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Throughout time it is shown that in society there is always a person who is in a higher status than another. Many are even considered ‘anticitizens’ who have no important opinions that should be integrated in day to day life. The views of society dominate the people living in the United States. This is shown in the early to mid- 19th century leading up to the Civil War where republican values were vital ideas that everyone should follow. However, this was not possible for those who did not grow up with a rich family, therefore, they had to work for to make a living.
The term ‘Freeman’ was coined for the white wage earners who considered them equal to the business owners but higher than the blacks and slaves. The Freemen carried political and
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If someone were to compare the two they would be appalled and state that the blacks and slaves were not equal to them. This shows how the white men would treat the ‘anticitizens’ in public events: they would drive them away from parades and fun events because the white men did not believe that they share the same rights and that one is superior to the other. Although, the Freemen were mistreating the blacks and slaves they were threatened by them and had a watchful eye on them because these ‘anticitizens’ can work with the employers of the white men and take their jobs. The white men saw the slaves and blacks as a threat that could seize power and take their rightful earnings from them. The South held the wages down for these ‘anticitizens’ so they would not be able to buy property and be integrated in day to day life. Today the same ideology is used toward the illegal immigrants from Mexico. Many Americans believe that Mexicans are taking the rightful jobs of citizens. So, these individuals are mistreated and paid basically nothing because if they complain they can get deported. These immigrants are just looking for the same rights as the US citizens but are being mistreated. US citizens also are afraid that if these individuals unionize that they can seize power and grow to have the same rights as US …show more content…
Employees insisted that without them the owner would not have a succeeding business. Workers used this ideology to ask for better conditions and to have some control of their surroundings because this was a mutualistic relationship. However, employers believed that all the power belongs to them and no one can take that power.
This was not the case because those individuals who believed they had the same rights to have control of the facilities eventually wanted to make changes. Workers in these facilities did not have the power to change these massive industrial facilities alone they needed to unionize to actually have an influence. Without a group of individuals, the employers would not care enough to negotiate. Initially, many of the workers at Homestead, for instance, had a powerful union that gave them a say in hiring, wages, and work conditions. Even when the employers wanted a nonunion contract the employees did not agree so they eventually got their way. However, as time went on the employers lost power and unions were broken up, many still were striking but the military interfered causing the employers to win the battle. Homestead was one of the battles that crippled the power of steel workers to unionize. The employees lost any power that they had in the steel business. The workers were very resistant to the employers’ initiative
Social and economic class is something we as Americans like to push into the back of our minds. Sometimes recognizing our class either socially or economically can almost be crippling. When individuals recognize class, limitations and judgment confront us. Instead, we should know it is important to recognize our class, but not let it define and limit us. In the essay, “Class in America”, Gregory Mantsios, founder and director of the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education at the School of Professional Studies, brings to light the fact that Americans don’t talk about class and class mobility. He describes the classes in extremes, mainly focusing on the very sharp divide between the extremely wealthy and extremely poor. In contrast, George
According to Gregory Mantsios many American people believed that the classes in the United States were irrelevant, that we equally reside(ed) in a middle class nation, that we were all getting richer, and that everyone has an opportunity to succeed in life. But what many believed, was far from the truth. In reality the middle class of the United States receives a very small amount of the nation's wealth, and sixty percent of America's population receives less than 6 percent of the nation's wealth, while the top 1 percent of the American population receives 34 percent of the total national wealth. In the article Class in America ( 2009), written by Gregory Mantsios informs us that there are some huge differences that exist between the classes of America, especially the wealthy and the poor. After
Smith introduces the concept of ascriptive inegalitarianism, which effectively brings to light the conditions in which the reality of political ideologies exist due to social preconceptions that are passed from one generation to the next about the “natural” superiority of one race, gender, religion, etc. Liberalism and republicanism exist and function within this realm, not allowing for their respective ideological potentials to be fully realized. Hereditary burdens are placed on minorities because of clashing of democratic liberalism and republicanism along with these systematic and cyclical discriminatory practices. When seen through the eyes of society and government, these systems are completely inescapable. Americans, through these ascriptive systems of multiple political traditions, struggle with the contradictions each idea presents against the other and as a society attempt to embrace the best qualities of each. These outlooks help explain why liberalizing efforts have failed when countered with supporting a new racial or gender order. The ascriptive tradition allows for intellectual and psychological validation for Americans to believe their personal and hereditary characteristics express an identity that has inherent importance in regards to the government, religion, and nature. This provides those who are a part of the white elite to dictate which features are the most desirable and holy, giving head to social conceptions like “white wages”, which make them inherently superior to all other races and cultures. These ideologies are institutionalized within all facets of American life such as causing evils like mass incarceration, wage gaps, and rising suicide
In this paper, Gregory Mantsios compares and contrasts class in America. He uses facts to support his point that things are getting better for the upper class, while things are increasingly getting worse for the middle and lower classes. Throughout the paper, he demonstrates comparing and contrasting by using “myth” versus “reality”.
