Class In American Summary

After I read the second reading, Class in American, I knew that most of American people do not think that they separate the American people into different classes. For example, some parts of people are in the higher class and some people are in the lower class. However, there are classes in American society. In the second reading, the author shows readers two exceptions that some American people think that the class exists in the USA. First one is that American people talk about “the middle class”, and second one is that “the class-avoidance phenomenon”. In addition, the author also points out seven realities in American people’s life, they could prove that the class problems do exist in the USA. The seven realities are about economy, American life style, education and some problem about discrimination. About the economic realities, the author mainly talks about the

population of rich people and poor people, and although the poor people have numerous numbers of populations, they only own a little part money in American economy. And the other problem of economic reality is that the great gap between rich and poor. So the economy is a kind of stander to set a class in America. Besides that, people could also easily to see the class problem form the American life style. For example the people from different class could get the different material to use, and since one born, he or she will get the different treatment because they are in the different class. And one thing that people always think that people are in the different class is about the racism and sexism.
Additionally, one thing that is same as the first reading is education.

In the first reading, the author mainly talks about the literacy. The author think that people who has much literacy, they will get more power. However, in the first reading, the author mostly introduce the four different main types of literacy, they are functional literacy, cultural literacy, literacy-for personal-growth and critical literacy. The different between the two articles is that the first one talks about the different types of literacy, and it is only talking about the relationship of these two article is that both of these two authors think that the literacy or the education could separate people into different level, and this means because the education, people will be in different class. In Knoblauch’s opinion, the author of first article, once one gets more literacy, he or she will get more power than others. And this phenomenon we could also explain by using the Mantsios’s idea. This person who get more literacy means he got a better education, and with this higher education, he will be in the higher

class.