Mask project
Artist statement
My Socialization Essay is written regarding class. The first symbol on my mask is a scale. This represents inequality and the need for balance in class. The next symbol on my mask is a puzzle. One piece of this puzzle is black, while all the others are colorful. This represents our place in society. Society forms a piece of a puzzle for each of us. Another symbol on my mask is a money blindfold. This represents how money blinds us from seeing the big picture of life. Additional symbols are plus and minus warpaint. Again, this represents inequality and balance, as well as the fact that society and class have both positive and negative effects. My final symbol is words written across the bottom with math symbols underneath. The words are power, inequality, and chaos. Each one is represented with a math symbol. I have a greater than (>) sign for power, a not equal (≠) sign, and the chaos symbol. Overall, my mask represents the inequality and imbalance of power and class within society.
Reflection
Socialization is the way we are put into our place by society. The definition from Merriam Webster is, “The process by which a human being, beginning at infancy acquires the habits, beliefs, and accumulated knowledge of society through education and training for adult status.”(Webster). Everyone around us socializes us according to how they have been socialized. This process can be negative, positive, or both. We are taught the social norms and are expected to follow them, punished when we do not. We are socialized regarding race, religion, class, gender, able/disabled, sexuality, and/or age. All of these factors play a role in our lives. Society teaches us who is “normal” and who is “different”. We base our lives off of these rules. Think about it: we pick our friends based off of our own place in society. We flock towards those who share a similar role as us. This may be because we want to find people with whom we can form an alliance to fight the constant turmoil over power. We are socialized both positively and negatively by those around us. Our peers, coaches, teachers, parents, etc. all tell us who to be, making us just another piece of the puzzle of society. Breaking the cycle of socialization means cutting out our own piece, one that goes on the outside of this puzzle and is hardly influenced by any inside pieces. Sometimes, the inside pieces get upset because we are breaking the social norms, and use enforcements to reshape our original piece. This puzzle makes up society. As Robert Frost states, “If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.” (Frost, 1). This quote emphasises the fact that if you can be exactly who you want to be, but still fit into the puzzle, then you can be yourself while still following the rules and constrictions of society. Society will mainly affect you positively. Then again, maybe this means that you are the face of socialization. No matter where we are in this puzzle, society influences everyone either positively or negatively.
This project was about how society affects us, whether positively or negatively. To write our essays, we chose one or more of seven ways of socialization. These include socialization by race, class, religion, gender, able/disabled, sexual orientation, and age. I wrote my essay regarding class. My mask pulls out the three key concepts that my essay revolves around. These key terms are power, inequality, and chaos. For each one, there is a mathematical symbol that I feel best represents these three terms. For power, I have the greater than sign, for inequality, I have the "Is not equal to" sign, and for chaos, I have the symbol for chaos. Above that, I have a plus and a minus. This shows that we can be socialized both positively and negatively around class. Additionally, I have a money blindfold. The main metaphor of my essay is that we are made visionless by the blindfold of wealth. Money blinds us from the "big picture" of life. Some people become so involved with money- who has more, who has less- that they forget to take a look around them. In the center of the forehead, I have a scale. This represents balance and equality. If everyone had the same amount of money, everyone would have the same amount of power. If everyone had the same amount of power, it would be like playing a giant game of tag where everyone is "it". It would be chaos. However, even in a supposedly balanced game of tag, there is always a fight for dominance. Some people would concur the game, tagging almost everyone, while others would simply sit down and give up. The last element on my mask is a puzzle. If society is this puzzle, the one white piece represents change. In order to break the cycle of socialization, we need to stand out and be different. We can also break the cycle by cutting out our own puzzle piece, or by starting a new puzzle altogether.
To write our essays, we started out by choosing a topic. We then wrote our theses, followed by topic sentences. Then we learned about TEA (Topic Evidence Analysis) and added evidence. We wrote our analysis' and then added another paragraph about socialization. We then finished our essays by adding an introduction paragraph and a conclusion. I decided to take this a step farther and I completed the challenge extension. The challenge extension was to write a paragraph about functionalist and conflict theorist views. While writing our essays, we learned how to write metaphors that carry all the way through.
So far at Animas, I am proud of my work quality overall. More specifically, I am pleased with the outcome of my mask. At first, it was a little rough. After I revised it and put a little more effort into it, the quality went up drastically. In the end, I was pleased with the attention to detail. I am looking forward to improving my time management. This has been an issue for me in the past, however it has gotten better this year. I look forward to improving upon this even more.