Growing up in The United States, people are given this idea of an American Dream. Almost every child is raised to believe they can become and do anything they want to do, if one works hard enough. However, a majority of people believe that there is a separation of class in American society. Gregory Mantsios author of “Class in America-2009” believes that Americans do not exchange thoughts about class division, although most of people are placed in their own set cluster of wealth. Also political officials are trying to get followers by trying to try to appeal to the bulk of the population, or the middle class, in order to get more supporters. An interesting myth that Mantsios makes in his essay is how Americans don’t have equal opportunities.
During the Civil War generation, Black population were enslaved to work in the plantations and serve the white men or population. They were treated like animals, and were forced to do extreme tough labor. The Black population had limited rights or privileges. For example, Blacks were not allowed to vote, buy land, obtain good jobs or careers, and speak freely. According to the short reading “A Different Mirror” by Ronald Takaki, a white owner during the Civil War stated, “I have men, who were slaves on the place…. They always lived there and will probably die there, right on the plantation where they were born.” Blacks were viewed as individuals without a purpose or viewed as nothing, like they had no value. Blacks faced great punishment if they spoke out or acted out against a white individual. The great punishments they faced were lashings on the backs, put into shackles, were chained to the ground, and other horrible punishments. (Black Peoples of America- Slave Punishments) A Black individual explained, “My father was born and brought up as a slave. He never knew anything else until after I was born. He was taught his place and was content to keep it. His father said, “When a young white man talks rough to me, I can’t talk rough to him. You can’t stand that; I can’t. “(Takaki) However, on January 1, 1963, the Emancipation Proclamation was passed by Abraham Lincoln. The Emancipation Proclamation stated, that all slaves would be set free. (...
In Mantsios’ “Class in America” he provides us with four myths about the United States. In one of these myths the idea is brought up that the United States is, at its core, a classless society. It is also states that whether rich or poor, everyone is equal in the eyes of the law. The myth also states that health care and education are provided to everyone regardless of their financial stability. This idea about a classless society is exactly what Mantsios claims it to be, a myth. It is untrue to state that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law, and to believe that whatever differences exist in financial standing are insignificant. There are clear distinctions between different groups of people depending on their economic and social standing.
The United States’s industrialization lead to a great boom in both economic and population growth, allowing businesses to flourish. With more money and workers at their disposal, employers often would often mistreat workers, suddenly cutting their wages or firing them. With only profit in mind, industries eventually became monopolized and the conditions of workers only worsened. Defenseless and barely able to survive, laborers soon found power in uniting with each other, leading to the establishment of American labor unions during the Gilded Age. They provided workers with necessary protection from their employers’ capricious decisions, and while their presence elicited fear in business owners, unions eventually bettered the standard of living for the American proletarian through compromise.
The three factors that are emphasized in his concept are wealth, status, and power. Wealth is defined as any material goods owned or your personal “net worth” (pg.203).Next, status is the amount of respect, or worth, a society places upon you (whether it be your occupation, education, etc). Then finally, power is the level of influence one holds over politics, peers, or societal circumstances (pg.190). My family identifies mostly with the working -middle class, which consists of about 40-45% of the population in the United States (pg. 183). My mother is currently a stay at home mother (she use to be a cafeteria worker), and my dad is a parts coordinator at Keihin (both of which are blue collared
In collective bargaining, employers too are stakeholders and ensuring that their interests are not compromised is important. Particularly, this is the case when the employees’ interests are conflicting with those of the employers. For example, a demand for shorter working hours by the workers would compromise the interests of the employer to enhancing productivity, which is part of their management mandate. In the collective bargaining agreement, some of the employers’ interests covered include managerial responsibility, safety standards, and disciplinary responsibility (Budd 11). The issue of employers’ rights is crucial to collective bargaining agreements because of the nature of the employer-employee relationship. Notably, collective bargaining is primarily based on strengthening or managing this relationship to the satisfaction of all parties. Therefore, without ensuring that the rights and responsibilities of each party are clearly stipulated in the collective bargaining agreement, the risk of one party’s interests being met at the expense of the other is real. A good example of how the issue of employer rights is featured in collective bargaining agreement occurred at one of the General Motors plants in Tonawanda where the management and workers agreed to work as partners rather than as antagonists (Pritchard Para
Society today is split in many different ways: the smart and the dumb, the pretty and the ugly, the popular and the awkward, and of course the rich and the poor. This key difference has led to many areas of conflict among the population. The rich and the poor often have different views on issues, and have different problems within their lives. Moral decay and materialism are two issues prevalent among the wealthy, while things such as socio-economic class conflict and the American dream may be more important to those without money. Ethics and responsibilities are an area of thought for both classes, with noblesse oblige leaning more towards the wealthy.
