income parents confront obstacles that tend to weigh them down. Yet, as you can see, the benefits don’t keep most of the children up, nor do the obstacles keep most of the children down. The main avenue to upward social mobility is education. Credit: Hill Street Studios/Blend Images/Alamy Stock Photo
For Your Consideration → If you are in a higher class, what can you do to help make sure that you stay there—or even rise higher? If you are in a lower class, what can you do to help make sure that you achieve a higher class?
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