Everyday Sociology Blog

Conspicuous consumption and your iPhone

By Bradley Wright

Conspicuous consumption is one of the classic concepts in sociology. It was developed by Thorstein Veblen in his 1899 book, The Theory of the Leisure Class. I know, it’s hard to believe that people were actually alive back then, let alone creating ideas that we still find useful, but it’s true.

This concept describes how wealthy people spend large amounts of money on goods and services as a way of showing their status. It doesn’t refer to all large expenses—sometimes you get a lot more things when you spend more; instead, it refers to spending as a way of showing off who you are. In fact, sometimes what you end up with is no better, or sometimes worse, than what you can get for less money.

A classic example of conspicuous consumption is using silver utensils and fine china for meals, especially when guests are over. Bringing out the good stuff does show that you’ve attained a certain level of material comfort, but it’s also not very practical. Silver has to be polished, china breaks easily, and neither can go into the dishwasher. Their main purpose, then, is one of status display.

There’s no reason to limit the concept of conspicuous consumption to just the well-to-do. Even college students engage in it. I don’t know about where you go to school, but here at the University of Connecticut the fashion among students is to wear jackets and pullovers (preferably black) by Northface and, for women, boots made by Ugg. Now, Northface’s slogan is “never stop exploring”, and its website has pictures of people doing all sorts of brave, active things, like rock climbing and canoeing. My guess, however, is that most college students don’t need that high level of performance. Why spend the big money on name-brands when generic wear is also available? One could make the case that it’s an issue of style and cultural taste, and that makes sense. The main reason for their appeal could be that name brand clothes show statues. They show that you have the money and prestige to wear the coolest things.

I’m writing about this concept now, even though it has been around for literally a hundred years, because I read about the perfect illustration of conspicuous consumption. As everyone under 40 knows (and some of us over 40 have heard about), Apple makes a wicked-cool cell phone it calls the iPhone. You can load little software programs on it, called “apps”, that do various functions.

One of these apps is called the “I am rich” application. It costs $1,000 and serves absolutely no purpose other than to shine a red ruby on your iPhone that lets others know that you could afford to buy this app. That’s it. It shows that you’re rich and doesn’t do anything else. Apparently Apple no longer carries it at its stores because it was getting bad publicity (again, making decisions on how people perceive something).

In thinking about how this concept plays out today, I suppose there is something that we could call “inconspicuous” consumption. Here you consume goods and services, and present them to others, as a way of hiding status. Perhaps back in Veblen’s time, when I think dinosaurs still roamed the world, all status was seen as good, so if you got it, you flaunt it. Now, however, we’re sufficiently suspicious and cynical about wealth that some people may make choices to hide status. Here are some examples that might illustrate this idea.

My wife went to a fancy, well-known liberal arts college, and when people ask her where she went to school, she’ll usually answer “in the Boston area.” Now, this conflicts with other people I know who went to Ivy league schools. You can be pretty sure that within five minutes of meeting someone, these people will let drop that they went to an Ivy.

Last year a family member gave us a used car that he didn’t need anymore. It’s about seven years old, doesn’t have too much mileage, and runs reasonably well. The big downside: It’s a Mercedes. Besides paying extra for mechanic bills, I have to put up with my friends ribbing me about thinking I’m high status because I drive a Mercedes. I’ve even thought of yanking off the hood ornament to disguise the manufacturer of the car. From a straight conspicuous consumption approach, I should seek to display status with this car, but in reality, I want to avoid what I perceive as negative stereotypes associated with it. I suppose, then, that I really am looking for status with my car choices, it’s just that I see “wealthy-display” as undesirable and maybe I’m looking for a status I value more, maybe “broke intellectual”?

If nothing else, the discussion above points out that conspicuous (or inconspicuous) consumption involves more than simply what we buy and hire, for it also includes how we make it known to others. To make a status display, you need not only to have the goods, but you need for other people to know.

Sociology on Vacation

 

By Bradley Wright

Last week I took my two sons up to a big amusement park (this is New England, so unfortunately we don’t have Disneyland). Each summer we try to buy season passes to a different fun place, and this year it was an amusement park. The boys really enjoy the rides and the water park. Me? I kind of have fun being a sociologist and watching what goes on at the park because a lot of what goes on fits with sociological principles. These include:

Social Stratification is a social system that ranks people in terms of a hierarchy. Sociologists usually talk about it in terms of class, caste, and intergenerational mobility. Well, this amusement park had its own class levels. At the bottom were the regular people like my family who just buy a ticket and go on rides. Next up is what they call a “super flash pass.” This pass works like magic. When you go to one of the popular rides, and there is a long line, you show this pass and you get put into a much shorter line for the ride.

Cool, but the “super flash pass” starts at $50. At the highest level is the “very important you” experience. With this you go straight to the start of the line, you get to park your car close to the entrance, you get a private tour of the park (though, I don’t know how private it is with thousands of people around you), and you get a private autograph session with one of the park characters. Okay, as far as I can tell, the characters can’t talk, and they are really alienated teenagers dressing up like cartoon animals for minimum wage, so I’m not sure why someone would pay extra for the autograph of an irritated, silent young person. The price for this highest level of “service”? $250 per person with a minimum of four people. That’s $1,000 to be top dog of the amusement park.

The conflict theory of crime holds that laws are passed to favor the wealthy (I know, you probably find this idea shocking), and it too was in evidence at the park. Being rather cheap, I don’t like paying $15 for the regular parking at the amusement park, so I pay $10 to park at a nearby restaurant that is actually a little closer to the main gate of the park. In speaking with the owner, I found out that the city is working hard to make it illegal to park there for the amusement park. So, if you want a bite to eat at the restaurant, go ahead and park your car. But, if you want to walk 100 yards to the amusement park, forget it.

Why would the city outlaw parking outside the park? Well, it’s a small town, and the amusement park is far-and-away their biggest tax payer. The amusement park makes approximately 1-trillion-dollars-a-day (their concession stands are really expensive), but they also want the less than one-thousand-dollars-a-day that this off-site parking place pulls in. The park, having lots of money, has lots of influence with the city government. The city government, eager to please the park, tries to pass an ordinance that doesn’t make much sense and only harms the average Joe looking to save a few dollars.

Another sociological observation involves the young people we saw at the park. Studies of youth culture note how young people find their own, distinctive ways of doing things, and this culture works best when it is different than what boring-old-people are doing.

