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Saturday, October 3, 2015

Land of Limitations and People Like Us



In the article “U.S.A., Land of Limitations” by Nicholas Kristof, it talks about how the United States isn’t truly “The Land of Opportunity” like everyone would like to believe.  Kristof talks about one of his old friends, Rick, who was born into a lower class family and had attention deficit disorder as a kid.  As Kristof says, Rick was a very intelligent kid but his A.D.D. led to nothing but trouble in school and eventually led to him dropping out in 10th grade.  After that, “Rick worked in lumber mills and machine shops, then became a talented custom painter of cars.”

Even with Rick’s intelligence and strong work ethic, he was never able to climb any higher than the social class in which he was born.  Sadly, that is how it works for many Americans that are born in the lower classes.  Especially with cases like Rick and his A.D.D., when a child’s parents can’t afford medication or to even take the child to get tested for A.D.D.  That usually causes the student to be seen as disruptive and they usually don’t finish school or don’t do very well.

It is similar to the People Like Us website.  One of the interesting stories that were in the stories section was about a man named Charles.  He was originally born into a very high-class family, where his dad, brothers, and sister were all sent to medical school and were very successful surgeons.  Charles on the other hand decided to leave college and find his own way in Louisiana even though it dropped him to a lower class.  But sadly, that made his parents disown him for embarrassing the family.


That shows just how important class is in our country.  For some people, status means everything and even leads to families being embarrassed of their situation.  That was even shown in some of the games, like Chintz or Shag because as you are playing some of the “judges” (especially Stiles) tended to make fun of some of your choices of furnishings if you didn’t choose things that weren’t “nouveau riche”.

Comments/Questions

In one of the games they were questioning what your class attitude was and showed how your attitude landed you into different social classes.  What social class do you think a wealthy person would be considered in if they lived modestly and didn't flaunt their riches because they showed that upper class people preferred to show there upper class-ness?  Also, I was not able to find the website for the Center for Working Class Studies.  Did anyone else have that issue?

1 comment:

  1. I would not say Kristof "had attention deficit disorder" because "had" is considered past tense. Any disorder is a part of your life from day one till the end.

    As for Charlie's story, it is too bad that he was disowned. However, some parents expect their children to be just like them, successful and wealthy. I think of a part of that is a worry that parents experience with having a child. They want to make sure that their children can support themselves and live independently. Not that I can vouch for the parent stand point. I do know that when I graduate I would like to have the independent stability. I am sure that my parents want the same for me because of how they speak about how important school is and how it affects life after graduation.

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