This project was about how society affects us, whether positively or negatively. To write our essays, we chose one or more of seven ways of socialization. These include socialization by race, class, religion, gender, able/disabled, sexual orientation, and age. I wrote my essay regarding class. My mask pulls out the three key concepts that my essay revolves around. These key terms are power, inequality, and chaos. For each one, there is a mathematical symbol that I feel best represents these three terms. For power, I have the greater than sign, for inequality, I have the "Is not equal to" sign, and for chaos, I have the symbol for chaos. Above that, I have a plus and a minus. This shows that we can be socialized both positively and negatively around class. Additionally, I have a money blindfold. The main metaphor of my essay is that we are made visionless by the blindfold of wealth. Money blinds us from the "big picture" of life. Some people become so involved with money- who has more, who has less- that they forget to take a look around them. In the center of the forehead, I have a scale. This represents balance and equality. If everyone had the same amount of money, everyone would have the same amount of power. If everyone had the same amount of power, it would be like playing a giant game of tag where everyone is "it". It would be chaos. However, even in a supposedly balanced game of tag, there is always a fight for dominance. Some people would concur the game, tagging almost everyone, while others would simply sit down and give up. The last element on my mask is a puzzle. If society is this puzzle, the one white piece represents change. In order to break the cycle of socialization, we need to stand out and be different. We can also break the cycle by cutting out our own puzzle piece, or by starting a new puzzle altogether.
To write our essays, we started out by choosing a topic. We then wrote our theses, followed by topic sentences. Then we learned about TEA (Topic Evidence Analysis) and added evidence. We wrote our analysis' and then added another paragraph about socialization. We then finished our essays by adding an introduction paragraph and a conclusion. I decided to take this a step farther and I completed the challenge extension. The challenge extension was to write a paragraph about functionalist and conflict theorist views. While writing our essays, we learned how to write metaphors that carry all the way through.
So far at Animas, I am proud of my work quality overall. More specifically, I am pleased with the outcome of my mask. At first, it was a little rough. After I revised it and put a little more effort into it, the quality went up drastically. In the end, I was pleased with the attention to detail. I am looking forward to improving my time management. This has been an issue for me in the past, however it has gotten better this year. I look forward to improving upon this even more.
My essay
Ruby Epstein
10/8/14
Equal Imbalance
The hallway seemed to me as though it couldn’t get any longer. For our group of “rich, snobby, white kids”, the subject of class is brought up frequently. There’s one girl who uses it to her advantage. She’s “popular”. She doesn’t need to fight for dominance because she is already supreme. Why does this not apply the rest of us? We all live on a spaced out road with large houses, but it shouldn’t matter. It wasn’t bullying, it was just joking. It wasn’t that bad... really, it wasn’t. I didn’t care. None of us cared. We just ignored it. The whole world is pulled into the pit of wealth, dazed by the blindfold of money. “Sometimes I think those who have more coming in can fall into the trap of taking it for granted. And then there's plain old-fashioned greed, which is another story altogether.”(Ubuntu Forums, 1) This applies to me because I felt as though I could never and would never say anything, I always just went along with it. I have been negatively socialized and made visionless by the blindfold of wealth.
Socialization is the way we are put into our place by society. The definition from Merriam Webster is, “The process by which a human being, beginning at infancy acquires the habits, beliefs, and accumulated knowledge of society through education and training for adult status.”(Webster). Everyone around us socializes us according to how they have been socialized. This process can be negative, positive, or both. We are taught the social norms and are expected to follow them, punished when we do not. We are socialized regarding race, religion, class, gender, able/disabled, sexuality, and/or age. All of these factors play a role in our lives. Society teaches us who is “normal” and who is “different”. We base our lives off of these rules. Think about it: we pick our friends based off of our own place in society. We flock towards those who share a similar role as us. This may be because we want to find people with whom we can form an alliance to fight the constant turmoil over power. We are socialized both positively and negatively by those around us. Our peers, coaches, teachers, parents, etc. all tell us who to be, making us just another piece of the puzzle of society. Breaking the cycle of socialization means cutting out our own piece, one that goes on the outside of this puzzle and is hardly influenced by any inside pieces. Sometimes, the inside pieces get upset because we are breaking the social norms, and use enforcements to reshape our original piece. This puzzle makes up society. As Robert Frost states, “If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.” (Frost, 1). This quote emphasises the fact that if you can be exactly who you want to be, but still fit into the puzzle, then you can be yourself while still following the rules and constrictions of society. Society will mainly affect you positively. Then again, maybe this means that you are the face of socialization. No matter where we are in this puzzle, society influences everyone either positively or negatively.
