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effects of class difference on education
power and society
power and society
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(1) Class According to Brenda Allen in the chapter “Power Matters,” she mentions that there dominant ideologies of identity that “reflect perspectives and experiences of ruling groups, whose members construct and circulate beliefs that will most benefit them.” We live in a country where there are dominant ideologies of organizational hierarchy, which “arranges job positions in a stratified structure, with power flowing from the top down.” This exemplifies the ideology of domination, which is a belief system in America that the “superior should rule over the inferior” (32). This ideology is so embedded into our system that most people believe it is natural. The American society we live in values patriarchy, white supremacy, heteronormativity, and a specific culture of wealth and poverty; any identity that falls outside of these dominant ideologies is marginalized and placed in the lower strata of social power. Allen supports her claims about hierarchies and power dynamics in her chapter “Social Class Matters.” She dives into the structures of society by examining power and social class in various contexts. In this chapter, she explains that people are categorized according to themes of class difference and struggle. Social class is associated with the relationship between power and the distribution of resources. Because this stratification system of social class is one of the biggest predictors of school achievement, social identity plays a large role in the social reproduction of inequality in the education system. (2) Race In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander states that we still use our criminal justice system to “label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage i... ... middle of paper ... ...understanding how social inequality is reproduced in the classroom and in school. Collins further talks about economic, cultural, and specifically linguistic reproduction. linguistic capital is a more specific form of capital. It refers to the role of language and class in social reproduction. This concept was originally coined by Basil Bernstein, who argued that “the experience of work process reinforces kinds of family role relations, themselves realized as discursive identities that are carried by ‘elaborated’ and ‘restricted’ codes” (39). We saw this in the 1960s; poor African Americans performed inadequately in school because they were culturally or linguistically deprived. Not only is race a determining factor in the social reproduction of inequality, but it is a combination of how facets of our identity intersect with changing values and norms of our society.
In his essay “Land of Opportunity” James W. Loewen details the ignorance that most American students have towards class structure. He bemoans the fact that most textbooks completely ignore the issue of class, and when it does it is usually only mentions middle class in order to make the point that America is a “middle class country. This is particularly grievous to Loewen because he believes, “Social class is probably the single most important variable in society. From womb to tomb, it correlates with almost all other social characteristics of people that we can measure.” Loewen simply believes that social class usually determine the paths that a person will take in life. (Loewen 203)
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a book by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. The book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarceration in the United States. Michelle Alexander (2010) argues that despite the old Jim Crow is death, does not necessarily means the end of racial caste (p.21). In her book “The New Jim Crow”, Alexander describes a set of practices and social discourses that serve to maintain African American people controlled by institutions. In this book her analyses is centered in examining the mass incarceration phenomenon in recent years. Comparing Jim Crow with mass incarceration she points out that mass incarceration is a network of laws, policies, customs and institutions that works together –almost invisible– to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined by race, African American (p. 178 -190).
Just Mercy’s Bryan Stevenson exposes some of these disparities woven around his presentation of the Walter McMillian case, and the overrepresentation of African-American men in our criminal justice system. His accounts of actors in the criminal justice system such as Judge Robert E. Lee and the D.A. Tom Chapman who refused to open up the case or provide support regardless of the overwhelmingly amount of inconsistencies found in the case. The fact that there were instances where policemen paid people off to testify falsely against McMillian others on death row significantly supports this perpetuation of racism. For many of the people of color featured in Stevenson’s book, the justice system was unfair to them wrongfully or excessively punishing them for crimes both violent and nonviolent compared to their white counterparts. Racism towards those of color has caused a “lack of concern and responsiveness by police, prosecutors, and victims’ services providers” and ultimately leads to the mass incarceration of this population (Stevenson, 2014, p. 141). Moreover the lack of diversity within the jury system and those in power plays into the already existing racism. African-American men are quickly becoming disenfranchised in our country through such racist biases leading to over 1/3 of this population “missing” from the overall American population because they are within the criminal justice
The work by Victor M. Rios entitled Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness depict ways in which policing and incarceration affect inequalities that exist in society. In this body of work I will draw on specific examples from the works of Victor M. Rios and Michelle Alexander to fulfill the tasks of this project. Over the course of the semester and by means of supplemental readings, a few key points are highlighted: how race and gender inequalities correlate to policing and incarceration, how laws marginalize specific groups, and lastly how policing and incarceration perpetuate the very inequalities that exist within American society.