Well, walking around the park, I noticed a unique style of dress. Scattered about were clusters of high-school-aged kids who were dressed virtually identically. They all wore oversized athletic shoes and relatively new blue jeans. Around their necks, they wore white t-shirts twisted with a bandana. This bandana was folded so that, if they wanted to, they could pull it up over their mouth to hide their features. (“Hey, you guys want to go rob a train?”). The kids had similar haircuts, and they wore brand-new ball caps, turned about 90 degrees to the side.

Now, these kids carried a bit of an “I’m tough” scowl on their faces and had a tough guy swagger to their walk, but to me they looked downright silly. I honestly thought that they were park characters when I first saw them (“Hi, can I get your autograph for $1,000?”) More than anything they reminded me of little kids dressing up like cowboys, which didn’t fit with the tough persona they were trying to project. Okay, if I were younger, a lot younger, maybe I would think they are cool, so I’m not trying to impose some middle-aged standard of appropriate dress. Instead, these “outfits” they wore illustrate the powerful influence of youth culture.

So there you have it; in addition to offering roller coasters, water rides, and overpriced hot dogs, amusement parks serve up sociology as well.

Everyday Sociology Talk: Global Inequality and Stuff

Karen Sternheimer and Sally Raskoff discuss where our everyday stuff comes from and what it teaches us about globalization and inequality.

Status and Sociology

By Karen Sternheimer

Sociologists study the role that social status plays in every aspect of social life. We consider how hierarchies impact opportunities and challenges, often looking critically at how people in positions of power use their status to maintain dominance over others.

Here’s one of sociology’s dirty little secrets: the field is filled with sociologists who wrestle each other for status, often uncritically accepting hierarchies and use the privileges they derive from their institutional affiliations and publications.

You would think that sociologists might refrain from establishing a social pecking order and continually enforcing it. But one thing that I have learned about people is that we are all rife with contradictions (a nice word for hypocrisy). 

I typically observe this status game being played out at our discipline’s annual meeting. People wear badges around their necks with their institutional affiliation listed under their names. The first thing a newcomer notes is the eye dart: the glance at the badge to see if the name rings a bell. I confess that I often do it too. Sometimes a well-known sociologist walks by, and you have the excitement of knowing that someone whose book you read is before you in the flesh.

Sociology actually has its own celebrities, celebrities who have no cache outside of a room full of sociologists. They can draw a crowd, and typically they are invited to sit on conference panels rather than submit a paper for presentation pending the approval of a session organizer. Others flock to these sessions to curry their favor, feign interest, try and network, or just to feel like they are in the presence of someone important. (Yes, some are also interested in the session itself too).

Men are the main holders of celebrity status within sociology, despite the fact that there are slightly more women than men in the discipline now. The majority of sociologists—about eighty percent—are white, as are the “stars” for the most part. But unlike the rest of society, age doesn’t minimize status for those who acquired high standing.

Sociologists don’t tend to be stars to non-sociologists, but successful non-sociologists who come to meetings are treated like celebrities. Authors, filmmakers, and journalists invited to sessions often draw standing-room-only crowds. These intellectual stars are to the NPR crowd what the High School Musical cast is to 'tweens (without the screaming, for the most part).

Sociologists also focus on their institution’s rank relative to others. Every graduate program has a rank, and many people choose a graduate program based on how high the school appears on a list (just like undergraduates often do). But it doesn’t end after grad school. Status conscious professors take jobs as stepping stones to try and climb the sociology status ladder, publish in journals based on their ranking, and for some the whole practice of sociology becomes about their personal success. This makes some journal articles unreadable, since they are only meant to impress other status seekers rather than a larger audience.

On my way to a conference years ago, I was aboard a plane and overheard the conversation of the people seated behind me. From their discussion it became clear that they were sociologists who were also headed to the conference. In those days, the preliminary program came in the mail, so I had a copy with me and apparently so did they. They looked up their sessions and noted to each other when they were scheduled to present their papers. Listening in, I looked up those sessions and saw they focused on inequalities of race and ethnicity.

Moments later, a flight attendant passed through the aisle. One of the sociologists called to her, “Excuse me, my coffee has gotten cold!” and demanded that she bring her a fresh cup. As the flight attendant walked away, the sociologist muttered to her colleague that the service was just terrible. When her fresh coffee arrived, she did not respond with gratitude, but with resentment.

I was shocked. First that anyone sitting in coach would have expected that level of attentive service, and second that someone who studies inequality for a living would treat a service worker in that manner. 

Most sociologists that I know aren’t as blind to their status or as demeaning as the lady on the plane was. Most sociologists are not cold-blooded status seekers (especially not the ones who write for this blog). But we seldom take a good look in the mirror to examine how we replicate inequality in both our personal lives and in our profession as well.

Do Sociologists all Look Alike? Homogeneity and Heterogeneity

By Sally Raskoff

I just returned from a sociology conference where I noticed, as I do every time I attend, that sociologists tend to look alike. When I go out into the city to walk and revive my body from the tedium of sitting too long in the meeting, I watch the people I pass on the street. Although I take off my conference name badge when I do this, as do most of the other sociologists, many of us can tell when we pass someone who else is a meeting escapee even if we don’t know the person. In the meeting itself or in the hotel public areas, it is also easy to identify the sociologists among the other hotel patrons. 

This is true for people in most occupational groups. We tend to look like people who do the same job even if our bodies and backgrounds are diverse. Why might this be?

Perhaps the clothing? Many occupations require certain styles or types of dress when working. Lawyers wear suits while many others wear actual uniforms like scrubs, jumpsuits, white coats, company issued pants, shirt, and jackets. When a dress code is not specified, people still may dress alike! A colleague told me years ago that he could always tell who the kindergarten through high school teachers were since they all wore clothing from J.C. Penney’s or Sears. 

Perhaps the income? Our clothes may be similar because the comparable income levels prompt people to shop at particular types of stores. Thus, teachers who make a low to moderate income would shop at stores known for price breaks and “affordable” clothing. And lawyers, whose income on average tends to be quite high, would wear more expensive custom tailored suits. 

This income homogeneity reminds me of a former acquaintance who had an interesting perspective on his home furnishings. Every time he got a promotion at work, he would get rid of his furniture and buy new items from a store “one level up” from the source of his last set of furnishings. 