Within society, there are two main groups with two very different opinions. These groups are functionalists and conflict theorists. Functionalists see society as a functioning community in which all elements work together to form a unified group. From Matt Dooley’s Sociology reading, “Functionalism is the view that sees society as a stable organization, in which all institutions play important roles sustaining and prolonging the life of society.”(Dooley, 4) I do not believe that I am a functionalist because rather than seeing everything as a working system where all parts are balanced, I see society as a constant battle for supremacy. Functionalism sees society as a clock, all the parts working together to keep society stable; however, if one part breaks or malfunctions, the whole thing stops working. Conflict theorists believe that society is an ongoing dispute for dominance. From Ashley Crossman of About Education, “Conflict theory emphasizes the role of coercion and power in producing social order.”(Crossman, 1). According to conflict theorists, society is the food chain. A larger group will always try to dominate the lower groups. Sometimes, the lower groups will fight back, causing disharmony in the animal kingdom. I do believe that we are in constant conflict, both with ourselves and with more or less supreme members of society. I am a conflict theorist because I don’t feel as though society is balanced enough that everything adds up to a whole.
According to society, coming from a wealthy family makes you supreme and even powerful, although in my experience, that is not necessarily the case. Generally speaking, everyone wants to be “popular.” We are all fighting for a higher spot in the puzzle of society. From my observations, the only reason that students with wealthy families could and would be popular is if they brag about it, or if everyone knows it. For example, although I come from an upper class family, I make a conscious effort not to brag about it or even talk about it. The only reason I would say anything about it is if someone else brings it up. In middle school, a few other students and I were jokingly teased about our families’ wealth, as though it were a bad thing to work hard and if we were responsible. As CGO Public Domain’s video, Wealth Inequality in America says, “... A Harvard Business Professor and Economist asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought that wealth was distributed in the United States… then he asked them what they thought was the ideal distribution. And 92%... said that it should be more equitable than they think it is. Now that fact is telling, admittedly. The notion that most Americans know that the system is already skewed unfairly… the richest 1% of the country takes home 40% of the country’s wealth.” (CGO) This video explains the gap in socioeconomic class. This has affected me negatively through institutional and cultural socialization. In middle school, things like, “Wow you’re so rich,” and whispered messages such as, “Have you seen his/her house? It’s huge,” or “Well so-and-so’s dad is a doctor,” and even, “My parents won’t let me go to their house because they are so rich,” were floating around between mouths. From a scene in Mean Girls when one of the characters, Janice, is introducing the new student Cady to the social scene of the school, “She's totally rich because her dad invented Toaster Strudel. Gretchen Wieners knows everybody's business. She knows everything about everyone. That's why her hair is so big. It's full of secrets.” This movie about stereotypes shows that wealth made “Gretchen Weiners” popular. Stereotypically and generally speaking, this is true in most movies. There is typically a popular girl who lives in a huge house and drives a fancy car. In my life, this is not the case. These stereotypes about being wealthy didn’t make us popular, supreme, or powerful, it just made most of us in this group feel bad about ourselves.