The New Jim Crow primarily appeals to more mature audiences consisting of young adults and adults of various socioeconomic backgrounds and races, those already incarcerated, policy makers, and those that are skeptical about these racial issues in the criminal justice system. While it may seem that Alexander’s book limits readers by forcing them to formulate their own interpretation of the information presented which can ultimately downplay the severity of the issues at hand, her substantial amount of credible facts and statistics forces the reader to step out of their comfort zone and truly visualize the staggering statistics presented. While The House I Live In and The New Jim Crow are both effective and complement one another, Alexander’s use of concrete statistics and factual information fails to dominate the heavy use of imagery and ethical appeals Jarecki’s uses in conjunction with the statistics presented in his
Many would argue that the reason why the incarceration rate for African Americans is sustainably higher compared to white American is because of economic situations, and because of past arrest patterns. While it is true that the economic opportunity someone has will affect their decisions, this argument doesn’t fully explain the real reason of why the rates are higher. To fully understand the reason why one must look back on America’s history and how African Americans were treated. The past arrest patterns do not explain why the gap continues to increase, however it is clear that the past arrest patterns is more an indicator of institutional racism that exists in this country. One study found that African Americans believe the reason for the high incarceration rates is becau...
In The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander introduces readers to the phenomenon of mass incarceration in the United States and challenges readers to view the crisis as the “ the most pressing racial justice issue of our time.” In the introduction, Alexander writes “what the book is intended to do and that is to stimulate much needed conversation about the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy in the United States.” We come to understand, How the United States create criminal justice system and maintain racial hierarchy through mass incarceration? How the current system of mass incarceration in the United States mirrors earlier systems of racialized
Michelle Alexander, in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, examines the development of institutionalized racism following the war on drugs, and how it has created what Alexander calls a “New Jim Crow era,” or a racial caste in the US. Alexander describes this undercaste as, “a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society,” (Alexander, 32). Not only is this because of mass incarceration rates among black men, but extends to the effects that these branded felons must face beyond prison walls. By checking the well known box on any application, it has become legal for almost any institution or corporation to discriminate against a marked felon. Alexander notes that, “Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination – employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusio...
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New, 2010. Print.
People carry the stigma of being criminals for their entire lives. Michelle Alexander, the writer of The New Jim Crow, describes the challenges criminals face after being released from prison. In the beginning of chapter four, she argues that they were treated cruelly by society, comparing them to freed slaves during the era of emancipation. Alexander effectively makes emotional appeals, logical moves, and convincing citations to add the credibility of her argument. Moreover, she organizes the passage through connected timelines and comparisons, successfully proving that criminals today encounter tough and biased treatment from the society.
Alexander does an incredible job of covering the issue of race in today’s criminal justice system. We discussed in class that it is a relatively difficult issue to discuss and a sore point of our country, but she recognized the need for it to be addressed from start to finish and really paints a picture of how racially biased the laws are and have been since the days of slavery. I think an important framework to discuss race and the causes and responses to crime is something that Alexander deems the new caste system. She argues that our new system is the rebirth of a redesigned caste system. In her introduction, she notes that “to put the matter starkly: the current system of control permanently locks a huge percentage of the African American community out of the mainstream society and economy. The system operates through our criminal justice institutions, but it functions more like a caste system than a system of crime control” (Alexander, 2012, p. 13)
Aside from individuals who were actually convicted of a felony, the tens of millions of Americans who were arrested without ever being convicted for a crime are no exception to this form of legalized discrimination as the same constraints applied to convicted felons are unfairly applied to them as well (Alexander 145). When it comes to felon discrimination, the severity of the felony does not matter. Public housing policies deny eligibility to people who have even the most minor criminal backgrounds. Due to the fact that people of color such as African Americans and Hispanics are primary targets of police in the War on Drugs, they are much more likely to be arrested for minor, nonviolent crimes as opposed to people who are white (Alexander 145). Instead of racial discrimination being nonexistent in present society, Michelle Alexander argues that racial discrimination has merely been extended to occur through subliminally discriminative colorblind practices (Alexander 11). The criminal justice system still targets racial minorities and deprives them of basic human rights by permitting legalized discrimination, such as the discrimination existent in public housing seen by the usage of racially restrictive covenants in the past, and by the
Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New
Social class has been the basis for opportunity in American Society because of the benefits of higher family income. The three main classes in America are the upper class, middle class, and the poor. The upper class enjoys many benefits that neither the middle nor the poor would be able to afford. Things like private schools, tutors, and SAT prep courses would be out of the question for most middle and poor families. However, the real advantage that most upper class families have is cultural capital. Cultural capital is any resources that upper to middle class families enjoy to their advantage in various situations. This could be anything from the ability to deal with bureaucracies to a sense of entitlement. Most upper- and middle-class parents have much more involvement with their children’s education than lower-class parents. It’s not that lower-class parents don’t care about their child’s education; the fact is that most lower-class parents don’t have the time to get their child invol...
The documentary Social Class in America depicts the impact of ascribed social status in the United States. We follow three boys, born at the same hospital, who live relatively close together geographically. We learn as we follow the boys throughout their life that although they have the same legal and Constitutional rights, they are not born “equal.” The child in the working class is born to a father who is employed at the local factory at the lowest level doing manual labor. Being an unskilled factory worker, the father rents part of a home which functions as the family residence in a run-down section of town. The middle class family’s dad also works at the factory, doing a desk job. Although there is little room for advancement in his