Structural and Cultural Barriers to the Upward Mobility of the Working Class

SOCIOLOGY - HOW WORKING-CLASS PEOPLE EXPERIENCE BOTH STRUCTURAL AND CULTURAL BARRIERS TO UPWARD MOBILITY. The American Dream is a popular cultural fiction that drives many Americans to work hard and persistently for upward mobility. Unfortunately, structural and cultural barriers show that the American Dream is too often a myth for the working class. The works of G. William Domhoff and Barbara Ehrenreich give two valuable perspectives on the obstacles that many in the working class cannot overcome in order to have the American Dream.

Structural Barriers to Upward Mobility The persistent American Dream of upward mobility through hard work and determination has proven to be a cruel myth for working class people. The cruelty, reasons and effects of the myth are revealed by G. William Domhoff and Barbara Ehrenreich from two different perspectives. Domhoff approaches the myth as a research professor who studies, interprets and sometimes verifies other research regarding the myth.

Ehrenreich examines it as a culture critic and writer who deliberately marginalizes herself to experience the lower working class first-hand in Florida, Maine and Minnesota. The structural barriers faced by the working class are established and maintained by the owners and administrators of America's larger income-generating properties, like corporations, banks and agricultural businesses.

According to Domhoff, these wealthy and powerful forces lobby, obviously and directly become involved in planning policy on important national issues, make large campaign donations to politicians supporting their continued domination, influence on the people being appointed to policy-making government positions, and sometimes even their own appointments to policy-making government positions.

Domhoff's article summarizes his findings that upper class people own nearly 50% of all privately owned stock in corporations, powerfully control corporations through their family offices, investment organizations and holding companies, and represent a high percentage of corporate board members and are supported by middle managers who share their values (Domhoff, 2006, p. 71).

If the current financial and power structures in America could be summarized in one sentence, Domhoff would say that the system is "rigged." Barbara Ehrenreich's experience is different from Domhoff's because she sees the rigged system from the trenches, for example, when she works in Minneapolis and needs a place to live.

Though she needs affordable housing, the city's housing vacancy rate was lower than 1% in general and sank to 1/10 of that availability in affordable housing for the working class; consequently, many working class people had to live in shelters rather than in their own rented spaces (Ehrenreich, 2011, p. 140). Ehrenreich also experiences structural barriers in the amounts of money she is paid. One full-time job's wages are not enough to pay all necessities like rent and food.

In fact, even two full-time jobs fail to give sustain her because working 16-hour days makes her so mentally and physically exhausted that she has to walk out on both her jobs in Florida (Ehrenreich, 2011, p. 32). Ehrenreich doesn't make as many large judgments about the rich vs. the poor as does Domhoff because her experience was immediate rather than taken from broad studies; however, she still encounters the structural situations that keep the working class from attaining upward mobility. b.

Cultural Barriers to Upward Mobility Domhoff and Ehrenreich also discuss the cultural barriers facing the working class in striving for upward mobility. Domhoff details the ways in which the wealthy and privileged band together, stay together in clubs, businesses and "the social register," and privately educate their children to carry on the same privileged and sheltered world, separate from culturally lower classes of people (Domhoff, 2006, pp. 72-78).

According to Domhoff, education in boarding schools and/or prep schools is especially important "for the distinctiveness of the mentality and life-style that exists within the upper class because schools play a large role in transmitting the class structure to their students" (Domhoff, 2006, p. 78). Domhoff's examination of other studies and his own work convince him that the upper class insulates, elevates and preserves its members from the cradle to the grave.

Ehrenreich also discusses cultural barriers but her experience is even more interesting because she is "at the top of the bottom" of social classes. She is in the bottom class because she works at low paying jobs; however, she is at the top of that bottom class because she is a white, well-educated, internet-savvy woman who speaks fluent English.

Unlike many other people in the working class, she was able to search online for the information she needed to pass a urine drug test in order to be employed at Walmart. Unlike many other people in the working class, she was able to pay daily rates at a Minneapolis hotel when affordable housing was so scarce for working class people (Ehrenreich, 2011, pp. 140-1).

Because she is a white, well-educated, internet-savvy woman who speaks fluent English, Ehrenreich could deal with the written applications, computer interviews, and drug testing policies that might overwhelm another person looking for a minimum wage job. Domhoff's perspective as a researching professor and Ehrenreich's perspective as a temporary member of the lower working class show how the deck is stacked structurally and culturally against the upward mobility of someone from the working class. 3. Conclusion G. William Domhoff and.