Class Culture in Area of Job Opportunities in United States - Article Example

140789 CULTURE IN AREA OF JOB OPPORTUNITIES IN UNITED S In American history, we come across continuous attempts by enlightened people to reconstruct the American social class and gender order. It is an ongoing process and with every attempt there is a certain reward. Even though America is considered to be a classless society, it had not been so, mainly because it is impossible to be so in any society, especially in a capitalist one. Just like any other country, America too is suffering from non-availability of job opportunities and usually it is the deprived class that finds itself at the receiving end. The widespread belief that any American can get to the top does not apply to all any more. There is a very distinct aristocracy in today’s American society. “The countrys elites have repeatedly flirted with the aristocratic principle, whether among the Brahmins of Boston or, more flagrantly, the rural ruling class in the South” Economist.com, 29th December 2004. There exists growing evidence today that jobs are difficult to come by and whatever jobs are available, are the property of privileged classes. In the last two decades, America has found an increasing inequality in its society1 even though Americans have always refused to find anything negative about inequality, because it is always argued that inequality is combined with greater mobility. Today economists and sociologists agree that America is looking more like imperial Britain with its own nobility, with aristocratic and dynastic ties and advantages. Others argue that social mobility is actually decreasing. Most of the leaders are from wealthy background with dynasties behind them. According to a belief, America has a separate class called Creative class which is subdivided further as Creative Professionals (knowledge workers) and Super Creative Core, which has grabbed 12% of all American jobs. “This group is deemed to contain a huge range of occupations (e.g. architecture, education, sports) with arts, design, and media workers making a small subset” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_class In the job field, there are suspicions that class difference is making its appearance and the socially deprived labor force is finding it hard to get proper opportunities. American Indians and the black community had been getting slowly marginalized, in spite of equal access to education. Between 1935 and 1950, as unemployment decreased, job opportunities touched the zenith proportionately. Blacks migrated from the rural south and married, homebound women came out of their seclusion, and found jobs easily in the pre and post war American society and there was a tremendous economic classless boom. The same bloom has resulted in diverse classes today. According to Weber the new deprived class springs from the lower class of capitalistic society and cannot be avoided. It starts with the alienation of workers who will eventually lose control ‘over the instruments. “Individuals at the lower levels in bureaucratic organizations inevitably lose control of the work they do, which is dominated by those in the higher echelons. Bureaucracy, according to Weber, forms a ‘steel-hard cage’ in which the vast majority of the population are destined to live out a large part of their lives. This is the price, he argues, we pay for living in a technically highly developed civilization,” Giddons and Held (1982, p.11). Even in the working class there is widespread discontent and segregation between white collared workers and blue collared workers. Unions are dwindling and people think that they are being stifled out of their jobs and freedom to work. The series of earlier informal relationships between management and unions are not found any more. According to surveys “Unemployment is tremendously widespread in working-class America. Millions of workers are thrown out of work every year, and the fear that it will happen to them is widespread among the remainder” Levison (1974, p.82). Another connected fear is that it happens more to the lower class. There is some evidence to prove this. But there is also evidence that the workers coming from the lower class are psychologically prejudiced by self-pity and persecution fixation and fail to function to the level of expectation and find themselves out of jobs, which will justify their feelings of being victimized. “Working-class racism has been a constant reality since the beginning of America. But in historical perspective it cannot be said to be becoming worse,” says Levison (p.151). There is a strong existence of discrimination and differentiation in the job circles, even though it cannot be recognized easily. High level occupations are mastered by the higher classes in the society. In America, money power is very prominent. Graduates with privileged background and education are easily recruited and go on climbing the corporate ladder without much assistance. People with higher professional education command better jobs in large corporations. The old middle class, consisting of farmers, small businessmen and free professionals is said to be on the decline in face of new middle class created by managers, salaried professionals, salespeople and office workers2. Social and class degradation, in every society, is a vicious circle, because one causes another result and then the result becomes another cause from which it is difficult to escape. Less income leads to low education and low job opportunities which in turn, leads to less income all over again. Gender, color and race have always played a prominent role in social classes. America has blacks, who were underprivileged for a long time. America also has American Indians who were marginalized and victimized, misunderstood and ill-treated for centuries. American history is guilty of persecuting American Indians and Blacks and thereby creating two degraded classes and even to this day, these classes are not compensated fully. Social backgrounds and history do not get erased in a hurry. Blacks and women still remain deprived in their middle-class positions compared to the educated privileged classes. “Moreover, neither blacks nor women have entered the world of top management to any noticeable degree so they remain excluded from positions of power…Sections of the middle class, therefore, remain closed to blacks and women,” according to Devine (1997, p.135). Marginalizing women is an issue which would not go away easily. “…the socio-political proclivities of women occupying intermediate-class positions in the class structure – especially those in cross-class families – has been central to the debate on gender and class consciousness,” Devine (p.183). Some of the classes are experiencing strong social exclusion because there are distinct under classes in today’s American society. America has a greater level of wealth inequality compared to any other western countries. The native races of the Pacific States of North America have felt ignored for centuries now. The deprived and the under privileged in the social structure are ignored by most of the job offers, because they are unsuitable mentally, educationally and psychologically. It is also true that some of the employers have a fixed mindset about races and classes, which would not allow them to offer jobs to the unprivileged class. It is true that inside a flourishing America, a discontented and deprived class exists and it is the same tale of haves and have-nots. It is necessary to attack this problem in the grass root level. To this category, Spanish immigrants, Asian immigrants, the jobless, skill less and nameless lot who stay in the background are added. It should not be forgotten that this is a section of labor available in America. Their need for jobs is overpowering and hence, their disenchantment and self-pity too are immense. Their inability to create gratifying jobs for themselves has a deep-rooted melody, which has classified them as one of the deprived classes. It is highly essential that this labor force is neither ignored, nor glossed over in the exterior glitter of world’s only super power. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Devine, Fiona (1997), Social Class in America and Britain, Edinburgh University Press. 2. Giddens, Anthony and Held, David (1982), Classes, Power, and Conflict, The Macmillan Press Ltd., Hampshire. 3. Levison, Andrew (1974), The Working-Class Majority, Coward, Mccann & Geoghegan, Inc., New York. ONLINE SOURCES: 1. Economist.com, 29th December 2004. http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3518560 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_class 3. Read More