Classism
The Wrong Guys (We’re Always Right)
Check in questions:
“Do your aspirations include you reaching a higher social class?” and “Are the people you admire in a high(er) social class?”
Classism: Prejudice or discrimination based on class, unequal treatment based on one’s social class (social class = label that indicates to others how much wealth/economic power one has; social and economic prowess interrelated)
The current global wealth distribution is as follows: the richest 0.5% of the world’s population owns 35.6% of the wealth, the upper middle class (7.5% of the population) owns 43.7% of global wealth, and the middle class (23.5% of the population) owns 16.5% of the wealth, leaving only 4.2% of the world’s wealth for the lower-middle and lower classes, which account for 68.4% of the world’s population.
Activity: After the check-in questions, we begun class with an activity meant to showcase this distribution. We set up ten chairs and asked the entire class (~20 people) to spread out evenly (~two to a chair); this represents a completely equal wealth distribution, such as that attempted by communism. We then began to adjust the seating situation to reflect the current situation, leaving one person to occupy 3 seats, 2 people to occupy 4 seats (2 each) 4 people to occupy 2 chairs (2 people to 1 chair) and everyone else to occupy the last seat/floor; representing the top 0.5%, upper-middle, middle, and remaining classes, respectively. We also proportionately gave out cookies to match each of these groups, so the "richest” person ended up with many cookies and the “poorest” group (~13 people) had to share one cookie. People at the “bottom” were very crowded and hungry, whereas the “richer” students were far fuller and more comfortable.
After this activity, we presented on types of classism, breaking it down into two concepts: individual/interpersonal classism, and structural/institutional classism. We discussed how different waves of immigrants have attained different class levels, tying class to race, and also gave a more in depth lecture on the history of classism via the creation of an economy dependent on racism, sexism, homophobia, and imperialism. We connected past institutions, laws and attitudes to those of modern times, and looked at how current societal norms are derived from the past and how they have changed over time.
The rest of the class was a discussion of the intersectionality of classism relating to citizenship status, race, gender. It was very in depth and interesting, class is a fundamental part of society and it’s important to consider how it affects and is affected by our other identities.
