As I mentioned in class, here's the link to the article about the woman who makes $140k a year cleaning up after UPenn students. It's got it all: race, class, gender, education, status... You might also want to take a look at the pictures.
One thing I'd love to see folks do on this blog is link to articles that illustrate concepts we talk or read about in class. Here's a perfect example of the challenges of categorizing individuals into class groupings; there are of course relatively few people who do such low-status work for such a large income, but cases like these are common enough to warrant consideration in thinking about how you want to define and operationalize class. Should Kia Grasty be understood as being in the same class as others who earn in the upper portions of the income distribution? Or should she be thought of as being in the same class as others who clean up after other people for a living? or should we somehow combine those measures?
I think Kia Grasty falls into the upper middle class because she makes 140,000 a year. She surely isn't lower class or comparable to other housekeepers who make much less than her. I think her status as upper middle class can be seen by her income, the car she drives, and her closet full of fancy clothes. If we look at class from a relational stand point she would be thought of as lower class. If we think about her income from a gradational approach she would be upper. I don't think class can be though of as strictly gradational or relational. This example illustrates just that.
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