Social Class and Cultural Diversity

 In preparation for my Family Relations class this week, we had to watch a few videos. One in particular stuck out to me. It was a bunch of clips of people being shown a picture of somebody who looked a bit run down and they were asked their thoughts on it. I think every person in the video said he looked to be in the low to middle class. Then some people proceeded and were making fun and laughing at his appearance. Later on in the same video, some people were talking about how they wouldn't be caught dead in certain types of vehicles and certain types of clothing. Now, why does any of this matter? In recent times, society has been pushing for a perfectly equal civilization, but those same people don't see others as equals. Most of us don't even realize that we're judging and looking down on others. This is where Social Class comes in. For the most part, people are typically Middle class; not super-rich, but not poor either. We as people tend to naturally look down on others. So Middle-Classers will look subconsciously look down on the lower class, and the Upper class will look down on both. In my hometown, there was a local Highschool that was majority Upper-class. Most of the people that went to that school lived in huge houses, and were to be completely honest, snobby jerks. They recruited for sports, they trash-talked all the time at sporting events, and overall just thought they were better than everybody else. I'm not trying to just trash on the rich here, but this is just an example of how Social Class can come into play. Since they're more privileged, they think it's within their right to look down on everybody else. Nobody else is exempt from this either. I've caught myself even looking at poorer schools thinking they looked ghetto or just weren't that great. Even though more the most part, people and businesses don't discriminate based on these imaginary Social Classes, it's still an issue in the world today.

    Another topic that has a bit of a relation is Cultural Diversity. No two families are the same. In class today, we used the example of how some families are very touchy-feely and affectionate in their words and in their actions, while other families are the opposite. Being raised in a certain type of family can often bleed into what your own family could look like in the future. There are also times where we don't realize we're different from other people and other families until we are immersed in their normal. It can often seem strange to us if they don't have the same kind of family function as us. Going back to the example of the touchy vs. not touchy families, say somebody from the non-touchy family goes on a sleepover with their friend who has a very touchy family. They could be creeped out or feel uncomfortable being around a very touchy family. I'm interested to see how it could look if people from opposite types of families were to marry each other and what their family would look like.