Whether we know it or not, we are constantly separated by class as a society. We have all probably walked past a homeless person on the street and moved to the other side of the sidewalk, whether on purpose or unintentionally. We have all most likely gotten caught up in the stereotypes of social class. Sometimes we feel bad for those less fortunate, other times we don’t feel bad because they could have worked harder or done something different. As my dad told me in the car during a discussion about the upper 1% of Americans and the country’s wealth, “I worked really, really hard to get where I am. Now the upper class is being asked to simply give that hard work away through taxes to those who can’t and won’t get a job because they are lazy. It’s not fair. It’s really not.”(Epstein). Listening to my dad talk about his hard work and success, I can see why he would be so adamant about this subject. It seems as though the government is trying to socialize us to believe that being in the wealthy upper class from hard work is a bad thing because it seems unfair to the lower and middle class. But is this really unfair? The White House website has a page called Cutting Taxes for Middle-Class Families, that states that the government is planning to, “Ensure the wealthiest Americans do their fair share by paying at least the same tax rate as middle class families so we can reduce the deficit in a balanced way while preserving investments in education, clean energy, manufacturing, and small businesses.” Although I do believe that the upper class should be paying the same tax rate as the middle class, I don’t think it would be the upper class’ “Fair share” because they had to get there somehow. They obviously worked hard enough to get to this top position. On the other hand, as Richard Wilkinson says in his TED Talk regarding inequality in class, “... in graph after graph, we find the countries that do worse, whatever the outcome, seem to be the more unequal ones…”(Wilkinson, 1). This means that when there is such a big gap between the upper-upper class and the lower class, the country is likely to do worse. Such a large separation by class causes us to discriminate against others creating dissonance. Although it may create dissonance, I believe that this separation is a good thing. If everyone had the same amount of money, everyone would have the same amount of power. It is interesting to think about what would happen if this were the case. It would be chaos. In my opinion, it isn’t reasonable to think that balancing out the distribution would create a more stable society. If everyone was equal, society would be one huge game of tag where everyone is “it”. We would all end up running around in circles, some people dominating the game, tagging everyone, while others would hold out their hands in hopes of being tagged. In the end, everyone would lose. In society, there will always be a force leading to dominance. There is always an imbalance of power, but this keeps society in order.
We are socialized to think that class is what creates who we are as people. There are many common stereotypes about a wealthy upper class and the lower-class. Siofra M. of “The Richest” website names a few such as, “Rich kids are greedy, money-obsessed, miserly, and think that they are better than everyone else,”(Siofra, 1) or as the Washington Post states, “Poor people are lazy. They don’t care about education. They’re alcoholics and drug abusers. They don’t want to work.”(Strauss, 1). These stereotypes are not always true, for often they are society’s rumors. If we knew the homeless person on the street, and knew why they were there to begin with, would we still walk to the other side? It seems as though if we didn’t know them, most of us would avoid eye contact and walk away. Often, the culture around us heavily influences us. An important example of this is in music. For instance, Bruno Mars and Travis “Travie” Mccoy’s “Billionaire” gives listeners the impression that being wealthy is the most glorious thing ever. It states, “I wanna be a billionaire so bad, buy all of the things I never had, Uh, I wanna be on the cover of Forbes magazine, smiling next to Oprah and the Queen… I’ll be playing basketball with the President, dunking on his delegates, then I’ll compliment him on his political etiquette, toss a couple milli in the air just for the heck of it…” This song among many other modern songs implies that being rich makes you powerful. This power, however, can often go to our heads. We are constantly brawling over power. In my opinion, money blinds us from what is really important. We get caught up in wealth because it is such a big part of our everyday lives. Many advertisements involve money. One popular one that has many different variations is Walmart’s, “Save money, live better.”(Walmart Stores Inc.). Some people become so involved in saving money, making money, or even spending money that the days flash by before their eyes. Money is everything to us, as everything we do involves money. Earning it, spending it, saving it, stealing it. A popular show on TLC, “Extreme Couponing” shows groups of people spending hours and hours a day sorting through coupons. They then go to the grocery store with their hundreds of coupons hoping to have the most extreme savings. The people on this show become obsessed. This blinds them from the rest of the world as the hours blur by. With money being a huge part of our everyday lives, we are often blinded from seeing the bigger picture. Some people may be able to see through the blindfold, or may even be able to take it off, while others simply tie it tighter. The way we view class stitches together our blindfold.
I learned in my Algebra 2 class that correlation does not equal causation. This means that just because two things are related does not mean that one causes the other. For example, just because someone is “popular” and also comes from a wealthy family doesn’t mean that they are popular because they come from a wealthy family. Sometimes we get caught up in wealth; who has more, who has less. We fight to rise to the top, most likely knocking down anyone and anything in our way without realizing it. In this way, wealth is a blindfold. This blindfold is stitched together by the way we view those in a different class. Our perspective is influenced by society. The way we are socialized to view class is the pattern to stitch our blindfold together. Everyone is given the same pattern. It is up to us to see through the blindfold and figure out a way to remove it so that we can see each other as individuals instead of poor, average, or rich. For these reasons, I have been negatively socialized by class and made visionless by the blindfold of wealth.
Works Cited
“Definition of Socialization”, http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/socialization n.d. Accessed 9/23/14.
“Wealth Inequality in America”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM n.d. Accessed 9/30/14
Crossman, Ashley. “Conflict Theory”. http://sociology.about.com/od/Sociological-Theory/a/Conflict-Theory.htm N.d. Accessed 10/6/14/
Dooley, Matt. “An Introduction to Sociology”. N.d. 8/28/14.
