"There is no one in the world who does not cherish the hope of having his standard of living raised." - His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie
I think this statement is true to the core of the culture of the United States. Mostly everyone I've ever known wants to be more affluent, own more things and in the plainest terms; have more money. Marx believed that if a person worked then he/she was apart of the working class regardless of how much money he/she made. As our culture shows us, this is not true.

I honestly loved and was blown away by the series of videos from People Like Us. These are actions I see all day everyday in life, but when I correlate what I've learned in sociology 100 to the videos; I really have to do a WOW. I was a little disappointed that their weren't any Black or Spanish videos but I pretty much got the gist of it.
Middle class, upper class and working class are terms rooted in our vocabulary so that we can associate and put people into the group they are deserving of. This means we class them by social status, political views, how they dress and how much money they have. America is a nation of groups, tribes that come together because they have the same likes and dislikes. What I've learned most from the video is that it is hard to define and put people in certain boxes, but it would be even harder if people just didn't. People tend to be afraid of what they don't understand. The United States has many social distinctions and some are very hard to see. Sometimes, I'm just seen as a black girl. Just a black girl, who's probably dumb and has no father and is poor. Among many people in social settings I am a hipster who lives in Brooklyn. To me, I am a young adventurous woman attempting to be happy. Why can't their be a class, classified as happy?

I decided to read Media Magic: Making class invisible by Gregory Mantsios. In which I am even more confused from what I knew about classes to now. What I have learned is that large corporations own most of the media, and Americans watch a lot of news, read lots of magazines and newspapers and love the Internet. The media along with the government get to decide what the mass people are exposed to and what the are not. The media definitely doesn't want to do any coverage of nasty, dirty poor,starving people. Why? Because the one percent of wealthy white men who own everything in America simply don't want to deal with it. So the media edits and produces it out so that the majority of the middle working class believe that it's not that bad, when in all reality they're just hiding that poor people in America exist. With all of the coverage of Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump, the media helps the people forget about poor. The poor are just down on their luck and an eyesore. But the reading tells us that poverty in the US is systematic. There could be literally no poor people in America but it would burden and hinder what the wealthy have. The rich are too worried about their next trip or purchase while the working class is too busy working for themselves and with the medias help, no class has to even know that the poor exist.

Class and inequality is a hard topic to talk about as a black female. Most of the time I like to just smile and pretend that none of it exists but with this assignment I realize from my own experiences that it does. I still believe in equal opportunity and individualism. With nurturing love and education, anything is possible.