IT'S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY

Class is one of the systems of stratification which exist globally with the highest emphasis in the USA. Class is not as rigid as other systems of stratification; it has room for mobility. Class, defined by many as the division of group of people based on education, income, occupation and wealth is a big issue in the USA because of the tremendous growth of the gap between the rich and the poor. Even though most people associate class with money, we find out from the film; People Like Us, that class is not all about money; money helps one maintain a class but does not get one into a social class. This is evident in the film when a young man tells the story of a class he belongs to (WASP) that someone offered to pay him in order to become a member of WASP. This illustrates that class has to do with where and how people are raised. The person who wants to pay to be accepted into a social class may have earned success and had a low class parents.

That class is not all about the money is also evident in the film when a lady teaches another lady how to interact with people of high class: she describes that many little things matter, even the distance between people as they interact. In the same film, there is a black community who also has a class in which they don’t let just anybody join. The women in the salon complain that they have never gotten an application form to join the black American community despite the efforts they made to find the application form. They wonder how the application form is given out.

Finally, in the film so far, we are exposed to a poor family who feel bad about their state; Tammy, the mother feels bad about how she walks to work but the son, another example of how class is not always about money, is worried about how the mother dresses. He says that his mother always dresses in a burger king shirt or pants every day and that he cannot introduce her to his friends because of how she dresses. He also says that the brother too does not dress up well sometimes and that he can only walk together with him whenever he dresses nicely. This same boy feels like he is in another class; a different class from that of his brother and mother by dressing up nicely and from the awards he’s received from school even though all of them are poor.

In short everyone in a high social class has wealth but not all the wealthy people have a high social class. Money only helps an already established class but does not buy one a high social class.