Epstein, Mark. “Personal Interview”. 9/12/14.
Fey, Tina. “Mean Girls”. Released/published 4/30/04. Accessed 9/15/14.
Frost, Robert. “Society”. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/robertfros136961.html n.d. Accessed 9/30/14
Lisati. “Money, Are People Blinded by it?”, http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1215018.html Published 7/16/09. Accessed 9/24/14.
Mars, Bruno. McCoy, Travis. “Billionaire”. Published May 2010. Accessed 9/23/14.
Siofra. “Live It, Earn it: 10 Phrases Typical of the Wealthy”
http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/world/live-it-earn-it-10-phrases-typical-of-the-wealthy/ Published 1/26/14. Accessed 9/30/14
Strauss, Valerie. “Five Stereotypes About Poor Families and Education”. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/28/five-stereotypes-about-poor-families-and-education/ Published 10/28/13. Accessed 9/30/14.
Wilkinson, Richard. “How Economic Inequality Harms Societies”. https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson Published July 2011. Accessed 9/23/14.
10/8/14
Equal Imbalance
The hallway seemed to me as though it couldn’t get any longer. For our group of “rich, snobby, white kids”, the subject of class is brought up frequently. There’s one girl who uses it to her advantage. She’s “popular”. She doesn’t need to fight for dominance because she is already supreme. Why does this not apply the rest of us? We all live on a spaced out road with large houses, but it shouldn’t matter. It wasn’t bullying, it was just joking. It wasn’t that bad... really, it wasn’t. I didn’t care. None of us cared. We just ignored it. The whole world is pulled into the pit of wealth, dazed by the blindfold of money. “Sometimes I think those who have more coming in can fall into the trap of taking it for granted. And then there's plain old-fashioned greed, which is another story altogether.”(Ubuntu Forums, 1) This applies to me because I felt as though I could never and would never say anything, I always just went along with it. I have been negatively socialized and made visionless by the blindfold of wealth.
Socialization is the way we are put into our place by society. The definition from Merriam Webster is, “The process by which a human being, beginning at infancy acquires the habits, beliefs, and accumulated knowledge of society through education and training for adult status.”(Webster). Everyone around us socializes us according to how they have been socialized. This process can be negative, positive, or both. We are taught the social norms and are expected to follow them, punished when we do not. We are socialized regarding race, religion, class, gender, able/disabled, sexuality, and/or age. All of these factors play a role in our lives. Society teaches us who is “normal” and who is “different”. We base our lives off of these rules. Think about it: we pick our friends based off of our own place in society. We flock towards those who share a similar role as us. This may be because we want to find people with whom we can form an alliance to fight the constant turmoil over power. We are socialized both positively and negatively by those around us. Our peers, coaches, teachers, parents, etc. all tell us who to be, making us just another piece of the puzzle of society. Breaking the cycle of socialization means cutting out our own piece, one that goes on the outside of this puzzle and is hardly influenced by any inside pieces. Sometimes, the inside pieces get upset because we are breaking the social norms, and use enforcements to reshape our original piece. This puzzle makes up society. As Robert Frost states, “If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.” (Frost, 1). This quote emphasises the fact that if you can be exactly who you want to be, but still fit into the puzzle, then you can be yourself while still following the rules and constrictions of society. Society will mainly affect you positively. Then again, maybe this means that you are the face of socialization. No matter where we are in this puzzle, society influences everyone either positively or negatively.
Within society, there are two main groups with two very different opinions. These groups are functionalists and conflict theorists. Functionalists see society as a functioning community in which all elements work together to form a unified group. From Matt Dooley’s Sociology reading, “Functionalism is the view that sees society as a stable organization, in which all institutions play important roles sustaining and prolonging the life of society.”(Dooley, 4) I do not believe that I am a functionalist because rather than seeing everything as a working system where all parts are balanced, I see society as a constant battle for supremacy. Functionalism sees society as a clock, all the parts working together to keep society stable; however, if one part breaks or malfunctions, the whole thing stops working. Conflict theorists believe that society is an ongoing dispute for dominance. From Ashley Crossman of About Education, “Conflict theory emphasizes the role of coercion and power in producing social order.”(Crossman, 1). According to conflict theorists, society is the food chain. A larger group will always try to dominate the lower groups. Sometimes, the lower groups will fight back, causing disharmony in the animal kingdom. I do believe that we are in constant conflict, both with ourselves and with more or less supreme members of society. I am a conflict theorist because I don’t feel as though society is balanced enough that everything adds up to a whole.
