SOCIOLOGY - HOW WORKING-CLASS PEOPLE EXPERIENCE BOTH STRUCTURAL AND CULTURAL BARRIERS TO UPWARD MOBILITY.
The American Dream is a popular cultural fiction that drives many Americans to work hard and persistently for upward mobility. Unfortunately, structural and cultural barriers show that the American Dream is too often a myth for the working class. The works of G. William Domhoff and Barbara Ehrenreich give two valuable perspectives on the obstacles that many in the working class cannot overcome in order to have the American Dream.
Structural Barriers to Upward Mobility
The persistent American Dream of upward mobility through hard work and determination has proven to be a cruel myth for working class people. The cruelty, reasons and effects of the myth are revealed by G. William Domhoff and Barbara Ehrenreich from two different perspectives. Domhoff approaches the myth as a research professor who studies, interprets and sometimes verifies other research regarding the myth. Ehrenreich examines it as a culture critic and writer who deliberately marginalizes herself to experience the lower working class first-hand in Florida, Maine and Minnesota.
The structural barriers faced by the working class are established and maintained by the owners and administrators of America's larger income-generating properties, like corporations, banks and agricultural businesses. According to Domhoff, these wealthy and powerful forces lobby, obviously and directly become involved in planning policy on important national issues, make large campaign donations to politicians supporting their continued domination, influence on the people being appointed to policy-making government positions, and sometimes even their own appointments...
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