"For this week's post, pull a quote or two from the articles and use that to discuss the value of a class analysis. Why should we bother with looking at the world, history, and our disciplines, through a class lens? What do we see differently? Is that important? How does this change your thinking? These should be substantive and draw on the texts."
History offers us information how people and societies as a whole behaved before we were there ourselves to witness anything. It is a wonderful thing because, solely relying on current information would diminish our efforts in attempt to try and mimic or most likely correct (or improve) previous histories inadequacies. The famous saying “History repeats itself” is one that rings very true for this history lesson. As a society the reconstruction of the past enables us to understand the present better, and therefore plan for our futures.
Furthermore, by the teachings of history we have the ability to learn about ourselves and how we can therefore identify in class terms compared to those of the past . After reading author Michael Zweig’s article in Chapter three a quote about history and class distinctions when dealing with inheritances in families really stood out for me ”The sad fact is that after a lifetime of work, most working class people have nothing to show for it, only their kids to take their place.” This is so sad but so true. Wages as explained throughout this article for the working class people fell and the wealth from the workers (which they earned keep in mind) was all but shifted to the capitalists (the big man on the totum pole...thats right mostly MAN). A true show of power distortion in America. Though these working class people worked their entire lives the people of power (the CEOS and Bill Gates of our society today), still get the big prize at the end. With no history of belongings (homes etc) its like the working class were pretty much robbed of their legacies. A sadness that is still true today in the year 2011.
A true-life story of these “working class” people’s histories being demolished was during hurricane Katrina that stuck New Orleans. Thousands lost homes, life savings, and everything they worked so hard to get. A truly catastrophic event that could have been avoided numerous ways, yet the wrong “class” of people did not live there in order for those problems to get fixed. A quote from the article which we read for class that truly made me upset was …so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this—this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.”
Where do these sick people come from?? People of power still think like this! AWFUL! A quote from Zweig again, “to exercise power, you need to know who you are. You also need to know who your adversary is, the target in conflict.” We need to know our history in order to find the people who have spoken such ill words like the previous quotes of Katrina’s victims. History allows us to find these wolves in sheep’s clothing, and actually try and do something about it…if we have power ourselves (by chance). The diminished histories of hard working people should be a fact of history, and not a re-occurance everyday still.
I think the answer to your question of where these people comes from lies in one of the other blogs I have read tonight. They come from a society that encourages colorblindness in such a way that those of color disappear. If we are not exposed to something, how are we to know. Now, understand that I am not defending Bush's words, I am only hoping to reconcile them with the good I hope is still in the world around us. It is possible that Bush learned something after her comment was made public which opened her eyes to her misstep and the class divides that we have in America. One can only hope.
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