According to society, coming from a wealthy family makes you supreme and even powerful, although in my experience, that is not necessarily the case. Generally speaking, everyone wants to be “popular.” We are all fighting for a higher spot in the puzzle of society. From my observations, the only reason that students with wealthy families could and would be popular is if they brag about it, or if everyone knows it. For example, although I come from an upper class family, I make a conscious effort not to brag about it or even talk about it. The only reason I would say anything about it is if someone else brings it up. In middle school, a few other students and I were jokingly teased about our families’ wealth, as though it were a bad thing to work hard and if we were responsible. As CGO Public Domain’s video, Wealth Inequality in America says, “... A Harvard Business Professor and Economist asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought that wealth was distributed in the United States… then he asked them what they thought was the ideal distribution. And 92%... said that it should be more equitable than they think it is. Now that fact is telling, admittedly. The notion that most Americans know that the system is already skewed unfairly… the richest 1% of the country takes home 40% of the country’s wealth.” (CGO) This video explains the gap in socioeconomic class. This has affected me negatively through institutional and cultural socialization. In middle school, things like, “Wow you’re so rich,” and whispered messages such as, “Have you seen his/her house? It’s huge,” or “Well so-and-so’s dad is a doctor,” and even, “My parents won’t let me go to their house because they are so rich,” were floating around between mouths. From a scene in Mean Girls when one of the characters, Janice, is introducing the new student Cady to the social scene of the school, “She's totally rich because her dad invented Toaster Strudel. Gretchen Wieners knows everybody's business. She knows everything about everyone. That's why her hair is so big. It's full of secrets.” This movie about stereotypes shows that wealth made “Gretchen Weiners” popular. Stereotypically and generally speaking, this is true in most movies. There is typically a popular girl who lives in a huge house and drives a fancy car. In my life, this is not the case. These stereotypes about being wealthy didn’t make us popular, supreme, or powerful, it just made most of us in this group feel bad about ourselves.
Whether we know it or not, we are constantly separated by class as a society. We have all probably walked past a homeless person on the street and moved to the other side of the sidewalk, whether on purpose or unintentionally. We have all most likely gotten caught up in the stereotypes of social class. Sometimes we feel bad for those less fortunate, other times we don’t feel bad because they could have worked harder or done something different. As my dad told me in the car during a discussion about the upper 1% of Americans and the country’s wealth, “I worked really, really hard to get where I am. Now the upper class is being asked to simply give that hard work away through taxes to those who can’t and won’t get a job because they are lazy. It’s not fair. It’s really not.”(Epstein). Listening to my dad talk about his hard work and success, I can see why he would be so adamant about this subject. It seems as though the government is trying to socialize us to believe that being in the wealthy upper class from hard work is a bad thing because it seems unfair to the lower and middle class. But is this really unfair? The White House website has a page called Cutting Taxes for Middle-Class Families, that states that the government is planning to, “Ensure the wealthiest Americans do their fair share by paying at least the same tax rate as middle class families so we can reduce the deficit in a balanced way while preserving investments in education, clean energy, manufacturing, and small businesses.” Although I do believe that the upper class should be paying the same tax rate as the middle class, I don’t think it would be the upper class’ “Fair share” because they had to get there somehow. They obviously worked hard enough to get to this top position. On the other hand, as Richard Wilkinson says in his TED Talk regarding inequality in class, “... in graph after graph, we find the countries that do worse, whatever the outcome, seem to be the more unequal ones…”(Wilkinson, 1). This means that when there is such a big gap between the upper-upper class and the lower class, the country is likely to do worse. Such a large separation by class causes us to discriminate against others creating dissonance. Although it may create dissonance, I believe that this separation is a good thing. If everyone had the same amount of money, everyone would have the same amount of power. It is interesting to think about what would happen if this were the case. It would be chaos. In my opinion, it isn’t reasonable to think that balancing out the distribution would create a more stable society. If everyone was equal, society would be one huge game of tag where everyone is “it”. We would all end up running around in circles, some people dominating the game, tagging everyone, while others would hold out their hands in hopes of being tagged. In the end, everyone would lose. In society, there will always be a force leading to dominance. There is always an imbalance of power, but this keeps society in order.
