For example, in discussing his childhood in "Southie" a poor neighborhood in Boston, Patrick MacDonald talks about the willful ignorance of the people in the neighborhood when he was a child. "They were all here now, all of my neighbors and friends who had died young from violence, drugs, and from the other deadly things we'd been taught didn't happen in Southie" (MacDonald, 1999, p.2). In other words, the reality of the poverty that defined the lives of the people in his neighborhood was less important than their concept of what it meant to live there.
However, while MacDonald makes it clear that the people in Southie considered themselves blessed to live there, he also makes it clear that they dealt with some very real struggles and that these struggles impacted how they viewed the world. They understood that they were disadvantaged compared to other whites. Therefore, like many groups of disadvantaged people, they looked for another group, one with even lower status, to call lesser than them. "We didn't want to own the problems that took the lives of my brothers and of so many others like them: poverty, crime, drugs -- those were black things that happened in the ghettos of Roxbury. Southie was Boston's proud Irish neighborhood" (MacDonald, 1999, p.2). In other words, the economic disadvantage experienced by MacDonald and his peers in Southie helped shape and inform racist thoughts and beliefs. What this suggests is that there are not three, or even four, social classes. Instead, there are six (or eight social classes) white and non-white versions of each group, because, the reality is that even upper class minorities are subject to a level of discrimination that makes their experience different than that of whites in the same economic position.
Race is not the only attribute that can change the impact of socioeconomic class on a person; women experience financial inequality differently than men. It is commonly accepted that women are more likely to be poor than men are, and this is true. Women are more likely to be single parents than men and to suffer negative financial consequences as the result of divorces. However, it is also interesting to note that women in the lower social classes are more likely to be never married, when marriage is actually on of the traditional ways that women have used to help change or insure their social status (McCall, 2008, p.297). In fact, the myth that women who are high-earners or who come from successful financial backgrounds have more difficulty finding mates is a myth; not only are they able to find mates among wealthier men, but also among men who earn less. This suggests that the idea of using marriage as a means of changing social status is not limited to women, but something that members of either gender will do.
What is interesting is that, as social class can be difficult to define, it can also be subject to change. If one considers an area undergoing gentrification, one can see the ways that changes in socioeconomic status may result in different changes depending upon the individual experiencing those changes. Newman and Chen examined Clinton Hill, a poor neighborhood that was undergoing gentrification, in order to see how gentrification would impact the traditional residents of that neighborhood. What they found was that the results of gentrification were not consistent across their subjects. "Indeed, the changing conditions of Clinton Hill are written upon the neighborhood's children, stamped upon their psyches like a genetic code waiting to express itself…the influences at work here are not nature, of course, but nurture: the effect of the urban environment upon the children who grow up there, the behavioral patterns imprinted upon their pliable minds at an early age" (Newman & Chen, 2007, p.42).
Finally, people who straddle the line between the lower class and the middle class may experience social inequality more strongly than members of other groups. Not only do they understand the ability to increase income, which leads to some type of wealth accumulation, but they also understand the risks of falling back into the lower class. Perhaps the largest personal impact that these economic differences have on people is the lack of a safety net. "These wealth differences are crucial: savings are the safety net that that catches you when you falter, but Missing Class families...
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