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The impact of social class on individuals
The impact of social class on individuals
The impact of social class on individuals
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Normality in Subcultures My family's subculture in a larger subculture Once you are born, you become a part of a larger group. You will grow up starting at a point in your parent's life and then over time they or even you will change the direction of your families subculture in whatever country you all live in. In America, People strive for the best. Not all get it, but somehow or someone will push that family into a situation where they can move up in the world. Over the years America has came to a point where most jobs pay well and mostly anyone can be considered a middle class resident. In America this is considered normal to the general public. Being normal and striving to be normal is the focus most people try to reach within their lifetimes. Normality is a subculture in itself. My family wasn't always an upper middle class family. Starting with my grandparents, my mom's mother named Bonnie Langdon. She lived in what is a now West Bloomfield in Oakland county Michigan. She was a sister to 9 siblings and she attended a One-room schoolhouse. Bonnie's mother Betty Worked in the post office for 30 year and her father Harry drove an oil truck for about the same amount of years. They were mostly lower class but they did manage to get themselves more towards the middle class. Over the years bonnie my grandmother graduated from high school and started to work for Pontiac motor, which moved Bonnie up tom middle class. She met my grandfather Names Fred shortly after and married. My grandfather grew up in Redford Michigan with 3 other siblings. His mom was named Pearl and his father was named Fred. His mom was from Canada who liked to hold old traditions such as eating soft-boiled eggs and drinking tea for breakfast. My mother remembers That Pearl would make her eat them each time she came over and she hated them. Pearl was a housewife and his dad worked as a carpenter. His dad Fed worked with Henry ford the man. His father was the personal Carpenter for Henry ford. Over the years my grandfather graduated from High school in Redford and started to work for the Oakland county Road commission. Over the years Bonnie and Fred had a higher class than there parents and they became the norm in the family. After Bonnie Langdon and Fred wood met they married and had one daughter names Janet, my mother.
Henrietta Lacks, birthed Loretta Pleasant, was born on August 1, 1920 to poor African- American parents. Although she was native of Roanoke, Virginia, Henrietta spent the majority of her childhood in Clover, Virginia on the tobacco field with her grandfather and a host of cousins. As a result of the excessive “quality” time with her cousins Henrietta became attached to one in particular, David “Day” Lacks. He later fathered her first child. At the age of fourteen Henrietta conceived her first child, Lawrence Lacks. Unlike White mothers who birthed their children in hospitals; Henrietta birthed her child in her grandfather’s home-house, a four room cabin previously used as slave quarters. While White patients were certain to receive the upmost patient ca...
Can you imagine yourself being apart of a group or lifestyle, now imagine yourself not fitting in. Maybe some people think you’re weird, but people just like you understand. Many suggest that it’s dangerous while others want to join. Whatever the reason may be you still consider yourself apart of society. As you grow older you realize that many people have different backgrounds and maybe even distinct behaviors. When people feel a deep need for love or respect, values and morals may be forgotten. It’s their customs, rituals, and beliefs that make up their own culture.
I consider my family and I to be in the middle class category and from being in the middle class, and the facts that are provided, the middle class is slowly declining as the time goes on. I believe that a lot of people go beyond the middle class to the upper middle class or people go below the middle class to the poor category. I’ve found a graph from Forbes that compares the rates of all classes from 1979 to 2014. From observing the graph my initial hypothesis was right. The middle class has declined by 6.8% between the years 1979-2014.
The "Roaring Twenties" were a turbulent time in American history. The United States had just returned from the carnage of World War I and was ready to revolutionize their ideas, morals, and most importantly, their presidents. The presidential election of 1920 was a particularly integral election due to the introduction of the right of women to vote and America's social & political unrest. Warren G. Harding, a Republican, defeated Democrat James M. Cox, on a platform that urged Americans to "return to normalcy". Normalcy was a play on words of normality by Harding, which meant to conform to the norm. But the question that stood on many historians was: Why did Americans actually vote to "return to normalcy"? The simple answer was that the nation was ready to recover from their wartime anxiety and wanted a country without financial or political stress and Harding was the president that promised that to them.
The Red Scare is referred to as America’s fear of communism and American radicals. The first Red Scare started in the 1920’s. WWI may have ended but the paranoia had lingered on. WWI had not gone very well for Russia and the burdens of losing the war forced the Czar to resign. Russia needed to form a new government and in November of 1917 Lenin led the Bolshevik workers revolution to form the communist party. Karl Marx’s idea’s had been well known throughout the world since 1848 but had never been successfully implemented. The western allied powers wanted to restore Czar Nicholas back to power in Russia but their efforts were in vain. The Bolsheviks had murdered the entire royal family, and had slowly taken control of the nation.