I don’t remember the exact order but he wouldn’t shop at a store high on his list until he had the job that he felt entitled him to that type of product. When he went into the houses of other people, he would assess their work status by assessing the source and quality of their furniture. His top goal was to reach a position that would allow him to hire a designer to find unique furniture from wholesale-only sources. (He moved away and we lost touch so I’m not sure he ever got promoted to that point!)

But income can’t be the only factor, since in this group of sociologists as in many others, there are some entry-level students and others at the other end of their careers and our incomes are as diverse as our sociological experience.

Beyond income, perhaps social class? Social class includes income but also wealth, education, and occupation, so it ties some of the elements in this puzzle together. People who gain similar levels of education and jobs, and go on to make similar amounts of income and wealth, would also tend to purchase their clothing and personal hygiene products from similar sources. 

However, those at higher levels of social class would have more options for those purchases, thus we could predict more variability in their appearances than for those at lower social class levels since they have fewer options. There are many stories floating around about super rich people who dress like “everyone else” yet they are certainly able to dress up in the latest fashions if going out to a public event.

Perhaps the event? Since the setting for my initial observation is a professional conference, there are some norms about what to wear, which create some standards of dress. However, as with other societal norms, not everyone follows these norms. Actually, there is much diversity in dress at these conferences since it seems that many people do dress as they do at their home institutions. We sociologists may know a lot about norms but that doesn’t mean that we are more likely to conform to them – perhaps we are more likely to deviate from them! While many are wearing suits and other professional attire, many others are wearing anything from all black to jeans. 

Perhaps personality? A relative once told me that she didn’t want to go into a particular line of work because the people she knew in that industry did not represent the type of person she wanted to be. She was noticing that people who do similar work not only may look alike but they may also have similar personalities, mannerisms, and/or behavior! The question then arises as to whether similar types of people go into similar types of work or people who work in similar jobs become similar over time. Does the person make the job or does the job make the person? 

Sociologically, both are probably true. (Life is not as simple as a one-way street!) 

Emile Durkheim’s concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity can help to explain the structure of life in different types of settings. In simpler, agrarian, or small communities, life is more homogeneous -- people do similar types of work, worship at the same types of places, and have similar ancestries or cultural practices. All of this offers a mechanical solidarity that ties people together. 

However in more complex, urban, and “modern” communities, organic solidarity is what holds the society together. As heterogeneity increases in population, jobs, opportunities, technologies, cultural practices and ancestry, it is the similarities that hold the entire system together. Thus, complex divisions of labor create not only different types of people but interdependent types of people in specific occupations. Those occupational groups also bond people within the group together so that their social network includes people from work and not just people in their kinship group. Symbolic bonds are displayed through clothing and other visible signs of membership. 

As our consumer options shrink with the merging of retail outlets, we see more homogeneity across the nation in our clothing and fashion. Would Durkheim say that this is just one way that our complex division of labor and the resulting interdependencies and occupational communities allow more social bonds to be formed to strengthen the society as a whole? Perhaps. Would Marx agree? Would Weber agree? Would Martineau agree? Would DuBois agree?

If we agree that people in related occupations who have similar income and education levels dress similarly because of their consumer limitations and workplace cultures, can we assume that the bonds they have with each other are reinforced by these visible and thus symbolic similarities?

Global Poverty for Sale

By Karen Sternheimer

Do you ever get unsolicited catalogs in the mail? I occasionally get them from “upscale” stores featuring high-priced designer brands.  This makes me laugh because I am an outlet mall shopper at heart, and the thought of spending thousands for a dress or a pair of shoes or a handbag never crosses my mind. I suspect that since many affluent people live in my zip code I am mistaken for one of “them.” 

 

These catalogs usually go right into the recycling bin, but occasionally I give them a look for a good mock now and then. A recent catalog seemed ripe for a laugh, with its extra-thick paper attempting to lure me to shop at South Coast Plaza, the largest mall in Orange County, California, which according to Mapquest is exactly 53.15 miles from my home (for point of reference, Rodeo Drive is less than ten miles away, so if I wanted to spend ridiculous amounts of money I could do so much closer to home). 

 

But leafing through the catalog was not so funny. The high-fashion shots featured models in their over-priced designer clothes against the backdrop of global poverty. The motorcycle pictured on the left features a license plate that reveals that the shoot took place in the Dominican Republic, a Caribbean island where approximately thirty percent of the population lives in poverty. In 2000, their per capita income was about $2,326.

 

But poverty is apparently chic, at least when it can add some element of authenticity to the new spring fashion line. As you can see from the ad copy on the right, words like “exotic,” “primitive” and “tribal colors” provide “inspiration” for “new designs.”

 

Yes, infant mortality rates in the Dominican are 47 per 1,000 live births, more than seven times the U.S. rate of 6.3 per 1,000, and 2.5 percent of the adult population is HIV positive, but they provide us with “simple shapes” and “vivid scenery.”

 

I found this ad for the green Dolce & Gabbana dress particularly interesting. The dress is nice, but the background is what is really interesting: the crumbling shack to the left and people adding “local color” in the far right. While I could not find the price for this particular dress, D & G dresses typically range from $1,500-$2,800 each. In other words, just about the annual income of an average Dominican.

 

The Quiksilver ad on the right offers a more up-close view of the “vivid scenery.” Here we have decidedly unhappy locals leaning against a house resting on crumbling concrete. Note that only the white model smiles. While his outfit probably cost under $150, much less than the D & G dress, his casual attire contrasts with the shabbier clothes of the others in the picture, particularly the boy with holes in his rolled-up jeans.

 

In these photos, the people of the Dominican Republic are mere props. Adding to a backdrop of what the ad describes as “exotic,” is the man riding a donkey pulling a cart on the left, and the young boys staring at the model on the right as she poses. 

 

Both of the women’s poses are interesting in light of the persistence of the global sex trade in developing nations. According to a 1997 Miami Herald article, prostitution is a particularly bad problem in the Dominican, with its high poverty rate and increase in international tourism. The majority of women working as prostitutes are mothers trying to support their children; and as with other poor countries, children themselves often end up ensnared in global sex tourism.

 

Yet the images of children in the ads are highly sentimental, enabling us to overlook some of the serious challenges children in “exotic places” confront. In the Dominican Republic, school children must wear uniforms, like the kids in these pictures, although no funding is provided for them. The girls in the ad on the right in the front are dressed in the American store’s clothes, in contrast with their uniformed peers. All stand in rubble but appear happy.

