Getting Started in Sociology, 3rd Edition - Latest Downloads

Getting Started in Sociology, 3rd Edition
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the-top, Protestant-work-ethic sort of argument.
Historically, major social institutions have contributed to systemic inequality. For example, religious systems have been part of
the power structure in certain societies. Religious leaders were thus in a position to suggest that the way things were—the
status quo—was God’s will. Thus citizens should be content with their portion and aspire neither to higher ground, nor to
change society such that the distribution of goods and services was more equitable.
Our system of education perpetuates inequality along gender and racial lines, for example through the use of tracking systems.
Earlier on, educators urged boys toward the “hard” sciences and math while detouring girls into home economics and
secretarial classes. Federal, state and local governments were for the longest time awash in a sea of white males—who
proceeded to allocate, among other things, less funding to school districts in poorer communities than to middle-class districts.
Having persisted for years, the inequality in our system became institutionalized.
Socialization and Inequality
During socialization, children learn the norms, values and other components of the general culture but also learn those
pertaining to particular subcultures, including the subculture of the socioeconomic class into which they are born. While being
socialized as a member of a certain socioeconomic class, a child will glean a sense not only of how to act or what to value but
also a sense of what goals are/are not appropriate to aspire to; how much/how little (s)he should be content to have.
Thus the very norms and values a child born into a lower socioeconomic class may learn, might teach him or her to not hope
for, aspire to or expect to have more of the good things in life than the portion (s)he was given at birth. At the same time a
child born into an affluent family is socialized to expect a much-expanded gamut of opportunities and privileges. Such
socialization at both levels, indeed at any level, only perpetuates the entrenchment of the inequality in our system.
With institutionalized inequality comes institutionalized discrimination and, for the poor, entrapment in a cycle of poverty.
Parents who are among the working poor may not be able to afford decent nutrition or decent medical care for themselves or
their children when they get sick—especially if their jobs do not yield benefits such as health insurance.
Poor children attend schools in districts with meager resources—outdated textbooks, no computers, etc. Their teachers do not
expect them to do well academically and give them that message through their interaction with the children, nonverbally if not
verbally. Consequently, many of the children indeed do not do well in school. The standardized achievement tests they take
assume a middle-class upbringing and education. Thus students from poorer districts tend to score badly on those tests. Later,
their parents cannot afford to put them through college and their academic performance is not sufficient to get them a
scholarship. With college not an option, they go to work in the same types of low-level jobs their parents have, without
benefits. The cycle continues.
Conflict theorists say the people who are at the top got there by being lucky enough to have been born into the ruling class, or
by being the leader of an interest group that wins a struggle for power. Aspirants should be skilled in the arts of persuasion,
motivation and manipulation, such that they can wheel and deal their way to the top. Too, their ascendancy can be greased by
the influence of powerful friends. Regarding the people who can never seem to get ahead, the conflict theorists would say they
are kept down deliberately by those higher up, because it serves the interests of the wealthy and/or powerful to keep them
down. Herbert Gans 2 notes that the poor:
! Provide a low-wage labor pool to do society’s “dirty” jobs
! Subsidize a variety of activities for the affluent, for example by serving as guinea pigs in medical research and
providing domestic workers (gardeners, housekeepers, servants) who cushion the flow of daily life for the well-to-do
! Create jobs for those in certain occupations which either serve the poor (e.g. pawnshop owners) or protect the rest of
society from them (e.g. prison guards)