Summary of Reading #6

1. Patterns of inequality result from and perpetuate a class system based on widening gaps in income, wealth, and power, between those on top and everyone below them. It is a system that produces oppressive consequences. p. 44
2. The author begins by stating that people think racism is silly and can’t understand why it is still present. He says that two reasons why there is racism are because it hasn’t been around very long and because it occurred at the same time that capitalism became the dominant economic system. The reason there are still privileges in the workforce is that social life is determined by where you fall in the workforce. During the early years of our country, other races besides the dominant “white” race settled for a low social life because of slavery and after slavery extremely low paying jobs. He said his first reason as to why there is still racism is because it hasn’t been around very long. The unfair privileges in the workforce are getting better, but are still extremely present. He then goes on to say that the top twenty percent of the richest households control fifty-six percent of all income. While at the same time the bottom twenty-five percent of the nation’s income is distributed to the bottom sixty percent of the population. He then says that it is extremely hard for a person to improve their place in the American class system. He summarizes this on page forty-five by saying, “Such dynamics of capitalism have played a key role in the trouble surrounding privilege, especially in relation to race and gender.” Johnson then says that unequal rights in the workplace began with the slavery of one million Africans so capitalists could make a gigantic profit on cheap labor. After the Civil War along with the African Americans, Chinese and Japanese immigrants were also used for cheap labor. He then says on page forty-six, “To justify such direct forms of imperialism and oppression, whites developed the idea of whiteness to define a privileged social category elevated above everyone who wasn’t included in it. He says one reason that there is a huge gap between the class levels is because when low or middle class white workers wanted better wages, the capitalists would threaten to fire them for cheaper “nonwhite” labor. This created anger among white people against people of other races rather than the wealthy who are the people who are actually to blame. He says on page forty-nine, “Class dynamics that arise from capitalism interact with that trouble [privilege] in powerful ways that both protect capitalism and class privilege and perpetuate privilege and oppression based on difference. He then writes that most people belong to a privileged class and an oppressed class at the same time. He says the only way to fix the privilege situation is to see that we can’t belong to a privileged class and an oppressed class at the same time. He summarizes this in his last sentence of the chapter in which he writes, “We won’t get rid of racism, in other words, without doing something about sexism and classism, because the system that produces the one also produces the others and connects them.
3. I think that the evidence supports his conclusion. The reason why so many minorities are still in the lower class in our country is because at the beginning of the capitalism movement they were at the bottom. Even though we may not think so in this present time, that still has a lingering effect, even though it was 150 years ago. Back then the whites were privileged far above all other races. While it is not nearly as bad now as it was back then, it definitely still has an effect. I would take a guess that a large percentage of the nation’s upper class is white. While there are people of other races that have advanced themselves to that level because of hard work, it is still monumentally difficult in this age for anyone of any race to advance to that upper class.
4. I agree with what he is saying. But I think that it is hard for anyone to advance to the upper class now. Even with a college degree, a person is still going to end up with a middle class or even lower class job most of the time. It takes a lot of luck for a person even with hard work to get to that level. But I do agree that certain people do have privileges over others in the workplace and I feel it will be like that for awhile.