Gregory Mantsios Summary

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Gregory Mantsios provides an integrated study on how race and gender relate to class, and in turn how class relates to well being. He moves on to discussing the myths that people have about the class system in America. These misconceptions consist of America being a classless society, health care and education opportunities being equal, and everyone getting richer.
In order to assess the myths, Mantsios provides statistical evidence about class differences. He then provides some realities about classes in order to combat the myths people have. These realities consist of the enormous gap in economic statuses that exists, the middle class holding a small share of the nation’s wealth, and the middle class shrinking in size, creating a bigger gap.
To demonstrate these realities, he provides profiles of “typical” and not-so-typical lifestyles in America, all of which differed in many aspects. After analyzing the socioeconomic statuses of each profile, he provides evidence explaining how people’s situations affect their status, health, and education.
Many people in the United States have a misconception that everyone has an …show more content…

I have always wanted a more socialistic society. People fear this society for a couple of reasons. One being that people want to keep wealth to themselves. People have this idea that all of those who struggle financially are lazy, and since they worked “hard” for that money they “deserve” all of it to be spent on things they don’t need. The author describes Harold Browning as a wealthy individual who inherited a lot of his wealth from his parents, and Cheryl Mitchell as a single mother that needs financial assistance from her mother. He states “Yet Harold Browning spends more money on his horses than Cheryl Mitchell earns in a year”(340). The fact that Harold’s horses have more money spent on them than Cheryl’s son just goes to show that there is a major class

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