 

The white model to the left, posed as “teacher,” appears pregnant herself, and it is interesting to think about the different life chances that child likely will have compared with children in developing countries. Adding to the “local color,” the book she holds “Incas, Mayas, y Aztecas,” recalls other colonized peoples in a crumbling classroom.

 

Finally, nature itself becomes commodified in these ads. This Jimmy Choo handbag, pictured with a hay-thatched hut in the background, retails for $3,050, more than the average annual income of a Dominican citizen. 

 

And this necklace pictured on the right turns being green on its head. While the ad copy shown above details the “vivid scenery” and “colors inspired by nature,” this picture seems to suggest that nature itself needs adornment.

 

Advertising may not make us more likely to buy any of this stuff, but it is loaded with interesting sociological components. Here we see issues of the environment, race, socioeconomic status, and globalization embedded into a series of ads. They (probably unintentionally) help us see some of the contrasts between the materialism of the wealthy in industrialized nations and the extreme poor of developing countries. What do you see?

The Economics of Selling Drugs

By Bradley Wright

One of the joys of doing social research is the constant exposure to empirical data. I can’t count the number of times that I was sure that the world worked in one way only to be corrected by data (and sometimes my research corrects others’ misperceptions).

Here’s a great example of how actual data about a topic can correct prevailing misconceptions. I think that most people in society would view drug dealing as a fairly lucrative business. Illegal drugs, such as cocaine, heroin, marijuana, are bought from growers and resold at a substantial mark-up. Somebody has to be making lots of money, no? Stories of drug busts often emphasize the enormous amounts of money involved. In movies and television, drug dealers usually seem to live on yachts and have private airplanes and waiting, chauffeured cars. 

Well, it turns out that once social scientists actually measured how much money that drug dealers were making, the results suggested that most dealers work for close to minimum wage. That’s right—that make about as much money selling drugs as if they were working at McDonalds or at the mall.

The best known study of the drug dealers’ finances was conducted by Levitt and Venkatesh. While they published it as an academic article, it is best known from a chapter in their best-selling book Freakonomics. What’s unique about this research is its data. Venkatesh, a sociologist, spent years living with a crack-dealing gang in Chicago.

(Check out the video clip of Venkatesh describing some of his work on the right.)

In the process of getting to know the gang members, Venkatesh was given financial records covering four years of the gang’s activities. These were the accounting books of the gang—the amount of drugs sold, expenses, and the pay given to each member of the gang. This remarkable data gave insight to the inside workings of a drug-dealing street gang.

The data indicated that the gang received its money from selling drugs, collecting dues from its members, and extorting individuals and companies doing business in the gang’s turf. The majority of money came from selling drugs. The gang’s expenses went to buying the drugs, hiring mercenary fighters, giving money to the gang hierarchy, paying for funerals for its members, buying weapons, and paying its members.

The picture that emerged from the wage data was one very similar to a conventional corporation. A few members made lots of money, but the majority made barely enough to live on; in fact, some of the dealers had to live with their mothers because they couldn’t afford to move out. The actual hourly wage earned by a gang’s foot soldier—the person on the street making the sales—ranged from $2.50 to $7.10 an hour (in 1995 dollars). That’s not much money at all. The gang leaders or “officers” did much better. They earned from $32 to $97 dollars an hour. These are data for one local gang. The central gang, which oversaw the local gangs much like a company would oversee its franchises, made substantially more money. As with a regular, legal corporation, the low-level workers of the gang did most of the work but the high-level members received most the pay. 

An interesting question arises from these data: Why do foot soldiers sell drugs for so little money? Any job has its potential costs—a worker at McDonalds might get sore feet, occasional grease burns, and probably some weight gain—but selling drugs is extraordinarily dangerous. The death rates in Venkatesh and Levitt’s sample was 7% annually. That means that, on average, about 1 in 14 gang members was killed. Why would anyone risk so much for so little?

A standard sociological answer would hold that the gang members had few opportunities for legitimate wages. In addition, the sample members spoke of being foot soldiers as a way of stepping up to becoming an officer of the gang and make much better money. Just as a college student might work in the mail room of a large corporation, in order to start climbing the ladder, these gang members started with selling drugs on the street for near minimum wage pay.

Despite the considerably different cultural context between gangs and corporate America, it seems that they share a lot of similarities. Both have hierarchical pay scales that represent inequality, and both have individuals willing to suffer through the lower ranks in hopes of getting to the higher ranks.

Who would have thought? 

Want to learn more? Here’s a presentation by Steven Levitt about this research.

Racism as a Risk Factor for Infant Mortality

By Janis Prince Inniss

One segment of the PBS documentary Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? examined infant mortality in the U.S. Infant mortality is a measure of the number of babies who die in their first year of life, a figure expressed as a portion of 1,000 live births. 

What causes babies to die so early? Congenital abnormalities, being born too early and too small, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), are the leading causes of infant death. According to the Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook’s 2007 estimate, the infant mortality rate in the U.S. is 6.37; according to this report 41 countries reported better rates than the U.S. 

In fact, according to the State of the World's Mothers report, the U.S. has the second worst infant mortality rate in the developed world! Although there may be many good reasons for the rates of other countries to appear better than they really are, a few things are clear about the U.S. rate. 

First, the infant mortality rate has decreased significantly over the last four or so decades; it was 26.0 in 1960. Second, among all women in the U.S., African American women have the highest infant mortality rate. Third, infant mortality rates for African Americans are almost two and a half times that of whites (13.6 compared to 5.6). 

If you’re familiar with the relationship between class and race, this disparity in infant mortality might not be particularly surprising. It might make sense that African Americans would experience higher infant mortality rates as result of factors related to their lower socioeconomic status (SES); for example, low-income pregnant women might not seek prenatal care due to a lack of health insurance and tight finances. However, research on the topic finds that increases in SES and education do not erase this racial gap. As you will see in the video, infant mortality rates for white college graduates is 3.7 per 1,000 while that for black college graduates is three times as high (10.2 per 1,000). Infant mortality rates for black college graduates are on par with that of whites without a high school education—who have a rate of 9.9 per 1,000. 

Another hypothesis put forward to explain the differential infant mortality rates is a possible genetic component responsible for the disparity. Researchers reasoned that looking at the infant mortality rates of other black women should confirm such a “prematurity gene”. Yet, black women from Africa and the Caribbean do have not have the same kinds of infant mortality rates as African-American women; African women have infant mortality rates similar to that of white American women and babies born to Caribbean women are heavier at birth than those of African-American women. 

