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Thuy Vy, Bui Nguyen

Professor Koning
English 113B
May 8
th
2014

Childrens Social Class Affect the Successful
I always live my life working hard, trying to reach my goals to be successful in the
future. I was born in a upper working class family so I have nice clothes, school to study and
place to live. I have a great family background, so I believe that if I work hard enough I can get
even higher. However, when I think about those competitors around me who also think and work
as hard as I do I know that my dream is not easy. When it is hard for me who already has almost
every support to be in a higher class it must be harder for the poor those children who do not
have enough support; the poor? I started my visual essay with two picture in the second slide.
While many people believe that if they work hard they will be able to change their social class to
a higher level bell hooks in Where We Stand: Class Matter believes that without overt
expressions of class antagonism or racial conflict, the poor are forced out by a class mobility that
they cannot intervene on (136). From my visual essay, I want to show that poor children do not
have the opportunity to change their social class because of the inequality of racism, their lack of
consumerism, and a lack of education.
The first series of the essay are picture of child labor on the left from slide 2 to 5, which
are children who work. So far, everyone knows that the lowest stage of the system of
stratification is poor and the most extreme form of social stratification is slavery, and the
children who has family history and background as a slave will be hard for them to change their
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social class in the future. Slavery is base on people being own illegally by someone else and they
are not allow to own anything, even their life. Furthermore, if the history and family background
was once a slave, they will never be able to hide it to have a better status and once they do not
have a good background or family history, it is hard for people to accept them. Therefore, in
other to compare the different between the chances that the poor children have in order to change
their class, I also put photo of rich children on the right side of each of them. Robin L. Neinhorn,
a history professor mentioned in his article Slavery that The history of slavery cannot be
separated from the history of business in the United States, especially in the context of the
relationship between public power and individual property rights. Since they were born, poor
children started their own business without income because the money will go there parent or
their owner. These poor children children lost their freedom and their future due to the lack of
everything. bell hooks said in her book that We live in a society where the poor have no public
voice (5) so no matter how much they want to be better it is just hard for them and no one will
admit their hard work. So when the rich children enjoying playing, shopping, studying or even
sleeping, the poor one have to work hard to living.
When talking about the poor, we think about their lack of consumerism, they do not have
money to buy anything they want. By looking at the poor children throughout the visual essay
we can see the different between the poor and rich children on how much property they have. So
once the poor are allow to play, they are not like the rich one who have technology devices and
expensive toys, they just play with anything they found at the garbage places or any nature active
activities; for example from slide 6 to 10. We already see that they do not have toys like the
wealthy children, from slide 11 to 15, the picture shows that the poor children do not have a
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proper place to live, to sleep and to take a shower. Everything they have are left over that they
found and those properties might used to belong to the wealthy children. Slide 11 shows that the
poor children have to take shower with dirty water outside in the river while the healthy kid have
their own bathroom and shower gel. In slide 12 to 14, while the wealthy have warm blanket,
clear bed and their own bed room in a big house, the poor children have sleep on the floor, on the
street or in any corner as long as they can. Further more in every slide, we could see that the poor
kids dont have enough clothes to wear while the rich one than enough. Therefore, with the
amount of property, it show that, the poor children will never be about to compete with the part
of the world that have more support than them. Furthermore, on slide 16, while Nelson Mandela
said education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world, poor
children do not have the same opportunity like everyone else. From slide 17 to 23, the poor do
not have enough books or any other school material like the wealthy children. Moreover, the
program that they are learning will never cover as much the rich one. This show that they do not
have any chance to change their own life then how can they change the world around them.
In conclusion, inequality happened in social class so it is not like everyone can have the
same opportunity. Having slavery background and being name is unfair for them when the
wealthy one get to be free. Class mobility cannot be change when the poor do not have enough
what they need in their everyday live and emotional support in other to make their successful.
The important thing is the poor children do not have enough education, knowledge to compete
with those have, they do not have any chance to change there class.


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Works Cited
Einhorn, Robin. "Slavery." Enterprise & Society, 9.3 (2008): 491. May 8
th
2014

Hooks, bell. WHERE WE STAND: Class Matters New York: Routledge, 2000. Pg. 5-
136. May 8
th
2014