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In a class system, the economic factor is the most important in determining differences, and achieved statuses, (gained by ability and merit), are the principal means of determining a person’s rank. This is a relatively open society and the boundaries between/among the layers are based on master status. There is greater economic equality but greater relative deprivation in the class system and although there is little social mobility at the extremes, there is great mobility at the center. The class system is characterized by a small, very wealthy, upper class, a large diverse middle class, and a mobile working class. Unfortunately, a relatively large and growing underclass has been characteristic in the US for the past 40 years. The United States is inarguably the richest nation in the world with an economy in 2002 over $12 trillion (12,000,000,000,000). England (population 59.6 million, economy $1.36 trillion); France (population 56 million, economy $1.45 trillion); Germany (population 83 million, economy $1.94 trillion); Italy (population 58 million, economy $1.3 trillion); Spain (population 40 million, economy $720 billion); Sweden (population 9 million, economy $197 billion); Austria (population 8 million, economy $203 billion), Switzerland (72. million, $207 billion), Denmark (population 5 million, $136 billion); Norway (4.5 million, $124 billion); Netherlands (16 million, $308 billion); Belgium (population 10 million, $259 billion). England France Italy and Spain have a combined population of about 300 million (approximately 20 million fewer people than the United States, their combined economies are valued at slightly less than $7 trillion or about 23 % that of the United States! In other words, the United States is richer than the 4 largest countries in Western Europe combined! CIA World Factbook On-Line , January 2, 2002. HYPERLINK http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook.And yet, even with this vast ability to generate wealth, at the end of 2000, eighteen percent of all American children lived in poverty and nearly 35 of children in Houston in 2000 lived in poverty. The government-determined poverty line is set so that an individual who makes less than $8,000 and a family four making less than $17,000 is considered poor. Poverty levels are based on subsistence levels for food, clothing, and shelter. The feminization of poverty is a social condition that has existed since WWII, in which women, particularly teenage mothers, elderly widows, divorced women, and female heads of single-parent households constitute a disproportionate share of the poor. In fact, single women with children are many times more likely to be poor than any other group in American society.
In 1903, when W.E.B. DuBois wrote,
The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line, he was writing about race relations in the United States and in the world system. DuBois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk . Signet. 1995. p. 41. Racism is woven into the fabric of American society. A race is a population that differs from others in the frequency of certain hereditary traits, which is also the definition of a species. However, all human beings are members of the same species, we all share the same DNA, and we share many physiological characteristics that cross the boundaries of skin color, hair texture, eye shape, and all of the other physical characteristics that we believe to define race. Biologically, there is no such things as race when it comes to human beings with the exception that we all members of the same species: Homo Sapiens Sapiens . Race, as we use the term on a day-to-day basis, is a social construct; it is categories of people who are set apart from others because of socially defined physical characteristics.
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