1. Social Class and Class Consciousness

2. I. Social stratification
It is a social arrangement in which there is a creation of layers of people who possess unequal shares resources such as income, wealth, power and prestige. Each layer of people is grouped into a social class

3. Does class exist in America?
* Explore this question with your table and provide an answer why it does and an explanation for why it may not.

4. Reasons for denial
Meritocracy –people are rewarded for their ability and achievement
Equal opportunity
-Racial and Gender discrimination barriers have been eliminated
Upward mobility -

5. Yes—social class exists in America
Vast differences among Americans in their incomes, property, power
Life chances are significantly influenced by social class at birth
Education
Access to technology
Network of opportunities

6. United States Social Class Categories
The Upper Class
The Middle Class
The Working Class
The Underclass

8. Top 18 richest Americans

9. 400 People make more than an entire social group

10. What about social mobility?
Mobility among classes is relatively common in the United States, but:
Children of the rich tend to be afforded a great deal of advantage in education, networking, ability to try and fail, etc.
People of different classes have fairly limited personal contact
Geographic segregation
Intermarriage across widely differing social classes is uncommon
Cinderella myth
Old money tends to maintain the class position of the next generation
Greatest access to higher circles has been through technology

11. Cornell Sheet on Khan Academy Video

12. Social class affects: Media access/choice Content preferences
Interpretation of media content
Representation within media content
Power over media

13. Internet use by household income

15. Source: Mediamark Research, Inc.

16. iPods/MP3 players are gadgets for the upscale
iPods/MP3 players are gadgets for the upscale. Fully 18% of those who live in households earning more than $75,000 have them; 13% of those living in households earning $50,000 to $75,000 have them; 9% of those living in households earning $30,000-$50,000 own them and 7% of those living in households earning less than $30,000 have them. (20% of respondents did not tell us their household income.)
Source: Pew Internet and American Life Project

17. Content Preferences

18. Source: NEA 2002 Survey of Participation in the Arts

19. Source: 2000 Porter Novelli Healthstyles Survey

20. Interpretation of content
Class-based worldview influences interpretations

21. Stereotypes
Just as for African Americans or women, etc. there are stereotypes that go with being working class or lower class
Usually negative for those lower on the status hierarchy

22. What are lower-class women like?
Trashy
Oversexed
Unsophisticated
Domestic
Kids
Dependant/“Golddigger”
Focused on men

25. What are lower-class men like?
Violent
Brutish
Dominant
Stupid
Ignorant
Focused on cars, sports, sex
Racist
Sexist
Engage in hair-brained schemes to get ahead
Lack taste

30. Representation
Over-representation of professionals and relatively well-to-do on TV
Parallel situation in film, though more varied
Working class and poor ‘invisibility’
Except as cops and criminals
Occasional representations are often stereotypic

32. When lower- and working-class people are depicted
Tend to be portrayed as foolish or ignorant
“Trailer trash” can be portrayed in ways that would cause significant outcry if applied to racial minorities, etc.
Archie Bunker
Homer Simpson
Seen as sexist, racist, violent, unintelligent and entirely lacking in taste
Jerry Springer
WWE
Blue Collar Comedy
Clampetts go to Maui

37. Prime Time programming
Early television included a number of working-class leads
Ralph Cramden
Marty
More recent examples
All in the Family
Roseanne

38. However, the tone of Prime Time is heavily white-collar/professional or upper class
The main exceptions are law enforcement personnel in “cop shows,” ‘reality’ shows and daytime talk shows
Often connect poor and working class with negative depictions, low culture

39. Soap operas
“On soap operas, single mothers are typically portrayed as White, upper-middle-class professionals, with nurturing male friends and an abundance of reliable child care providers (Larson, 1996).”
“Teenage girls who were heavy viewers of soap operas were more likely than lighter viewers to underestimate the relationship between single motherhood and poverty and to overestimate the percentage of single mothers in high-paying jobs.”

40. Media facilitate “classless society” myth by:
Presenting the interests of the well-off (e.g., stock, financial portfolios, and leisure time) as general concerns
Downplaying the structural economic concerns (e.g., job security, income) of the working class and poor, and
Emphasizing shared interclass concerns (e.g., safety, crime)
Portraying the middle class as the norm, with little representation of interclass tension

41. Content analysis of Newsweek 1993-1995
De Goede (1996) found that “the language used in the articles reinforced strong ingroup-outgroup class-based distinctions, simultaneously extolling the moral superiority of the middle class while degrading the values and behaviors of the poor.”
Single African American mothers and teenage mothers often the focus of these negative articles

42. Depictions of drug crimes
“Although the ‘typical’ drug consumer and dealer is an employed, high-school-educated European American man, the majority of arrests depicted on reality-based crime programs involve African American and Latino men in densely populated, urban areas (Anderson, 1994).”

43. Tabloid news shows
Tabloid news shows tended to “focus on stories involving upper-class criminals, particularly celebrities, whereas “highbrow” news programs were more likely to focus on stories involving working-class, unemployed criminals.”
Also tend to show “rags to riches” stories or the “hollowness of wealth”

44. Welfare Recipients
“Welfare recipients are among the the most hated and stereotyped groups in contemporary society”
Only one among 17 stereotyped groups (feminists, housewives, retarded people, Blacks, migrant workers, etc.) that respondents both disliked and disrespected.
Lacking both competence and warmth
However, most common group of welfare recipients is poor children
Media representations concentrate on their mothers

45. Connection to race
European Americans greatly overestimate the percentage of African Americans who are poor

47. Stereotypes in media and popular culture
African American men—members of “threatening and violent underclass”
African American women—welfare queens or as “ignorant, promiscuous women caught in a self-perpetuating ‘cycle of dependency’”
Emphasis on African Americans tends to render white poor ‘invisible’ in popular culture

48. Popular music draws heavily from urban lower class and rural working class
Rap
Hip-hop

49. What does all this lead to?
Blaming the victim
Personality failure rather than structural disadvantage
Support for a heavily hierarchical reward system
Low self-esteem among ‘lower classes’
Ability of the well-to-do to engage in modern “Social Darwinism”
Don’t have to face their own responsibility for poor conditions many live under
Exultation of self-interest
Mean World (for real)

50. Their personal shortcomings lead to a need for care from professionals
Problems stem from personal failings (not society, actions of others)
Jerry Springer
WWE
Implies that social policy should protect the populace from a dangerous, personally lacking group rather than treating a structural problem

51. “By dedicating little broadcast time or print space to stories that openly discuss class privilege, class-based power differences, and inequalities, the poor are either rendered invisible or portrayed in terms of characterological deficiencies and moral failings (e.g., substance abuse, crime, sexual, availability, violence).”