Gregory Mantsio's 'Class in America': The Issue of Prejudice in Society

Harvard anthropologist, Dr. James Herron, defines racism as “Racial ideologies are fundamentally judgements about who is worthy, who is decent, who belongs, and who doesn't. Inclusion and exclusion.” (Fieseler, Baran, & Herron 2017) Most people do not want to be defined as racist as for majority of people agree it is a negative label. What if I told you that you, your parents, and our government are subconsciously racist. A little absurd but not far off from the fact of the privilege of being born white and that you are already 100 steps ahead of those who aren’t by doing nothing. This essay will be examining how social class, society, education, policies, and our political system have prejudice beliefs within them.

In ​Gregory Mantsios work, Class in America,​ the author discusses within his article about how there is no middle-class in America. By providing strong evidence for his argument he is able to convey to his audience the distinct separation between the poor and the rich class. In this argument he mentions how Americans do not normally mention how they recognize class amongst themselves. It is more of a taboo subject to talk about. In today’s society it is much easier for people within the lower class to obtain designer clothing due to the mass production of clothes at a cheaper rate. (Mantsios 382) Due to this happening, amongst other factors, contributes to the facade of a middle class in America and making it harder to discern whether someone is lower class. When we are unable to make out someone’s status based off appearances, this leads us to judge other aspects including race, ethnicity, location, and gender. Mantsios presents multiple profiles of people that include: their parents occupation, education, activities, care, past and current jobs, and incomes. Through analyzing these 3 profiles he comes to the conclusion that what you are born into usually is where you will stay your whole life. For example, being born into the top 1%, 323,000 Americans, making more than 1 million in salary you hold 36% of the nation's wealth while the wealthiest 20% holds 90%. (Mantsios 380) That being said, this will result in the opening up of abundant opportunities. Compared to being born into one of the 42 million people that are low class or in poverty which will not have access to these types of opportunities in their lifetime. All of these factors, most of which are uncontrollable, can negatively affect one’s lifestyles, materials, physical and mental health, health care, death rate, and/or housing. As a result, what you are born into will determine what opportunities and abilities you will have in this life. You can be born into privilege or be struggling for bare necessities your whole life.

It has been almost 60 years since the US Supreme Court ruled segregation within schools was unconstitutional. Being that those were public high schools, kids are districted based on their geographic location of their house to decide what school they go to. Along with schooling zones, this is how the districts for voting for representatives in Congress are decided. There are states that practice gerrymandering, which is when the one manipulates the boundaries or “district lines” to favor one group over others. For example, say there is a section of a city that is generally democratic in a red state. This unfair practice is accomplished by drawing the zones right in between the blue area and grouping each part with larger republican areas. This will then lead the area to have two sections more likely to have republican representatives win in elections.

We see the evidence of this ingrained racism in American policies in districting for public schools by deciding who goes to what school. By deciding what neighborhoods and groups of people go to what school determines the quality of education children will receive. As we learned from the research of Mantsios, this will in turn affect the rest of the expected quality of life, well-being, and success of a person before they even have a chance to change it. There is deep-seated prejudice in not only primary education and state redistricting, but in a multitude of American political policies that most have normalized.

In a Harvard published article, Dr. Baran refers to a study done by the Yale Child Study Center showing how early prejudice within the school and the education system starts. The conclusion of this study states, “even preschool teachers expect and watch for problem behavior more from black boys. This leads to more discipline, more suspensions and expulsions, and exclusion from all the benefits of education.” (Fieseler, Baran, & Herron 2017) This supports the idea that limited resources earlier in life affect many other things later in an individual's future. This quote mentions exclusion and the loss of the benefits of education because of racism within teachers as early as age of 2. Most resources are structurally geared towards white Americans over minorities through policies and laws for example. We learn to think humans are separated by groups at a very young age. Do you remember as a kid if your parents sat you down and gave you a talk about racism and how it is wrong but it is something out there in the world? Most, if not all (whites), will not have had this talk. Now families of the minority are more likely to sit their kids down and talk to them about this, along with the subject of police brutality. Parents will teach their kids how to not get killed at young ages from police for doing nothing.

The policies and laws are once again pushing most of our resources in favor of the majority, which as a result end up harming the minorities. From ​Class in America ​it is said that when taxes are cut it seems like a good thing to hear, but usually these are cut disproportionately between classes. For example, the lower taxes could be made up in public transportation, which is mainly used by people of lower classes who are now making up for the tax cut. (Mantsios 394) This could also be made up in college tuition prices, the high price of tuition is easily overcome by privileged white kids with successful parents but makes college an even farther away goal for most minorities. All of these examples and data discussed in the articles and studies mentioned give hard evidence supporting how the system makes it harder and more unfair for people of minority groups to prosper in our current society.

In conclusion, there are many more ways that the deep-seated prejudice against minorities in today's society could be examined and brought to light. Americans do not need to be “colorblind” to people with different ethnicity or skin color but rather acknowledge that resources and opportunities are not a given and that the privilege of being white is very real. The work of many who research and write about this gives windows into examining our social system, normalized policies, unfair opportunities, and society as a whole.