America's Caste System

If someone were to claim that America had a caste system, I imagine that at first glance, most American's would readily reject such a claim. "This is America" That alone is suppose to say it all. The land of dreams and opportunity. America, by its very name sake... is suppose to proclaim the availability of social mobility to any and all of its citizens. The idea that people are born... live... and die... in certain "castes" seems a foreign concept. "This aint India" one may exclaim.

But, how far off would the charge of a caste system be? We are seeing wages fall in this nation. We are seeing more "good paying" jobs go overseas and an influx of service level jobs. When I speak of the working poor... Or the bottom of America's caste system... for the most part, I am referring to "service" level jobs. Almost like a servant class... the service level jobs are serving the greater population in one form or another. Each of the pictures on the screen is an example of a low wage service level job. You run into these people everyday. You may be one of these people. The "invisible poor" that serve the nation in different capacities, sometimes receiving scorn of disdain from those they are serving.

"That stupid maid didn't fold my bed sheets right."

These are often the jobs with, not only the lowest wages, but close to non-existent healthcare. Out for 4 days because you had the flu? No, thats 4 unexcused absences, and thats going to count against you. Time to start looking for a new job. And if you ARE able to get a day off because you're sick... paid sick time is a fantasy. You should just be grateful that your boss allowed you to have the day off without writing you up... you want to be paid for it as well...? Ha, ha ha ha... Of all the nerve. Can you believe these slaves... er... I mean... workers.

What is minimum wage? In theory... and I do stress... THEORY... it is suppose to be the least amount one person can make and take care of themselves. No luxuries... just... the amount one can reasonably survive off of. About one third of American workers earn less than 15K per year. That is about 7.50/hr. One third of all the people in this country make about 8 bucks an hour or less. And the bottom 10% earn less than 6 grand a year. If that is not a caste system, I truly... do not know what is. Its like musical chairs, but with fewer and fewer chairs available. How can people look at numbers like that and say things like...

"why dont people just stop being lazy, go out there and make it happen."

Only so many can. And Im sure those people who say those things, they still want luxuries like being able to go to the grocery store and have fresh fruit there for them.

There is this weird dichotomy between those who despise poor workers, but enjoy the comfort (servitude?) that these full-time workers allow them to have. Noone likes the trash guy, he's a loser who probably didn't apply himself in highschool... yet, they want their trash picked up. We want our sandwiches. We want our security. We want our restaurant food brought to our table. We want our lawns trimmed... our hotels cleaned... our clothes pressed... our toll booths to give us change... our store shelves fully stocked... we want all these things to be done for us... yet we want to hold people who do these services for us in contempt.

Barbara Ehrenreich, who earned a PhD in biology, has made her career as a writer. She has penned a dozen books and articles for Time, Harper's Magazine, and The New Republic. One day at lunch, she and her editor were conversing about poverty, economics and welfare reform. She wondered how could a person truly live off of a fulltime low wage job and her editor challenged her to be the one to do the ground work on the subject.

So she did. She would not just study the subject as a 3rd party journalist, but live the life herself, with little to no outside help for 6 months. The experiment resulted in her best-selling book: Nickel and Dimed; On (not) Getting By in America (2001). This wasn't just done in one area, she travelled to different parts of America taking different types of jobs. In Florida she worked 2nd shift as a waitress and also worked as a home cleaner for Molly Maid. In Maine she worked as a “dietary aide” at a nursing home and as a hotel maid. In Minnesota she clerked at Wal-Mart.

Barbara usually lived in budget motels or dangerous, poverty stricken trailer parks. She also only ate what she could afford which she found out tended to be fastfood, compared to buying meats and produce from grocery stores for home cooked dinners. 99cent burger here... $2 burger there. In her book, she also mentions that she felt that she was always physically and emotionally drained and it seemed like she needed to work a second job on the side, just inorder to get by. Trying to move up seemed out of the question. And if she got sick during her experiment [long hours = weak immune system] she had to power through, because missing work, from a monetary standpoint, was just not an option. In fact, Ehrenreich's colleagues routinely worked more than one job, slept in cars, and crowded multiple people into small living quarters.

Where is the poor's voice? They are less likely to vote and, if we will go off the word of Baraba during her experiment... are too concerned, focused, frustrated with the here and now to worry about policies and pontificating that goes on in Washington. Hard to keep up with politics when you're working two jobs and worrying about making rent. And the poor have no lobby. How do the poor get the ear of Washington? They have no voice. They dont have the money readily accessible to push lobbying agendas in Congress the same way that corporations who enjoy the status quo can.

Lastly, a quick nugget about education. The United States also has very disproportioned educational opportunities. That is to say... the quality of schooling in America will noticeably vary depending on where you live. I grew up in a (somewhat) poor part of town, but was "bussed" to school on San Felipe (near the Galleria in Houston) so I can attest to the differences in the middle school education I recieved, compared to my friends who went to our "zoned" middle school. How much economic freedom can there be, when certain wealthier portions of the population have access to better funded, better equipped, better prepared schools? That is not to say that one can not make it from an inner city school, only to say that quality of education that person will recieve is just another disadvantage in the game of musical chairs.

And in a land where you have to BUY education on the university level... that is not the case in Europe where most are free or very low cost, in comparison... this only further reinforces the opportunity disparities between the haves... and the have-nots in America.

PS: a good "musical" drama-documentary appropriately titled America's Ruling Class can be viewed here. It is not just about the working poor, but it does mention the subject (among other things) and... for those too busy to watch a good 90min piece about who controls America... if you skip ahead to the 28minute mark, Barbara Ehrenreich makes a brief cameo while working as a waitress and mentions her experiment to the "stars" of the documentary.