Class & Classism
The era which was marked by agricultural advancement and land settlements by the human population.
What is the agricultural revolution?
The economic system characterized by private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of the working class for profit.
What is capitalism?
The process by which we learn the norms, behaviors, and expectations of our specific social class.
What is class Socialization?
Beyond just a yearly salary, this is the most accurate measure of a person’s financial standing, calculated by taking the total value of everything they own (assets) and subtracting everything they owe (debts).
What is net worth?
This belief pits working-class citizens against working-class immigrants. It ignores the fact that the owning class (corporations) chooses to suppress wages or outsource labor to maximize profit.
What is "immigrants are stealing our jobs"?
This term refers to the total value of what you own (property, stocks, savings) minus your debts, as opposed to just your yearly salary.
What is wealth?
This social class consists of individuals who must sell their labor to survive and typically have little to no control over their workplace or the products they produce.
What is the working class?
This occurs when a few massive corporations own the majority of TV, news, and film outlets, ensuring that the "Common Sense" message of the owning class is the only one most people ever hear.
What is consolidation of media ownership?
The "American Dream" is built on the belief in this—the ability for an individual to move up into a higher social class. However, statistical patterns show that most people stay in the same class they were born into.
What is social mobility?
This term is frequently used by politicians and the media to silence those who point out economic inequality. It suggests that critiquing the wealth gap is an act of aggression rather than a call for structural justice.
What is class warfare?
This term describes the systematic oppression of poor and working-class people by those who control resources.
What is Classism?
Often portrayed as the "universal" or "normal" American identity, this class usually includes professionals who have some degree of autonomy at work and often hold college degrees.
What is the middle class?
Developed during the Industrial Revolution, this system was designed to socialize the working class into becoming compliant, punctual factory workers rather than critical thinkers.
What is compulsory mass schooling?
This term refers to the systemic "head start" given to children of the wealthy, often seen in the form of inherited wealth or "preferential" admissions to elite universities because their parents attended.
What is legacy?
This label is often applied to any policy that suggests resources should be shared collectively (like universal healthcare or free tuition). By calling it "propaganda," the dominant class frames social well-being as a dangerous or "un-American" threat.
What is socialist propaganda?
The claim that cutting taxes and increasing benefits for the richest will improve the standard of living for everyone.
What are trickle-down economics?
A term for a workplace characterized by extremely low wages, long hours, and poor or illegal working conditions; these are often used by large corporations to minimize costs and maximize profit in a capitalist system.
What are sweatshops?
These are the "unwritten rules" of a social class, including ways of speaking, dressing, and behaving, that signal to others which class you belong to.
What are class/cultural norms (or class performance)?
This system illustrates the intersection of class and state power; it describes how government and private industry profit from the surveillance and mass incarceration of poor, racialized communities.
What is the prison-industrial complex?
The wealth of the U.S. and Canada depended- and continues to depend- upon what was stolen from these two groups.
Who are African Americans and Indigenous Peoples?
The three-letter acronym used by sociologists to measure a person’s combined economic and social status.
What is SES? Socio-economic status
An economic and political system that advocates for the means of production, distribution, and exchange to be owned or regulated by the community as a whole, rather than by private individuals for profit.
What is socialism?
This concept explains how elite education is often a "requirement" for the owning class to maintain their status, while historically, access to that same knowledge has been "denied" to the working class to prevent social mobility.
What is required/ denied attendance?
This is a common Classist Belief (often called Class Reductionism) that suggests race and gender are "distractions" from the only "real" struggle, ignoring how these identities are actually inseparable.
What is the belief that Class is the True Oppression?