Blog 5

Race and Ethnicity have two different meanings but we tend to throw them together when addressing people. “Race is associated with biology, whereas ethnicity is associated with culture” https://www.livescience.com/33903-difference-race-ethnicity.html. As humans we have made race based off of appearance and skin color. However, there’s not too many genetic differences between people from different places besides skin color. “Ethnicity is the term for the culture of people in a given geographic region.” This all includes the language, religion and heritage in the ethnic group that are religiously practiced, which forms the ethnic group. As you can see race and ethnicity are different from each other but somehow as the world has evolved we’ve confused the true definitions. If a woman identifies herself as Japanese-American, ethnically she would be Japanese. Although, she may not practice the same traditions as her Japanese ancestors and instead practice American traditions, she might just call herself American.

One thing that stood out to me is the different social and financial advantages that only certain races have. Usually, people with lighter skin colors have more of a social advantage. Majority of the European/white race have more of a financial advantage in today’s society. The reason behind racial discrimination has a lot to do with the history of the U.S., and heritage of ancestors. Wealth between social groups is not evenly distributed and race has much to do with it. Being white in the U.S. comes with many advantages and perks in this society that most non-whites do not have. Non-whites in this country generally have less education and wealth based off those advantages that the whites and light skinned have. Not to say that being a part of another ethnic group or race you won’t have success, but that it will be harder to achieve that success. Pierre Bourdieu, explains that social reproduction and cultural capital are the reasons behind these inequalities between races. Social reproduction is the inherited social class status that has been passed down to generation to generation. Cultural capital is the effect of social reproduction because the generations that have been in a high social class in the past, pass down social advantages that allow certain people to have an easier route to a comfortable life.

Blog 4

Whatever social class you are placed in matters a lot, maybe too much, in America. There are six social classes, each come with there own perks and minuses; upper class, upper-middle class, middle class, lower class, the working class and the underclass. These social classes depict whether or not you live comfortably or live paycheck-to-paycheck struggling to find where the next meal is going to come from. It seems that the people in power don’t mind the continuous growth of poverty in this country and a big part of this is where people are placed within these social classes, because the injustices of the advantages that the social class give to only a certain amount of people.

People from the upper class and upper-middle class are usually the people that are financially stable in all aspects and have more of an impact on the government and how it will effect them, “Armed with money and social capital, 10 percenters can bend government to their economic ends. We see this in upper-income tax cuts; vanishing estate taxes; deductions for retirement savings and mortgage payments; favored treatment for earnings and appreciation from investments. But it also enables them to thwart housing programs which might provide upward mobility for others” (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-inequality-in-america_us_5b86d189e4b0cf7b00316252.) This is an epitome of what impact social class and certain income has on someones life, even others.

Pierre Bourdieu, explains the definition of social reproduction; “the tendency for social class status to be passed down from one generation to the next.” This ideal most likely describes the social injustice of today and how it came to be. What Bourdieu is trying to explain that the rich did not just become rich and the poor become poor. Wealth has been passed down from generation to generation, which is called cultural capital, and allows families with money to continue to save and expand their wealth given to them. Those with little to no money do not have much money to give to the upcoming generation because there isn’t much money that poor families can casually save for years. So, given this description and the social class injustice, who’s fault is it really that the poor keep getting poorer and find themselves working 14 hour jobs that pay minimum wage, having to pay taxes, bills, and having to find food?