Breaking down stereotypes and class divisions, is it possible?

Though most American's seem to take pride in the equality they feel the United States of America exhibits but, in reality our inequality has just shifted from being racially focused to now financially focused. I think that class stereotypes and prejudices are still acceptable in America today because it is a way in which people can feel more powerful and better than others. Any of the various terms to describe either poverty, climb to wealth, wealth) have negative connotations (ie: ghetto, white trash, social climber, yuppie, etc.). If racial slurs are not acceptable why are social slurs ok? Is it because social class is more gray than black or white- social class is more perception based than race?

Social Class in America

It's interesting how evident social class is...if you ask a student which towns that feed into our school have the most money, they could probably tell you pretty easily. Especially freshman year you will hear many students attempting to guess what Jr. High other students came from. Scarily enough, their guesses are usually accurate. So, what are they judging on? Material things and mannerisms! These things are even similar town to town! Certain towns kids will wear the designer clothes others won't, certain kids will be talking about their extravagant vacations others will not, this is just within our little area what is the effect on a larger scale? Location effects everything!! Mostly your location effects your education which effects where you will go in life. If you go to a well off High School or a poverty stricken one it makes a great difference. On this website America's Top High Schools are ranked....there are not many High Schools in poor areas and the financial status is factored in! The people who go to a good High School are more likely to go to a good college and therefore get the better paying job. The J-Curve in which most of the wealth is held by a very small portion of the population makes complete sense when you look at all the factors that seem like they will glue you to the class you were born into.

Jail Priorities

"A graver offense in Illinois to possess a minute amount of cocaine or heroin than to beat a wife, girlfriend, or a sister,"(Courtroom 302, 15) The priorities of the justice system are completely out of place! When in Illinois 26% of the prison population's most serious crime was a drug offense, there is definitely a problem. Even those who work in the justice system acknowledge that, "it's just jobs for people. We're pushing papers around." (Courtroom 310, 16) Especially with our struggling economy the government funds could be much better used in many places! Although, the only government official seeming yo care about doing anything about this problem is Governor Schwarzenegger...the people need to push changes in this area for anything to happen, but how?

The Election

Elections always seem like a huge deal but especially this year it seemed bigger than ever! It was so frustrating to be only months away from voting age! Luckily however, I volunteered as an election judge which was one of the greatest experiences on so many fronts. Getting to experience first hand how the voting works was very interesting! After sitting and helping people get set up to vote the polls finally closed... the machines did all the counting with the exception of the write in candidates which we had to go through and look for and mark down by hand. While going through the ballots looking for the write ins I was attempting to get a sense of how many people voted McCain VS. Obama...It seemed soo even at my polling place it was staggering to get home and see how land-slideish it was. As interesting as the system and the people coming to vote were....the most interesting thing was the other election judges who had worked many elections. Hearing them compare this election to previous they were very excited about the new-found voter excitement that they hadn't seen previously. They were also so adamit that we were the future and we should try to change how campaigns work because "people would actually listen to us." They wanted us to know they thought that campaigns should be shorter and election day should be a national holiday. I thought it was interesting that they thought people would only listen to us, this seems to be the disconnect, so much more would get done if we all tried to make a difference. Why don't people see that? Its not your age, sex, or race that matters its what you do with your life.

Masculinity...

In class we had been discussing how masculinity is being fueled negatively by the culture. In our discussions the example that most stuck out in my mind is the fact that GI Joe action figure's biceps getting disproportionately bigger by the decade. We discussed that it's the societal pressures (through toys, advertisements, how we treat boys when they're young, etc.) we put on men to act strong and be strong but another side of this picture just occurred to me. Several chapters into this book I am reading, I was stunned as to how applicable it is to the discussions we have been having in class. This book is called, "Wild at Heart,"discusses how theoretically the roles of men and women go all the way back to the creation of earth. "Adventure, with all its requisite danger and wildness, is a deeply spiritual longing written into the soul of man..."what I have read so far has gotten me to think more deeply about the roles of men and women in society and the effect those roles must have. Back in history as far back as you can go men were the hunters and women were the gatherers...How do we know that masculinity is not just purely genetic and the lack of constructive outlet now-a-days is the cause of violence? What if these masculine traits are natural and the contradiction of the naturalness of these traits vs. the necessity to be domesticated and stuck indoors is causing the violence? Think: If you domesticated a tiger through generations and generations would the need to hunt and be aggressive vanish? Is this any different than humans?