We are socialized to think that class is what creates who we are as people. There are many common stereotypes about a wealthy upper class and the lower-class. Siofra M. of “The Richest” website names a few such as, “Rich kids are greedy, money-obsessed, miserly, and think that they are better than everyone else,”(Siofra, 1) or as the Washington Post states, “Poor people are lazy. They don’t care about education. They’re alcoholics and drug abusers. They don’t want to work.”(Strauss, 1). These stereotypes are not always true, for often they are society’s rumors. If we knew the homeless person on the street, and knew why they were there to begin with, would we still walk to the other side? It seems as though if we didn’t know them, most of us would avoid eye contact and walk away. Often, the culture around us heavily influences us. An important example of this is in music. For instance, Bruno Mars and Travis “Travie” Mccoy’s “Billionaire” gives listeners the impression that being wealthy is the most glorious thing ever. It states, “I wanna be a billionaire so bad, buy all of the things I never had, Uh, I wanna be on the cover of Forbes magazine, smiling next to Oprah and the Queen… I’ll be playing basketball with the President, dunking on his delegates, then I’ll compliment him on his political etiquette, toss a couple milli in the air just for the heck of it…” This song among many other modern songs implies that being rich makes you powerful. This power, however, can often go to our heads. We are constantly brawling over power. In my opinion, money blinds us from what is really important. We get caught up in wealth because it is such a big part of our everyday lives. Many advertisements involve money. One popular one that has many different variations is Walmart’s, “Save money, live better.”(Walmart Stores Inc.). Some people become so involved in saving money, making money, or even spending money that the days flash by before their eyes. Money is everything to us, as everything we do involves money. Earning it, spending it, saving it, stealing it. A popular show on TLC, “Extreme Couponing” shows groups of people spending hours and hours a day sorting through coupons. They then go to the grocery store with their hundreds of coupons hoping to have the most extreme savings. The people on this show become obsessed. This blinds them from the rest of the world as the hours blur by. With money being a huge part of our everyday lives, we are often blinded from seeing the bigger picture. Some people may be able to see through the blindfold, or may even be able to take it off, while others simply tie it tighter. The way we view class stitches together our blindfold.
I learned in my Algebra 2 class that correlation does not equal causation. This means that just because two things are related does not mean that one causes the other. For example, just because someone is “popular” and also comes from a wealthy family doesn’t mean that they are popular because they come from a wealthy family. Sometimes we get caught up in wealth; who has more, who has less. We fight to rise to the top, most likely knocking down anyone and anything in our way without realizing it. In this way, wealth is a blindfold. This blindfold is stitched together by the way we view those in a different class. Our perspective is influenced by society. The way we are socialized to view class is the pattern to stitch our blindfold together. Everyone is given the same pattern. It is up to us to see through the blindfold and figure out a way to remove it so that we can see each other as individuals instead of poor, average, or rich. For these reasons, I have been negatively socialized by class and made visionless by the blindfold of wealth.
Works Cited
“Definition of Socialization”, http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/socialization n.d. Accessed 9/23/14.
“Wealth Inequality in America”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM n.d. Accessed 9/30/14
Crossman, Ashley. “Conflict Theory”. http://sociology.about.com/od/Sociological-Theory/a/Conflict-Theory.htm N.d. Accessed 10/6/14/
Dooley, Matt. “An Introduction to Sociology”. N.d. 8/28/14.
Epstein, Mark. “Personal Interview”. 9/12/14.
Fey, Tina. “Mean Girls”. Released/published 4/30/04. Accessed 9/15/14.
Frost, Robert. “Society”. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/robertfros136961.html n.d. Accessed 9/30/14
Lisati. “Money, Are People Blinded by it?”, http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1215018.html Published 7/16/09. Accessed 9/24/14.
Mars, Bruno. McCoy, Travis. “Billionaire”. Published May 2010. Accessed 9/23/14.
Siofra. “Live It, Earn it: 10 Phrases Typical of the Wealthy”
http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/world/live-it-earn-it-10-phrases-typical-of-the-wealthy/ Published 1/26/14. Accessed 9/30/14
Strauss, Valerie. “Five Stereotypes About Poor Families and Education”. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/28/five-stereotypes-about-poor-families-and-education/ Published 10/28/13. Accessed 9/30/14.
Wilkinson, Richard. “How Economic Inequality Harms Societies”. https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson Published July 2011. Accessed 9/23/14.