SOCS185- CULTURE AND SOCIETY

The class structure in the United States may be categorized in four parts: an upper class, a middle class, a working class, and an underclass. Each class is distinguished by major economic assets, primary occupations, educational attainment, and income and wealth accumulation. The current class system of the United States reveals substantial and growing social and economic inequality.

What is your family’s social class? In what ways has social class helped shape your family? What privileges, if any, did you enjoy because of your family’s social class position? What barriers, if any, did you face? Were you taught some versions of the ideas of equal opportunity, meritocracy, and individualism within your family upbringing? What is the relationship between your family’s social class position and the ideology you learned?