Maryann Cooper's Cut Adrift: Social Inequality In Society

In Maryann Cooper’s book Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times; Cooper validates the notion of social inequalities these economic times have instilled upon the classes in her interviews. Her observations of interviewing different levels of classes, as well as race, genders, and education shows how differently in society classes deal with the risks and insecurities of the recession. A distinct analogy I found in Dalton Conley’s You May Ask Yourself: An Introduction to Thinking like a Sociologist linking to Cooper’s findings; is the connection of society to playing the game of Monopoly.
Today’s American society is economically stratified by class, if you put into perspective the upper educated class would start the game thousands of dollars more. Nevertheless making the playing field an unfair and unequal. The lower and middle classes start off already at a disadvantage, leading to inequality in opportunities in the board game and in life as well. Needless to say Cooper demonstrates how socialization causes the lower classes to accept these new playing terms and rules as the new social norm in today’s society.
The “American Dream” of opportunity for advancement in society while hard work leads to financial security seems to be a remnant of a folklore, a myth

In a Cut Adrift, the author substantiates Weber’s analysis where commonality among these distinguish groups separates them into the expanding divisions of the “have and have-nots”. However, in stratification of social class, inequalities are not based on economic insecurities alone; furthermore it is assisted by gender, race, and education. These faucets go hand in hand in each group’s opportunities, disadvantages, privileges, or being deprived in social mobility along with acceptance of the new social norms of unequal social order for in their class