Social Class: Course Analysis

Sociology was a very effective course that I enjoyed, the topics we covered helped me understand different situations better. There were many things that caught my attention and made me want to know more throughout the semester such as the correlation with rich and poor throughout most of the chapters along with the power that comes with money. One of the main things I learned was that things don’t just happen many times you hear people say everyone has the same chance or opportunity and it’s the choices we make throughout our life that determine the outcome. An example that is easy to relate to is social classes and the idea of being born into a social class and not being able to advance to a higher class. The paper tower project that we did in class was a good visual example of not having the same choices but being expected to have the same outcome as everyone else in your community.

I work at the QuikTrip in Claremore one policy that we have at my work is that we must ID anyone that looks under the age of forty for alcohol and cigarettes. One thing I see with this is white privilege, sometimes when I ask an African American for their ID even though most the time they don’t say anything I can sense the frustration and change in tone as if I’m only getting their ID because they are African American and not white. With this being said I do notice that white privilege is still something that is going on in our society currently. Another topic we covered was the percentage of people in America that are poor compared to the amount of money the top five percent hold as a whole. When you are in the upper class or top five percent you have control over a lot more and those people aren’t going to be genuinely concerned about the lower classes. So they have been able to set society up to benefit them and at the same time make everyone feel powerless and stuck where they