A meritocratic society of class structures is what America has portrayed and
promoted.If one were to work hard and have all the virtues of honesty and integrity, all would fall into place. A person would not have to worry about anything because all of his good deeds and what he strived for would be rewarded. It is the utopia of the American society. However, and there is always the implication of the darker truth, it has become exceedingly evident the American society is a gilded class system with the entire makings of a caste system. In truth, the American society has thrived upon this myth; a myth that has driven home to every American and those rushing to the United States holding in their hearts the “Horatio Alger Dream”. The dream telling a person that it does not matter what class of society he came from, he has the chance to be one of the wealthy. The myth stating every person started from the same beginning and has the chance to race all in search to become ‘someone’.The sad truth of the matter is a person’s life can be greatly influenced, if not guided, by the mere fact of which class of society ;he or she was born into.
The American myth has laid the foundation for the pitiful and mediocre belief society has despondently followed. The belief that all have an equal opportunity tosucceed and even the boy who was born and raised in the slums of India can join in the wealth and fortune of the top five percent of Americans. The “Horatio Alger Dream” has become so ingrained into the American thought process that it has been named the “American Dream”. “[W]e live in today an era of diminished possibilities.” (Dalton, 277) The honest truth of the matter is a person is either made or broken at birth; they are se tfor life in a whirlwind cycle of a caste system that has been so diligently disguised as a class system. “From the cradle to the grave, class standing has a significant impact on our
chances for survival.” (Mantios,314) Whichever class a person happened to be born into
can greatly determine how his life will be set for the future. Those born into the wealthy society are far more likely to succeed and survive than those in the middle class; and those born into the middle class are more likely to succeed than those born into the poorclass.The society of America has the same standards in life for each person no matter which class the person happened to come from. The entire caste system however begins not with the schooling, but with the family.
There is a beginning to everything, and origin to which all can be traced back. For society, it all starts with the family. A person born into a wealthy family will have all that money can buy, which is not necessarily a debauched thing. The child who was born intothe affluent society will have a higher education and a privileged life as he ages. Theenvironment a child is raised in will have a tremendous impact upon the child’s life.A child born into a wealthy family where the parents and immediate family all graduated from college and have high status careers will be more likely to follow in the same path and usually take on the family business. On the other hand, a child who was raised in the ghettos of the downtown and saw drugs, guns, gang violence and alcoholism on his everyday walk to the neighborhood school, which barely offers the minimal educational standard, will most likely find himself growing old in either the same neighborhood or inpretty much the same, if he did not die early from an unnatural cause. Those who are raised in the middle class teeter on the brink of mingling with the poor or the rich. Those born in the middle class are usually raised in a cookie cutter neighborhood, so to say, or in the “rich” parts of town. The children grow up with soccer practice, ballet and are used to having the mother and father both work. Rarely do these children see the addiction to hard drugs and they see dog walkers and mailmen while walking to school rather than alcoholics and the homeless. When school does set in, it gives those who can afford it a head start and those who can’t, it leaves behind; all because money can buy a person’s way in.
There is an obvious difference when it comes to education and the classes in
society. If a person is wealthy, they will live where the wealthy live, shop where the
wealthy shop, work and attend school where the wealthy do as well. If one is poor they
will live, work, shop and converse with those who are poor. The middle class will be on the edge of all, not conversing solely with the rich and not solely with the poor, more often than none; the middle class will be in proximity with the poor rather than the wealthy. Those in the wealthy or the middle class are able to send their children to better public schools and to private schools. In sending the children to the neighborhood public school which offers music and art or to the private school which offers internships, college classes and all the arts, the wealthy and the affluent are already thrown into a society of the learned. The poor child sent to the neighborhood public school with the outdated books, large student to teacher ratio and a complete neglect of the arts is set in a slow downturn in which, if the child continues in the mediocre schooling, he or she will be unable to keep pace with the affluent and the middle class. With the affluent and the middle class ahead, the gap begins to become evident.Those within the affluent society have their debuts and begin to mingle with business owner and begin the transition from adolescence to college and finally to taking on the family corporation. The middle class have college at universities and begin their careers. Many of the poor cannot afford college, and if they get help from the government they usually only receive their Associates degree and work in order to put a roof over their head and food on the table eventually putting their college education on hold or stopping it for good. “[I]n this way the children of the privileged have a greater chance of staying
at the top of the social heap.”(Brooks, HO) The lack of education and contacts with the wealthy plunges the poor into the abyss of society. Although in this abyss, many still feelit worth to have a dream, to have something in the end to look forward to, and that is the pursuit of happiness.
Every person wishes to pursue happiness, for that is one part of our inalienable
rights as Americans. An “[e]qual chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don’t it?” (Bambara, 270) For too long the “Horatio Alger Dream’ has guided
Americans and immigrants to America leading them to believe everyone has a chance,
despite any prejudices and racism. The classes, the distribution of wealth and power
continue to shrivel into the stretched Eiffel tower instead of being equally distributed. The corporations move overseas in order to pay people less than minimum wage than here in America, causing greater unemployment rates, a larger working-poor class and an ever-growing middle class with the widest gap seen. These companies would not even take a second thought and come back to America, and why, for “[t]here’s too many countries out there.” (Barlette and Steele, HO) Companies move overseas, the working class and middle class become larger, sharing less of the amount of wealth, while the wealthy continue the cycle of wealth.
As time passes the lives of those born to certain classes rarely change
significantly. The same people who wait and bus the tables at the restaurants will most always be from the same class. The dishwashers who wash all the restaurants dishes will most always be from the same class; and those who the waiters and the dishwashers clean
after and serve will almost always be from the same class. The poor, and mostly the
working poor, were born into the working society. This continuum has placed a
hindrance and a burden upon the middle and poor class, keeping America in a “hereditary class structure” (Brooks, HO) better known as a caste system. Those in the working class are often the minorities born into the poor class of society, barely receiving the minimal education and must work just to survive, not to live, as was stated in “Serving in Florida”
America has thrived and fed itself upon a dream that has been rotting from the
core. The “American Dream” taken from the famous Horatio Alger character himself is
all but too good to be true, for its only useful purpose “is it is often necessary for
[someone] to convince [themselves] that there is a reason to get up in the morning.”
(Dalton, 276) Although the cases arise that there are those who went from “rags to riches”, there is still no denying the fact that whichever class of society a person was born into can greatly affect the person’s life. If a person were born into the affluent society, they have a far more likely chance of not only succeeding, but surviving among the social hierarchies. Those in the middle class will be forever struggling to either attain the higher class or trying desperately not to fall into the poor class. Then those at the very bottom end of the social ladder, rarely able to climb the social ladder to anything higher, are destitute for a life of working just to survive, never to live. The class of society in which a person is born into can greatly shape the person’s life, often keeping the person in a caste system rather than the class system full of opportunities to climb the social ladder which
America continues to portray.
