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Thuy Vy, Bui Nguyen

Professor Koning
English 113B
May 8
th
2014

Childrens Social Class Affects the Success
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 pictures 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 have 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 based on people being owned illegally by someone else and
they are not allow to own anything, even their life. Furthermore, if the history and family
background of the person was once a slave, he or she 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 order to compare the difference between the chances that the poor
children have in order to change their class, I also put photos 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 their parents or their owner. These poor children lost their freedom and their
future because they lack 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 acknowledge their hard work. So when the rich children are enjoying
playing, shopping, studying or even sleeping, the poor ones have to work hard to live.
When talking about the poor, we think about they lack 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 children are allow to play, they are not the same as the rich ones who have
technology devices and expensive toys. The poor children 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
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the poor children do not have a proper place to live, to sleep and to take a shower. Everything
they have is the 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
materials like the wealthy children. Moreover, the program that they are learning will never
cover as much as the rich ones. This shows that they do not have any chance to change their own
lives then how can they change the world around them.
In conclusion, inequality present in social class so it is not like everyone can have the
same opportunity. Having a slavery background and being labeled is unfair for them when the
wealthy ones get to be free. Class mobility cannot be changed when the poor do not have enough
what they need in their everyday lives and emotional support in order to make their success. The
important thing is the poor children do not have enough education, knowledge to compete with
those who have, they do not have any chance to change their 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