| > Now now relax. We can have a sensible discussion without condescension. > You're in a thread about class and you're saying that class distinctions are good......You don't think those people who have experienced the bottom are going to have a reaction to that? I've "experienced bottom" and I don't really find what I said to be inflammatory or offensive, if we're willing to be honest with ourselves, it's rather quite self-evident. >You make it sound so easy! But it's not, growing up in a poor community frequently means growing up in poor schools with poor opportunities, no mentors and rare role models. I'm familiar with how "easy" or not it is - I've lived it. If you graduate high school and don't have a kid before you are married, you're pretty much guaranteed to enter the middle-class. > Would you say the same thing about racial distinctions? If not, why? What exactly do you mean? Do I think that racially homogeneous societies exhibit more social order? I don't know, that to me sounds like a question for a social scientist or sociologist. I don't find it to be analogous to what we're talking about here though, as one cannot change their race, but many are socially mobile. |
Fair.
>I've "experienced bottom" and I don't really find what I said to be inflammatory or offensive, if we're willing to be honest with ourselves, it's rather quite self-evident.
Well no. It may be self-evident when you're honest with yourself but when "we're" honest with "ourselves" it's not at all, hence the downvotes and disagreement in the replies.
>I'm familiar with how "easy" or not it is - I've lived it. If you graduate high school and don't have a kid before you are married, you're pretty much guaranteed to enter the middle-class.
This is the success sequence stuff? Look it's just not very true. Almost the entirety of various 'success sequence' poverty figures can be explained by one thing: maintaining full-time work. Everything else is small or zero. Well maintaining full-time work isn't always easy! There's a variety of circumstances outside ones control which can affect your ability to maintain full-time work.
http://www.demos.org/blog/8/13/15/success-sequence-extremely...
>What exactly do you mean? Do I think that racially homogeneous societies exhibit more social order? I don't know, that to me sounds like a question for a social scientist or sociologist.
You didn't need a social scientist or sociologist to declare that class distinctions are natural and helpful. Why the trepidation on race?
>I don't find it to be analogous to what we're talking about here though, as one cannot change their race, but many are socially mobile.
Are many mobile in an effortful sense though? Say I have a society where at birth we roll a bingo machine filled with balls 1-5 and we assign you to a quintile. This society would demonstrate perfect intergenerational mobility yet there would be no way to exert effort and change your circumstance - same as race. Now what if instead of a bingo machine we just had a very large 'luck' component to mobility? It's the same deal. It's not just about how many went from bottom quintile to third quintile or better, it's about how it happened.