Further, after one generation of living in the U.S. these immigrant groups have infant mortality rates similar to that of African Americans, suggesting that there is something about the black American experience that leads to poor infant mortality. Hmm.

But how could race impact infant mortality? In a word, racism. Researchers have found that women who perceive racial prejudice are two times more likely to have a very low birth weight baby. Social scientists are now examining the relationship between the stress that racial prejudice produces and its adverse impact on the body; such stress may cause the release of stress hormones that trigger labor, for example. Watch Drs. Lu and Jones discuss the life course perspective and the impact of this kind of stress over a lifetime:

In a number of previous posts, I have discussed issues related to race, ethnicity, culture and related concepts. Perhaps like you, readers have questioned whether race is even relevant in today’s multiracial, multiethnic world. More than forty years have passed since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred segregation in public places in the U.S. So racial prejudice is history! But is it really? 

Most young Americans grew up before the passage of this act. Many of your parents, professors, ministers, and doctors, can tell personal stories of what life was like before the passage of that legislation. History doesn’t seem so ancient then. And what are the present day remnants of racial prejudice? Is that history too? Just as we may begin to feel comfortable that race and related concepts are simply well, historical concepts, the findings surrounding infant mortality suggest remind us that while we may argue about definitions and the utility of these ideas, people’s experiences demonstrate that none of this is simply academic flexing. Racism and its perception impacts lives, including—perhaps most especially—the smallest lives among us.

Robert W. Fuller: An End to Inequality and Violence?

By Thomas Scheff 

Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, UC Santa Barbara

I didn’t understand why I found Barack Obama's race speech so moving until I read Robert W. Fuller's comments about it. They seemed brilliant to me, so I proceeded to read Fuller’s other writings. I think they make a powerful contribution to our understanding of the enigmas of our time, and may have the potential to help us surmount them.

Fuller has had an illustrious career; first as physicist, then President of his alma mater, Oberlin College, as a citizen diplomat during the Cold War, chair of the board of Internews, and many other distinctions. The approach he takes to the issue of inequality may be his greatest contribution, though. 

In his approach, there are two main components to the problem of inequality: rankism, on the one hand, and dignity, on the other. The term rankism doesn’t concern rank per se, but the abuse of rank. Some systems of rank are inherently abusive: white over black, male over female, hetero over homosexual, Christian over Muslim, extreme nationalism, and so on. But even legitimate systems of rank, those in most organizations, are often abusive; if not in principle, then in practice.

Fuller focuses his spotlight on dignity and the ways it can be abused. This perspective offers what seems to me to be a distinctive solution to the problem of inequality. That is, it doesn’t concern economic rank or political hierarchy directly, but dignity and its opposite, humiliation. This focus, as will be suggested below, may help with a problem that probably cannot be understood in strictly economic or political terms: gratuitous and/or interminable conflict. 

Fuller’s analysis begins with what he calls micro-inequalities, the withholding of dignity by one person from another. At work, if your boss continually interrupts conversations to take phone calls, it is a slight, a small indignity. But slights add up. If they are frequent enough, one can feel like a nobody. Maybe the boss meant no disrespect, but to be slighted consistently is humiliating. 

Much of the sociologist Erving Goffman’s work concerns this issue. He called it facework, the saving and loss of face. But it also is crucial to his most famous idea, impression management. One seeks to manage the impression one makes on others, in order to maintain one’s dignity, and often, the dignity of others. 

Goffman was concerned only with face-to-face interaction, but Fuller extends dignity/humiliation process to the traditional problem of macro-inequalities between groups. All contacts between persons and between groups have an effect on the bond: the bond is either maintained, strengthened, or disrupted by those contacts. Helping the other person or group maintain their dignity maintains the existing bond or strengthens it. Disrespect disrupts it. There are no exceptions: contact cannot occur without affecting the bond. Secure bonds lead to cooperation, disrupted ones to conflict. When the bond is entirely broken, as is often the case, others can become mere objects.

Fuller’s approach is powerful in several different ways. It is applicable to many ostensibly different issues: race, inter-ethnic and inter-nation relations, gender, sexual orientation, social class, and so on. It also implies a theory that may explain gratuitous and/or interminable conflict between individuals and between groups. 

For example, the Serbian attack on the Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s can be traced back to a defeat of the Serbs by Muslim Turks hundreds of years earlier. The Serbs took this ancient defeat as a humiliation, and harbored vengeance until it became possible. Similarly, France plotted for many years to regain their honor (read dignity) after defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, and Hitler won over the German people by promising to regain the honor they lost in the defeat in 1918. Humiliation spawns humiliation, and it can strike deep. The dignity/humiliation framework seems to reach into the very core of human conduct. 

Finally, Fuller uses terms that are understandable by everyone. Audiences all over the world have responded enthusiastically to his speeches. Indeed, his work could provide the foundation for a social movement to create dignitarian organizations and, ultimately, to build a dignitarian society. For these and other reasons not mentioned in these brief comments, Fuller's ideas are well worth our attention.

Reality Life

By Karen Sternheimer

Confession: I am fascinated by reality shows. Not the game show kind, where there is a contest or people get eliminated (although I was into them at first). My weakness is for the ones that follow people around and promise to give us a glimpse into their everyday lives. I don’t admit this very often, but I have often thought about the significance of shows like The Osbournes, Hogan Knows Best, Hey Paula, My Life on the D-List, and Newlyweds. (Yes, I have watched several episodes—okay, every episode—of all of these shows…and others like them).

Most of these programs feature the daily lives of people at various levels of celebrity, or people who become celebrities based on their appearance on their show. We get an inside glimpse of what it is like to be one of “them” and temporarily feel like members of their inner circle. There’s a bit of a paradox working here: on the one hand the shows present their everyday behaviors that make them seem more like “us,” but the fact that they even have a reality show reinforces (or creates) their celebrity. 

If you’ve ever seen the Geico insurance ad, you might have noticed that in spots like this one they pair a “real person” with a celebrity, as if the terms were mutually exclusive.

Even though some of the shows, like The Real Housewives of Orange County, The Hills, and My Super Sweet Sixteen focus on people who are not famous (at first), they do have one thing in common with “celebreality”: all the people we are watching are rich.

Are the lives of wealthy people really more interesting than everyone else’s?

