Social Status

Essay by karimeUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, March 2004

download word file, 4 pages 3.5

Class system is a social ranking based primarily on economic position in which achieved characteristics can influence social mobility. Income inequality is a basic characteristic of a class system (215). An example of this would be in 2000, the median household income in the United States was $42,148. Sociologist Daniel Rossides uses a five-class model to describe the class system of the United States: upper class, upper-middle class, lower-middle class, the working class, and the lower class. An example of this would be Rossides categorized about 1 to 2% of the people of the United States as upper class which consist of executive clubs and social circles. By contrast, the lower class consists of approximately 20 to 25% of the population. This class includes Blacks, Hispanics, single mother with dependant children, unemployed, or low paying work. Using the objective method to measure social class, the following factors are taken into consideration, occupation, education, income, and residence (221).

Table 9-1 refers to the prestige rankings of occupations where a physician gets a high rating and a janitor gets an extremely low rating (222).

Racial group are those minorities set apart from others by obvious physical differences (269). The largest racial minorities in the United States are: African Americans (Blacks), Native Americans (American Indians), and Asian Americans (Japanese, Chinese and others) (270). In the United States nearly 7 million people, in 2000, reported they were of two or more races (271). People of White and American Indian were the largest group of multiracial residents. Minorities are subject to stereotypes which are unreliable generalizations about all members of a group that do not recognize individual differences within a group (272). Critics have pointed out the power of the mass media. Almost all leading dramatic roles are cast as Whites, even in...