Slavery is the idea and practice that one person is inferior to another. What made the institution of slavery in America significantly different from previous institutions was that “slavery developed as an institution based upon race.” Slavery based upon race is what made slavery an issue within the United States, in fact, it was a race issue. In addition, “to know whether certain men possessed natural rights one had only to inquire whether they were human beings.” Slaves were not even viewed as human beings; instead, they were dehumanized and were viewed as property or animals. During this era of slavery in the New World, many African slaves would prefer to die than live a life of forced servitude to the white man. Moreover, the problem of slavery was that an African born in the United States never knew what freedom was. According to Winthrop D. Jordan, “the concept of Negro slavery there was neither borrowed from foreigners, nor extracted from books, nor invented out of whole cloth, nor extrapolated from servitude, nor generated by English reaction to Negroes as such, nor necessitated by the exigencies of the New World. Not any one of these made the Negro a slave, but all.” American colonists fought a long and bloody war for independence that both white men and black men fought together, but it only seemed to serve the white man’s independence to continue their complete dominance over the African slave. The white man must carry a heavy
Sociologists have shown that all societies are divided into layers based on caste, class, race, or gender. Many Americans believe in a simple three-class society that includes the rich, the middle class, and the poor. Many do class structure according to income, education, type of occupation, and education. As a result, some people have greater advantages than others, leading to social inequality. A leader would need the qualities of a good leader to represent and maintain a good economy, however, a leader could easily become too powerful, lose control, and consequently get a skewed perspective of right from wrong.
At the Homestead Steel Works outside Pittsburgh, which had been purchased by Carnegie in 1883, the chairman blamed the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers for low production, and with the expiry of the collective bargaining agreement approaching, he saw an opportunity to reduce the union’s power. Carnegie, who was an open supporter of unions, nevertheless agreed with Frick in the case of Homestead, because he considered AA to be a corrupt organization that did not properly represent the workers. In fact, only about 800 of the 3,800 employees at Homestead were members of AA (Krass 277).
"In the Middle Ages men were united by custom and prescription into associations, ranks, guilds, and communities of various kinds. These ties endured as long as life lasted. Consequently, society was dependant, throughout all its details, on status, and the tie, or bond, was sentimental. In out modern state, and in the United States more than anywhere else, the social structure is based on contract, and status is of the least importance." This quote by William Graham Sumner in his 1883 speech "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other" illustrates my main focus of this week's proposed question, "Does American Government have an obligation to provide for the poor?" Sumner supports that the American Government does not have an obligation to provide for the poor because in America, all people have the opportunity to work hard and bring themselves out of poverty, where in Europe and their other native lands, people were trapped in a caste system in which they could not escape. In America, there was is a defined class system in which those living in the society were confined and hard work, followed by success, is a luxury offered in America. By living in a free state like America, Sumner says, its citizens live equally among one another in a society based on a contract, which allows the most leeway for individual developments and successes. Every man must fend for himself in this society that allows for personal establishment. Sumner also says, "It follows, however, that one man, in a free state, cannot claim help from, and cannot be charged to give help to, another." He directly says that it cannot be imposed upon the American Government that hard-working tax-paying citizens should have to financially assist the plight of the poor. The Populist Party Platform of 1892 says in its second declaration that "Wealth belongs to him that creates it...If any will not work, neither shall he eat." The Populist Party realized that men were fully entitled to their earned keep and should they not work, they should not be provided for by the government, especially not by collected tax money.