It all depends on what a large number of people find interesting. And it just so happens that living in a fabulous home in an exclusive community filled with great stuff is interesting to a lot of people (myself included). This has something to do with how we currently define the American Dream: having financial independence and, of course, fame. What is it like to have all that? What’s it like to be the child of somebody rich and famous?

The flip side to all this should be lost on no one who has ever seen one of these shows, which are edited in such a way to help us feel a bit superior to them. Now, I would not say that the people on the shows are just “made to look bad,” as some reality show participants later complained, and that it is only because of the editing. But in addition to watching reality denizens bask in their high tax bracket status, we get to judge them too. Remember how Jessica Simpson seemed to be, er, intellectually challenged? Or all the dog doo lying around the Osbourne house? The temper tantrums when the “sweet” sixteen-year-old didn’t have her way?

The wealthy people we see on television aren’t always admirable, either. Often shows like The Real Housewives of Orange County (which don’t really feature “housewives” since nearly of the women work outside the home and some aren’t married, but that’s the topic of another post) highlight the excesses and superficiality of their subjects. So in a way these shows both celebrate wealth and criticize the wealthy. If we’re not in the exclusive club of being wealthy, watching them might make us feel better about our relatively modest lives.

All of these examples point to the combined fascination and disgust that celebrities often generate. They have come to define what sociologist Thorsten Veblen called the “leisure class” in America. The real upper crust, whose money is not nearly as new, would probably not allow cameras in their home or want to call any attention to themselves, so they remain largely invisible. This helps to maintain the illusion of a completely open society, since it appears that anyone with an interesting personality can be famous, and perhaps rich. As of 2006, only 17 percent of American households earned $100,000 or more, and the wealthiest one percent of Americans hold about one-third of all wealth.

The continued focus on the newly-minted rich serves to mask how the real elite got that way. CEOs of major corporations, families with multi-generational wealth and power are off of the pop culture radar screen. Sociologist C. Wright Mills called these people the “power elite.”

Are they less interesting than the Hogan family of wrestling fame? Who knows. But one thing is for sure: no matter how wealthy (and strong) the Hulk might be, he has a whole lot less power than the invisible rich in the grand scheme of things. And our continued focus on wealth coming from hard work, talent, and being on a reality show masks the reality of where wealth mostly comes from in America.

Class and Race

By Janis Prince Inniss

America has a long, painful history with race relations, but has prided itself on being free of class conflicts. Most Americans—regardless of their actual income—consider themselves middle class. In what is considered the land of opportunity, most people believe that if you work hard, regardless of your beginnings, you can become wealthy. 

While there is some discussion in the public arena about race (and to some extent ethnicity), there is less about class. During campaign speeches we hear charges that an opponent is for the rich, at the expense of the common folks. Recently, I learned that U.S. Presidential candidate Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed the income gap. On November 19, 2007 in a speech entitled “Economy: Policy Address on America’s Economic Challenges, she made the following comments:

(T)he gap between the rich and everybody else has only gotten broader. 

In 2005, the last year I could find the numbers for, all income gains went to the top 10 percent of households, while the bottom 90 percent saw their incomes decline. That is not the America that I grew up in; that is not the country that I believe is holding out the promise of prosperity for people willing to work hard and take responsibility. 

The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans held 22 percent of America's income. That's an astonishing figure, and it is the highest level of income inequality since the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929.

Indeed, the income gap exists and has widened. But what else can we learn about class by digging a little deeper? It is well documented that gender and race intersect with class and that these factors determine our relationships to power and privilege. 

This post examines some of the relationships between class and race— by looking at some of the differences in income, wealth, education and occupation by race. I am looking at these two socio-demographic factors for the sake of simplicity, but bearing in mind that the relationships between gender, class and race are highly interconnected. 

Income refers to wages and salaries for work we do. It also refers to money we make on our investments. Income in the U.S. has increased significantly over the past decades for all sectors of workers (not only those in white collar and professional, managerial occupations but also for blue collar workers). At the same time however, the divide between the top 5% of wage earners and pretty much everyone else has increase enormously.

A recently released report by the Pew Charitable Trusts entitled “Economic Mobility of Black and White Families” indicates that median family incomes have increased since the 1960s but that is less true for black families than it is for white families. (These are the only two groups the report addresses due to limitations of the data used.)

Researchers performed an intergenerational analysis and looked at how children fare in comparison to their parents in terms of income. They found that the economic benefits that black middle class parents enjoy are mostly not being matched by their children. In fact, the majority of black children of middle class parents fall below their parents in income and economic status, while white children exceed their parents’ attainments on those dimensions. Only 31 percent of black children grow up to earn more than their parents, compared to 68 percent of white children in that income range. This decline in income for blacks is found not only among middle class, but upper-middle-class children.

Even worse, almost half (45 percent) of black children of middle class parents fall to the very bottom of the income distribution, compared to 16% minority of white children. Looking at other income groups, black children fared better in the two lowest income groups, although they are always well below the gains of white children.

Wealth refers to assets such as real estate property, stocks and bonds. Wealth in the U.S. is concentrated in the hands of very few people; the top 1% of families held about one third (32.7%) of the nation’s total net worth and in fact the top 10% of families hold about 70% of the total net worth. 

This means that the majority of people – 90% of the population – have less than one third of the nation’s total net worth! 

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau illustrates the relationship between race and economic resources. Black households and Hispanic households held a significantly higher proportion of their net worth in housing than Whites. Black and Hispanic households have a significantly lower proportion in financial assets such as stocks and mutual fund shares compared with White households. 

Despite a historically large gap in the high school completion rates between whites and blacks, in 2000, high school completion rates for whites and Asians are pretty close, with Blacks a not very distant third place. Barely half of Hispanics finished high school; this group has the highest dropout rate of any in the U.S.

Although a large number of blacks do attend college today, graduation rates are disappointing for this group and for Hispanics. Asians are the only group approaching 50% of their population having attained a Bachelor’s Degree or higher.

Clearly, education and its relationship to race has an impact on occupation: the types of jobs that people are qualified for and by extension the incomes they can command. 

Where do you fall on each of the four dimensions of class—income, wealth, education and occupation? What role do you think your race plays in your social class standing? 

The Beautiful People

By Bradley Wright 

Like many people, you want to get ahead in life… have a successful career, be well-liked, you know, all that good stuff. So, you go to school, work hard, treat others well, and hope for the best. 

