Prejudice, Racism and American dream in Gregory Mantsios' 'Class in America'

Prejudice, racism, discrimination, stereotyping have a significant part in America's society. Race influences how money is in people’s lives, affecting many things such as, houses, cars, clothing, and people they surround themselves with. In America not everyone has equal opportunities and lifestyles. The purpose of this essay is to inform people about prejudice, racism, money, humanity, economic division, opportunities, and the American dream.

What is prejudice? Prejudice is a feeling towards a person or a group member based only on that person's group membership. A person is prejudiced when she/he has formed some type of feeling towards a specific group of people before they even get the chance of knowing them. There’s negative and positive prejudice. Negative is when the attitude is hostile towards a person and positive is when the attitude is unduly favorable towards the person or group. However, prejudice runs much deeper than a person’s color. There are many types of prejudice, prejudice is found between gender, religion, cultural, background, and race. People have discriminated against others based upon these attributes from the beginning of time. Prejudiced has become a complex problem in our society and much of our world's history is based on hatred. Prejudice exists at the personal individual but also at the societal level. In the 1600s, white men used African Americans as slaves and treated them as if they weren’t humans. African Americans were not allowed to use the same drinking fountains as the white people until the mid 1900s. Prejudice involved the Jews, who have endured mistreatment and persecution for thousands of years. People have attempted this group of people, which occurred during World War II. when millions of Jews were exterminated in German Concentration camps in Nazi ideals of racial purity. Our society is riddled with such hatred based upons people's beliefs and origins. To this day there’s no solutions to fix this problem in our society. Prejudice might be an inherited trait, possibly even genetic. This includes the idea that groups seek to preserve themselves even unprejudiced people can become prejudiced against their enemies.

What's the difference between prejudice and racism? Prejudice is a feeling towards a person or group member based only on that person's group membership, which can be positive or negative. Racism is a belief that race is equated with particular traits and beliefs that some faces are superior to others. Prejudiced is unlikely to impact people as negatively as racism. How is money connected to prejudice and racism? Money has and will always be a huge thing in everyone’s lives. Money defines a person and their lifestyles. “Class in America,” by Gregory Mantsios, argues: “The differences are class differences, which have a profound impact on the way they live. More important, the difference in class determines where they live, who their friends are, how they were educated, what they do for a living, and what they come to expect from life” (387). Wealthier class are going to stick to hanging and surrounding themselves with someone in the same environment. They aren't going to surround themselves someone lower than they are. Same goes for the lower class, they are going to surround themselves around wealthier people than them. There many reasons to believe that wealth is a cause for prejudice.

Most members in wealthy classes have similar qualities such as, work ethics, intelligence, etc. Wealthy people have abilities that other citizens don’t which is the ability to make money. By grouping a class of people together with the same abilities then treating them differently is engaging in class prejudice. In today's society there's prejudice in every class. However, the connection of money with racism is a bit different compared to prejudice. Money is connected with racism because not all races have the same equal rights and opportunities. People put others people in categories which, precedence has taken over humanity. For example, racism created economic division in the 70s. While the African Americans were separated from their families and working their asses off in trying to basically do what the whites could have been doing themselves they were only getting paid cents and the whites were getting paid dollars. The whites are seen as perfect wealthy human beings that nothing that they do is wrong and in the other had African Americans are looked as dangerous low class human beings just because of the color of their skin. “The Case For Reparations,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, argues: “Black families, regardless of income, are significantly less wealthy than white families” (580). If slavery and racism didn't exist African Americans would have had an equal opportunity in making as much money as the white people, but the white people believe that they should be the only ones getting paid better than other races, but when some other race is making more money than the white they decide to make it a huge deal by saying that they are drug dealers or that they are taking their jobs.

What is the American dream? The American dream is the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunities to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. The American dream made people less accountable for their action towards others because people who are trying to achieve the famous American dream don't want others that come here to achieve it as well. Different races don't have equal opportunities for trying to achieve the American dream. To this day African Americans are discriminated just for the color of their skin. Hispanics are discriminated because legal or not people just judge them by just looking at them and think they can just tell them that they don’t belong here. They automatically think they are immigrants. Legal or illegal Hispanics do the jobs that people don’t want to do. Once a white person decided to do something and realizes that not they cant get a job easily, they start saying that Hispanics are taking their jobs. White people are the only ones with fair opportunities compared to other races such as: equal opportunity for getting hired for a job, equal justice under the law, etc. Therefore, the country only seems to care when something is happening to white wealthy people because they are able to pay for more things than other races. The country doesn’t seem to care about the poor people because if they did there wouldn't be as much as there is. What's confusing is that mostly all poor people who end up being homeless is that they are mostly all whites. “Framing Class, Vicarious Living and Conspicuous Consumption,” by Diana Kendall argues: “ At worst, however, the poor are blamed for their own problems: stereotypes of the homeless as bums, alcoholics, and drug addicts, caught in a hopeless downward spiral because of their individual pathological behavior are omnipresent in the media” (429). The people who are poor are either on food stamps, barely holding on, or end up being homeless. The people who end up being homeless are more likely to have been addicted to any type of drug and were alcoholics so when they are out on the street asking for money they are most likely going to spend what they end up getting on that day for alcohol. I've seen plenty of homeless people with signs asking for money so they can buy themselves a beer instead of something to eat and enjoy for the day. The country doesn't end up helping them in any type expect that somewhere in San Francisco, there's a place that if you're homeless you can go and spend the night, but there are only limited spots. If you want to sleep there again you have to get into very big lines and just wait there the whole day, since there are limited spots. Moving on to prejudicial characteristic such as religion, ethnicity, language, social class, gender, physical abilities, age, or sexual orientation and how its impacting Americans and their success. In today's society everything's an enormous problem. The type of religion, the type of language, gender etc is a problem. Its get in the way on how people view others and it shouldn't be that way everyone should be able to just be themselves and not have to worry about what other people are going to say or think about them. Instead of being an accepting nation, there's just all these discrimination, prejudice, racism etc human being.

In conclusion, Prejudice is a feeling towards a person or a group member based only on that person's group membership. A person is prejudiced when she/he has formed some type of feeling towards a specific group of people before they even get the chance of knowing them. Racism is a belief that race is equated with particular traits and beliefs that some faces are superior to others. Prejudiced is unlikely to impact people as negatively as racism. Money defines a person and their lifestyles people from all over the world come to the U.S. that want to achieve the American dream. The American dream is the ideal that every U.S. citizen should have an equal opportunities to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.