Chicago and then moved to Grand Rapids when she was 2 years old. Her father
What comes into my mind when thinking on how to categorize those people that belong in the middle class, I look at such things as education, race, family, income, gender and how many people are in your household. I look at it as those people who are making between $40,000 and about $85,000 to be in the middle class while the next step would be the upper middle class and then to the upper class. Maybe I am wrong here, but like I said before, everyone wants to have that “I am middle class” attitude. The most recent Census Bureau survey data shows that the share of households with incomes of $75,000 or more has doubled in the past 24 years. Other studies, however, discover that more people who depart the middle class move down than up, at least temporarily.
Let's take it back to the past in regards to wealth distribution in this country. The fact is that the economy boomed from the end of WWII into the 1970's. “Incomes grew rapidly and at roughly the same rate up and down the income ladder, roughly doubling in inflation-adjusted terms between the late 1940s and early 1970s” (CBPP). Through the 70's economic growth slowed, and the wealth gap widened. Middle-class families were now considered lower class. People relied on the government to help them out with welfare programs. The middle-class class was weakened and the gap grew and grew. There were periods of positive fluctuation, however the middle-class simply never regained it's status that was held in more prosperous times in the past.
A “normal person” can be considered many different things, depending on the viewpoint of the person. Often times one would consider a “normal person” to be a person without any sort of mental illness. A normal person is someone who adapts to the norms and standards of society.
In the dictionary, it states that the definition of “normal” is “Conforming with, adhering to, or constituting a norm, standard, pattern, level, or type; typical.”But the word itself has a wide range of meanings.It can mean: “what’s accepted,” “average,” “just like everyone else,” or “just not sticking out in the crowd” just to name a few. We all have different perceptions of what the word normal means, and what is considered to be different.This perception is always changing and is affected by everything around us.If you ask a person what is normal one day, and then ask him again in about a month, that person will probably give an entirely different answer.The word normal is, in the most part, has opinionated definition.It varies from person to person, and changes dramatically as each person learns, experiences and accepts new things.
Every day of my life the sociology of “norms” is at work in my daily life. It works on a subconscious level, keeping me from acting “strange”. These norms are my guiding light to acting “normal” and fitting in with the societies that I am a part of, they tell me how to conduct myself and what my expectations of other’s behaviors should be.
The figure of Robin Hood is pure fiction. It has evolved over time, originating with a Common Highwayman, from there to acquire the title of Noble Patriot and finally became an early Advocate for Social Justice – ‘take it from the rich and give it to the poor’. Frequently reworked versions, which have been adapted over time, and additionally invented ballads, made him become a legend.
Deviant Behavior is optional not to conform norms and does not come together with an outlook of prosperity groups of the society as a whole. However, the subculture violence theory is described to have people in these situations which are separated as they begin to believe the acts and values that are ordinary, or better-quality to all other views. A number of things are associated with deviant behavior and the subculture violence theory. Some examples include, no subculture can be completely different or absolutely in conflict with the society, the counter-norm is nonviolence, recognized and unrecognized collective reins that attempt to avoid or diminish deviance, and crime, the infringement of properly enacted the law, is official deviance while having an unofficial social violation.
Robin Hood was the fearless villain with a heart of gold that audiences loved because of him and his “merry-men’s” courageous acts to rob the higher authorities and give their gains to the less fortunate (Sinha). He was first recognized as a yeoman and then later, an aristocrat. Some say that he was unjustly driven out of his land by the town sheriff, which led him to becoming an outlaw (“Robin Hood Outlaw of the Forest”). Robin and the other outlaws lived in the forest and this is where they would ambush travelers and then feast with them. They would eat with knights, monks, and others. After the feast they would make the people pay and that is the money they would give to the peasants, who were unmercifully taxed.
In the year of 1984, when I was born, my family lived in Reading, Pennsylvania. Reading was not an area known for its good economic reputation. Most of the people in the area could be considered lower-income, middle class individuals. Our community was composed mostly of factory workers and small business owners. My father was self-employed at the time, for he owned a retail establishment. In our neighborhood, we may have been one of the families that earned the most money per year. We lived in a duplex, but even then, we were still considered upper-middle class. My mother was working nights as a medical technologist, and this was all so she could stay at home with me during the day. My father never completed his college career, but my mother did. She needed that degree to pursue her career in the medical field, and to have the potential to earn more pay.