Well, you’re forgetting something, and that is to look good. Why? It turns out that we attribute all sorts of positive qualities to good looking people, and these qualities have a way of becoming true. 

Here’s how it works. Social psychologists have identified something called the “what is beautiful is good stereotype.” If someone is good looking—clear skin, symmetrical face, sparkly eyes or whatever else we see as beautiful or sexy or cute—we think that they are also lots of other good things. Just because they are hot, we think that they are more intelligent, sensitive, interesting, competent, and kind. 

Our positive expectations for attractive people can serve as a self-fulfilling prophesy. If we think someone is smart and has a great personality, we start to treat them differently. We expect them to live up to our expectations, and, lo and behold, they do. As such, if we think that beautiful people are better people overall, they become so. 

Usually we think about stereotypes being negative, and the problems that they cause. For example, if teachers think that girls are inherently worse at math than boys, they might put less effort into teaching them, call on them less in the class, and in general have lower expectations. The result, girls end up doing worse in math because the teachers think they will. 

The “what is beautiful is good” stereotype is positive, and it can be just as powerful. In a classic study, researchers had men talk with a woman via intercom for 10 minutes, and after the conversation the men were asked to rate the woman’s personality. Half the men were shown a picture of an attractive woman and told that was the woman they were talking to. The other half were shown a picture of an unattractive woman. In reality, as you probably guessed, it was the same woman talking to each of the men. 

The men who thought they were talking to an attractive woman rated her as more friendly, sociable, and likable than those talking to an “unattractive” woman. They perceived her as having a much better personality just because she was beautiful. Why? Self-fulfilling prophesy. The men talking to the “attractive” woman treated had higher expectations for her, and she lived up to them. 

The effect of this stereotype varies. As might be expected, it works most strongly with first impressions. We evaluate somebody’s appearance when we first meet them, and that information becomes most important. The more we get to know them, however, the more we factor in their other characteristics as well. Also, some people put more weight on physical appearances than others, and so they would be more affected by this stereotype. 

This stereotype has various social implications. We’re all aware of the remarkable amounts of time and energy that people put into their appearance. Here in the U.S. alone, women spend billions of dollars on cosmetics. This seems like frivolity, but if in fact attractive people receive preferential treatment, it might not be as misguided as it first seems. 

It also suggests another source of social stratification. Sociologists are quite attuned to how race, gender, sexuality, age, and other demographic characteristics affect our social standing. Perhaps we should incorporate other characteristics, such as attractiveness. Who knows, maybe an attractive person of minority status might have better odds in society than an unattractive person of majority status. 

This stereotype also gives an idea as to why the media so often uses attractive people. Open up any magazine, and there are beautiful people selling everything from vacuum cleaners to computers to watches. We see their attractiveness, and we associate other good qualities with them, and so maybe we should listen to them about what to buy. 

An instance of this stereotype is found with newscasters. In general, television news anchors tend to be attractive people. Here are pictures of two of them. Stone Phillips is a reporter and anchor for CBS news. Melissa Theuriau is a reporter on French television. Both of them are remarkably attractive people. Now, it’s been awhile since I’ve walked through the journalism department here at UConn, but I’m pretty sure that the average journalism student isn’t this good looking. News organizations pick anchors, in part, on their physical attractiveness, and given all the positive attributes associated with attractiveness, this isn’t a bad idea. 

The beauty stereotype raises some interesting moral questions. 

One could justifiably argue that it is wrong to give extra social capital to people because of their good looks. Somehow it seems unfair, almost discriminatory, to those of us who will never earn the name “Stone”. Still, the same argument applies to intelligence, education, organizational skills, and any other factors that society rewards. Some have more, some have less. Now, don’t get me wrong. If society rewarded only beauty, I’d be in deep, deep trouble. But, if society is inherently random in the rewards it gives—some people get them and some people don’t—how much does it matter which criteria are used?

The Bus To Class

By Janis Prince Inniss

I never pulled the cord to stop the bus in all the years I attended Queens College in New York. Not once! Today, there are fancier ways of signaling that you want the bus driver to pull over, but in those days there was a cord that would “ding” to alert the driver that you wanted to get off the bus. It was my little game as I exited the bus near Dunkin Donuts across the street from campus. Would this be the day that I would finally have to let the driver know that this was my stop? Nope. No matter the day of the week or time of day. Not even on the day that a mighty, mighty snow storm came.

Accustomed as I was to taking public transportation, I made a mental note of the busses I saw around the streets of Los Angeles when I visited to learn more about the University of Southern California, as I was considering attending graduate school there. When I met with students to get the real deal on the program and what life was like in L.A., I was bewildered by their repeated assertions, “There are no busses in L.A.! You’ll have to buy a car.” I would murmur something about having seen a few busses, but let the matter drop.

I checked and saw bus stops on the major street right next to the Sociology department ,where I would spend most of my time at USC. I knew that I was not going to buy a car because I could not afford one.

My tuition at Queens College was about $700 per semester. With a part-time job, I could afford tuition and other school related expenses quite easily. I lived with my parents during my undergraduate years, so lodging was one less expense for me to worry about. I realized that I would have to get a scholarship to afford graduate school. I decided to attend USC, and received a prestigious fellowship from the American Sociological Association.

Prestigious, yes but financially bountiful, no! The cost of living in Los Angeles was so high that my fellowship stipend did not even cover essentials--and by essentials I mean food and lodging, not a car! Despite what I had been told, I knew that on my purse strings, a car could not be essential. I moved to L.A. and got an apartment that was on a bus line.

Unless someone took pity on me and offered me a lift home, I took the bus to and from USC daily, but found that to be a very different experience from taking the bus in Queens. I learned quickly enough that my "I’m not pulling the buzzer” game would not work in L.A.! Rarely did I ever have company getting off the bus at USC. In the couple of years that I took the bus, I could count on one hand the number of other students riding with me.

My backpack in my lap and my reading material in hand were good clues that I was a student. On bus #204 heading south on Vermont Avenue from Hollywood for about 30 minutes, there was ample time for me to observe and be observed. People would often chat with me and ask which school I attended; as I recall, USC and Los Angeles City College (LACC) were the only two schools of higher education on Vermont Avenue so I found this particularly perplexing – especially when the bus had already passed LACC. A college student on the bus headed toward USC must be attending USC… right? Wrong!

