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Law in Contemporary Society
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Paper Title-- By JonathanWaisnor - 17 Feb 2010Section ISubsection ASubsub 1Subsection BSubsub 1Subsub 2Section IISubsection ASubsection BAmerican society consists of three broadly defined socioeconomic groups. The first is the upper-class. These are Americans who have achieved such a level of wealth that they can guarantee themselves and their families security, not only for the duration of their lives, but for some generations afterward. The middle class is a group that, if they maintain their current standard of living, will have security for the rest of that individuals life, and may be able to leave some for their children. The lower-class has no security. Security is a nebulous term that does not only include wealth, although wealth is a sizeable component. Security also includes opportunity (the ability for one and one's children to increase the amount of security they have), physical safety, membership in a stable community, participation in the dominant cultural institutions, and the option to adopt the values and morals of the dominant culture because your group has contributed in some way to that culture. Traditionally, the upper-class have had almost full security. The lower-class, who greatly outnumber the upper-class, have had none. Historical examples of the lower class include Native Americans, convicts, impoverished people (both urban and rural), recent unskilled immigrants, and poor blacks in the era of Reconstruction. The middle-class, who outnumber even the poor, have had partial, but never full, security. The middle class cuts across racial and gender lines. The three classes of rights that guarantee security are, in no order of preference, economic/physical protection, civil/political participation, and cultural/social input. Economic/physical protection means, among other things, safety from government-imposed violence or violence perpetrated because of a lack of effective government, providing one's family with a comfortable standard of living that includes non-essential items and access to good education to ensure the best possibility of continuing to be upper-class. Civil/political participation is the ability to donate to candidates, speak freely, assemble, vote, and become a member of civic organizations that increase one's political power. Culture/social input means having the values of your group influence the dominant values and morals of the wider culture. Traditionally, the wealthy have controlled all three of these classes of rights. The rich continue to get richer, and even during the high-taxation years preceding Ronald Reagan were able to afford protection from seeing themselves or their families cast down into the economic mileu. Unless a member of the upper-class falls into an otherwise despised group, such as Communists, they will continue to participate in the political process if they so choose. Finally, the upper-class are largely responsible for creating two of the dominant mythical culture figures in modern American society, the American businessman (an extension of the frontiersman of old) and the nuclear family (with the individual role of husband/provider, mother/caretaker, and children so specifically defined) and these mythologies ultimately benefit the wealthy in terms of social stability, increased consumption, and a bias against active government. The poor have none of these rights. For example, poor blacks during segregation could be beaten and killed at the whim of the majority, lived in abject poverty, had no input into the political system, and were vilified and negatively stereotyped by the dominant culture. Control is established by the upper-class, unconsciously, by offering the middle class a choice between classes of rights. That is to say, the middle-class will always face a choice between having some of the pie or none of it, without any consideration to whether they or the poor might be able to have it all. This system is created because it is in the best interests of the wealthy, as it increases their security in what is seen as a zero-sum game. To continue with the Civil Rights movement analogy, middle-class blacks had some measure of economic protection, in that they had jobs, houses, sometimes even businesses. Within their communities, they had civic organizations and a culture and value system all their own. However, these existed outside of the dominant culture, and the expectation was that blacks would accept the cultural role created for them by whites. Like many groups, they were allowed to maintain their own separate spheres, as long as those spheres did not impact the dominant ones. If the middle-class blacks chose to strive for full rights, they would be risking what little they had (their economic and physical security). The leaders of the movement needed the middle-class blacks, who had community ties and organizations, time and money, and a veneer of respectability. Rosa Parks, a middle-class, married, upstanding woman, was chosen as the figurehead, and Claudette Colvin, a poor, undereducated, pregnant teenager, was not, because of the need to have someone that middle-class blacks could rally around. The movement succeeded when these middle-class blacks risked losing their physical/economic protection, after they were convinced that the "choice" being presented to them was inherently unjust. Other marginalized groups, such as women, laborers, draftees, all have faced similar choices. Today, this choice is presented to people defaulting on their mortgages. These people are sacrificing their economic protection in order to continue to fit into the cultural definition, established by the wealthy, of the provider who owns his own home, successfully manages his "castle", and always pays his debts. The interesting role of the law in these situations speaks not to what the law protects, but where it does not extend. The question that it is not in the interests of the wealthy to ask is this: is it possible to use the law to fashion a society where all three groups, upper, middle, and lower class, have guarantees of these rights.You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" on the next line: # * Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, JonathanWaisnor Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of that line. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated list |
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