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Meritocracy and the American Dream
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When you think of
the American
Dream,
what comes to mind?
Not in terms of what
everyone else thinks, but
what you think?
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+ The American Dream
The American Dream is a national ethos of the
United States, a set of ideals in which freedom
includes the opportunity for prosperity and
success, and an upward social mobility for the
family and children, achieved through hard work in
a society with few barriers. In the definition of the
American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931,
"life should be better and richer and fuller for
everyone, with opportunity for each according to
ability or achievement" regardless of social class or
circumstances of birth.
The American Dream is rooted in the Declaration of
Independence, which proclaims that "all men are
created equal" with the right to "Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness."
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Money, Power, and the
American Dream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OKyju06e4&index=45&list=PLtKYJlhZvF6YmG
vS-hrf7ZbjYM9fd0JEv
Modified Monopoly
Beginning Salaries: Each participant
begins with the following amounts of
money
Underclass $100*3= $300
Working Poor $170*3= $410
Working $350*3 = $1,050
Lower Middle $600*3= $1,800
Upper Middle $1250*3= $3,750
+ Capitalist $10000*3= $30,000
Buying Property:
Underclass SES can buy only the purple
and the light blue properties;
Working SES can buy lower SES and
maroon and orange properties;
Middle SES can buy lower and working
SES properties, red and yellow properties,
utilities and railroads;
Capitalist SES can buy any properties it
can afford.
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American Dream?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vF
O-2Q&index=21&list=PLtKYJlhZvF6YmGvShrf7ZbjYM9fd0JEv
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PLACE MATTERS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saREW_Bf
xwY&index=41&list=PLtKYJlhZvF6YmGvShrf7ZbjYM9fd0JEv
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Social Mobility
Social mobility is the ability of individuals to move up or down
in socio-economic-political status.
Most American authors (including Alger, and Twain– and
Dickens in England) have written at least one major work that
deals with this issue, because social mobility is considered an
important measure of freedom. Most immigrants to America
are coming specifically because they value this freedom, but
other cultures do not share this value, or even provide this
opportunity.
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A conversation with the ghetto.
It’s Bigger than Hip-Hop by MK. Asante Jr.
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By Ta’Nehisi Coates
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The Case of Austin’s Declining African
American Population
By Eric Tang
Gregory Town
Factors that contribute to
Gentrification
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Employment
Education
Policing
The Artist Guild
Art:
Artist:
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Critics:
RACE, GENDER AND CAPITAL
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Industrial capitalism emerged in
the in the United states
dominated by white males, with
a gender and race segregated
labor force, laced with wage
inequalities, and a society-wide
gender division of caring labor.
The process of reproducing
segregation and wage inequality
changed over time, but
segregation and inequality were
not eliminated.
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Gender and Capital
White men had the privilege of deserving “man’s wage” which
was sufficient of supporting a worker and his family. Domestic
and caring activities are devalued and seen as outside the
“main business”- thus wage labor undermined the work and
value of women. Power dynamic between paid market labor
and unpaid domestic labor.
The successful CEO and successful organization are
aggressive, decisive, competitive, focused on winning and
defeating the enemy, and taking territory from others. masculine ethos.
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Race and Capital
The United States was a racial dictatorship from 1607-1865,
severe exploitation, exclusion and domination of colonized
peoples by whites perpetuated racial divisions consigning
their colonial subjects to the most menial, low paying work in
agriculture, mining and domestic service. Despite the
abolition of slavery and bonded labor, coercion persisted in
the labor system, certain regions and industries that
disproportionately employed labor by people of color and
adopted debt peonage and other restrictions on their mobility.
Because the labor market was so segregated jobs themselves
took on race-gender meanings. Work associated with
racialized minorities was Viewed as "dirty" or "servile,“ and
that associated with women as “unskilled” and "feminine."
Epithets such as "nigger work" were attached to servantry,
field labor, and cleaning.
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Employment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlhFMa4t28A
&index=46&list=PLtKYJlhZvF6YmGvShrf7ZbjYM9fd0JEv
1:07
Think of the top three places you shop. What are
the employee work conditions. Do you think the
current enterprise design is offers ? Do you think
the employees and employers would support
democratized the enterprise?
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Education
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PJH4XOp3p0
1:00 min
We give all these students unstandardized schools
and then give them standardized exams.
The standards themselves are reflections of
inequality. There is also a subjective evaluation
process even when the standards themselves are
fair.
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who
falsely believe they are free.”
Johann Wolfgang Von Goeth
An American worker who once upon a time made
$8/hour, loses his job when the company relocates to
Thailand where workers are paid only $2/day.
Unemployed, and alienated from a society indifferent
to his needs, he becomes involved in the drug
economy or some other outlawed means of survival.
He is arrested, put in prison, and put to work.
His new salary: 22 cents/hour.
RACE, GENDER AND CAPITAL
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Policing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om2hx6X
m2JE&list=PLtKYJlhZvF6YmGvShrf7ZbjYM9fd0 JEv&index=47
How has the war on drugs, and the harsh
mandatory minimum sentences, and racism
converged to create a caste system very much
like the one under Jim Crow laws.
Imprisonment is the solution to a whole range of problems that are not being
addressed by the social institutions. Instead of building housing, throw the
homeless in prisons. Instead of developing the whole educational system,
throw the illiterate in prison. Throw people in the prison who lose jobs as a
result of deindustrialization, globalization of capital, and the dismantling of
the welfare state. Get rid of all of them. Remove these dispensable
populations from society. According to this logic, the prison becomes a way
of disappearing people in the false hope of disappearing the underlying
social problems they represent.
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Acting Out!
Kinds of Oppression:
Tracy Ore
Institutionalized oppression: that
which is built into, supported by, and
perpetuated by social institutions.
Interpersonal oppression: that which
is manifested between individuals.
+ Internalized oppression: that which is
directed at oneself.
People are slow to condemn or even
recognize institutional prejudice and
discrimination because it often
involves respected public officials and
long-established institutionalized
practices.
- Huey P Newton
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Happiness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF6jph_f6
4I
Explain the authors theory about intrinsic
goals versus extrinsic goals and happiness.
How import is close supportive family and
friends to your happiness and sense of
fulfillment?
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Remember to be radical is to simply grasp the
root of the problem and the root is us. I have a
suggestion, pretend you have boils, pretend
sitting on your ass gives you enormous pain…
you must act.
Let’s not talk any more of capitalism and
socialism, let’s just talk of using the incredible
wealth of the earth and of human beings, giving
people what they need: food, water, clean air,
pleasant homes so they can live, trees, some
grass, some hours of work, more hours of
leisure.
Don’t ask who deserves it, every human being
deserves it.