Class In America

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe,” said by Frederick Douglass. What is class? Class in today's society can mean anything. Class is something one can have, one can be a part of or one can be limited to. Class as a whole isn't just about where you stand financially but it is where you're placed in society. Class has everything to do with your foundation. This paper talks about the lower, middle and upper class but it also address other issues as to being degraded and discriminated against because of where you stand in civilization.
Class is another …show more content…
So you knew where you stood when it came to your financial situation. Those who were almost entirely without resources often starved to death because they couldn't afford to buy them. Then you had others who experienced native prejudice. Which is when you cannot get a decent job because of your race or ethnicity. The worst victims of this were free blacks. The best jobs they could get were menial and that was ware in itself. Plus they could not vote nor attend public school so life outside of slavery was no easier. This is what was going on in the north, but they still preferred to live there because the south was no better. At least they had a better opportunity to receive a job in the North. Then the civil war occurred which had a major effect on the South. It created so much instability within society people began dropping to the lower class because they were having trouble selling agriculture due to the union blockade which caused them to not be able to pay for other necessities. Once migration and immigration became a big thing in the United States a group that fell to the bottom of the totem pole just as quickly as African Americans was the Mexicans. Finding labor was especially difficult for them because English speaking prospectors excluded them from mines …show more content…
The upper class typically were the business owners or those who were born into money. People of wealth looked for ways to display their good wealth by buying mansions, having fancy carriages, lavish household goods and elegant social establishments. The construction of Central Park in the 1850s was a result of pressure from members of high society who wanted an elegant setting for their display. Before the great depression occurred the upper class put money a lot of money into to the stock market. So when it crashed it caused them to lose money they weren’t planning on losing. Although many Americans were going through extremely rough times the upper class still found a way to survive. Most upper class looked down on the lower classes because they felt they were better and had higher authority or power over those who made less than them or didn't live the lavish life they did. If only they knew the saying “I’d rather be poor and happy than rich and miserable,” maybe they would have had a different outlook on the lower classes. When President Roosevelt enforced the New Deal a lot of the wealthy people taxes went up because of the fact the maldistribution of purchasing power cased a weakness in custom demand which is also a cause of the