Apparently I didn’t look like I attended USC! First, several passengers told me that I looked like a high school student. Second, USC is a private university that had—and may still have—a reputation as a school for the rich (and given its location in LA – sometimes famous). If I was rich or even had two nickels to rub together, why would I be on a bus? I was learning that in Los Angeles only the poor resort to taking the bus. And even though they were sociology students, the people I spoke with on my visit to the campus were so entrenched in the culture of Los Angeles that they had stopped seeing busses—which they saw as a symbol of poverty in direct contrast to Angelenos’ beloved and worshiped automobile.

The third reason people were surprised to hear that I attended USC is that I’m black and did not “look” like most people’s idea of who attended USC. Currently only about six percent of the USC student population is black/African American. I imagine that the same was probably true when I attended a decade ago.

In other words, among my self-identified roles was my role as a USC student, an achieved status or a role I achieved by my hard work. However, my apparently youthful appearance, social class and race all had a powerful impact on my master status—features that so defined how I was seen by others, that clues or signals that would challenge this perception were disregarded.

Class Consciousness

By Karen Sternheimer

A few months back, I got a letter saying that I had won the lottery. No, not that kind of lottery. Not a scam lottery either. I won the kind that gives you a week of jury duty.

So I dutifully showed up at the courthouse to fulfill my civic obligation.

“Jury duty?” a woman asked as I walked out of the parking structure. She must have seen the papers in my hand. 

“Yep,” I answered. 

“Me too,” she said. “Have you been here before?” she asked. I said no; she said that she hadn’t either.

As we waited in the long security line to enter the courthouse, I noticed that we were among the few white women there. And although she was significantly older than me, our appearances were somewhat similar in other ways: the open-toed shoes revealing manicured feet, slightly cropped pants and short-sleeved shirt under a light sweater. We both carried a tote bag with that day’s Los Angeles Times sticking out. We were “class” mates.

There were other clues too. The courthouse was located in a working-class neighborhood, where she (correctly) presumed I did not reside. 

“How long did it take you to get here?” she asked.

I said not too long, maybe thirty minutes. “From the west side?” she (again, correctly) guessed, and then asked me which streets I took to get there. In Los Angeles, the west side is synonymous with being at least middle class, if not affluent. 

Once she confirmed our similar class statuses, she complained that she didn’t see any suitable restaurants in the area for lunch. I mentioned that there was a snack bar, and she said there was probably nothing healthy there. I told her that I had the same thought the night before and brought my lunch with me.

Social class is an interesting and sometimes complex sociological concept. Based on more than just how much money you have or where you live, it includes things like educational background, occupational prestige, and whether most of your money comes from income earned from a job or from inherited wealth. And as some sociologists argue, cultural preferences may also provide markers about class membership (like what kinds of food you eat and the sort of clothes you wear). 

Once we got through security and into the courthouse, we found that the jury room was packed; my new friend and I sat next to each other. In such a crowded space it was all too easy to overhear the numerous conversations taking place. Many revealed the class status of the conversant; a group in front of me discussed how many days their employers paid for jury duty—not an issue for a professor on summer break, a business owner, or someone who does not need to be in the labor force at all. 

One of the people in front said he was a mail carrier. In his conversation with the women beside him, he compared the post office’s policy to the transit authority’s jury duty policy, as he used to be a bus driver. His neighbor mentioned that her friend drives a bus too; from their conversation I learned that wages are much lower now than they had been when the man drove a bus, and that finding a good job with a strong union was tough these days. 

Aside from profession, income, neighborhood, and food preferences, our entertainment choices can also be used to demonstrate class status. As the jury room television played Jerry Springer, the lady next to me mentioned under her breath that she couldn’t understand why anyone would watch such “trash.” Later, someone changed the channel and put on an afternoon soap, much to the dismay of the people in front of us.

“Who do they think they are, changing the channel while people are watching?”  one woman asked. A man nearby her got up and changed the channel back to the raucous talk show (about who the real father of a teen’s baby was). A woman on the other side of me also shook her head and muttered, “I can’t believe these people” when it became apparent that the people in front of us really wanted to watch the show.

Now how did my new neighbors know that I wasn’t I die-hard Springer fan? Okay, I’m not, but why would they presume that they could criticize the show and not offend me? 

My status cues suggested that I wouldn’t be someone in Jerry’s fan base, but instead someone who reads the newspaper daily (an increasingly small demographic). Plus they overheard me talking to an old grad-school classmate, coincidentally on jury duty too. From our conversation they could surmise other reasons that I would be an unlikely fan of the show: I have an advanced degree and work as a professor.

Some of my neighbors displayed their class status by distancing themselves from the show. And the people in front of me did the same thing in a different way. “Her mother didn’t raise her right,” one of the women said of the Springer guest, who (supposedly) had no idea who the baby’s daddy really was. “Mm-mm,” she shook her head, “my momma would have whooped my butt if I was running around with all those guys.” 

Part of establishing class lines includes differentiating ourselves from others, either those we somehow feel superior to (because of what kinds of popular culture they enjoy, in this case) or those we think might feel superior to us (“who do they think they are?”).

But Americans rarely discuss class, maintaining the illusion that we live in a classless society. The mythology of the American Dream tells us that anyone can rise to the top, provided they work hard. Even our use of the word “class” denotes individual, rather than collective realities. Saying someone has or doesn’t have class is a reflection of their behavior, not a reference to our system of stratification.

Americans often have an easier time noting the impact of race and racial discrimination than we understand the persistence of economic stratification. This is especially challenging because race and class have been so entangled in American life (which is why I purposely haven’t touched on issues of race in this essay). 

Maybe that’s because we seldom have opportunities to mingle with people from other social class levels outside of the workplace, and at work stratification may seem normal. Even jury duty, a seemingly perfect possibility for a cross-class gathering, generally excludes those at the top and bottom of the socio-economic scale. 

Those at the bottom may not be registered to vote or have a driver’s license, and therefore would be excluded from the pool of potential jurors. Also, people earning minimum wage with no vacation time or benefits might not lose their job if they go on jury duty, but they probably would not get paid and thus could be excused for financial hardship reasons. And as for the wealthy, the threat of a $1,500 fine for failing to appear might not be a big deal (that is if they couldn’t use connections to get themselves excused in the first place). 

At the end of the day, the jury room supervisor let us know that none of us would be needed on a case, and we were free to go. I said goodbye to my “class mate,” knowing that I would probably never see her again. But I will probably encounter many other “class mates” like her in the future, as America remains in many ways more segregated by class than it is by race.