Classism in our community

Classism, is a very common social issue that can be noticed very frequently in communities all over the world, as demonstrated in the article, "Staggering Along the Periphery: Classism in America", which basically talks about the various types of noticed and unnoticed forms of classism in a modern community in the United States. This can be further related back to Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility", which focuses primarily on the disturbance in people's lives caused by status back in the eighteenth century. This book follows the lives of the Dashwood family who have to be dependent on one person or the other ever since Mr. Dashwood died due to the fact, that they don't have his property or his money now, resulting them to be categorized as middle or even low class people. But what one might find in between the lines is a sense of reality hidden beneath a light and fictitious story that to some extent narrates the importance of status in a person's life. Going back to the article, during one of the concluding paragraphs, the author intends to sum up the whole article by writing, "For many across America, Democrat or Republican, it does not matter, addressing the ills brought about by classism is subversive to an embraced ideology that has taken root in our country over the last few decades. Merely identifying it brings about charges of class envy or, oddly, discrimination towards the rich."  Essentially by using these words, the author is trying to to play with the whole concept of the ancient ideology that seems to overpower our thoughts and further decided our actions. Not only does a person's status narrate his/her personality but also the kind of treatment they deserve. Obviously, being rich and powerful means everything as in the novel, John Dashwood says, "But I confess, it would give me great pleasure to call Colonel Brandon brother. His property here, his place, is house, everything in such respectable and excellent condition!" This happens fairly at the end of the novel when the oldest Dashwood sister is engaged. This shows that even after the whole novel passed for him to change, John Dashwood doesn't come out of the whole point of status due to the type of society he lives in. The same thing can be noticed these days as mentioned in the article too. While examining, this two pieces of information, one might be able to notice that there is indeed a lot of similarity between the society form two hundred years ago and now and it just comes to show that, no matter how advanced or civilized humans might think they are, they always come back to these things due to the common mentality and ideology running in our society, that has been occupying our brains ever since we were little. To wrap it up, the ideas presented in both the novel and the article clearly aren't new but they are projected as if they are, as if we have no idea about how much we discriminate based on someone's status. Even though, we all know about classicism and we all know where and when we do it, the question that when arises is even after knowing how much it destroys our society, why do we do this it?

To check pout the article go to the link:

 http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/08/staggering-along-the-periphery-classism-in-america/

Sense and Sensibility quotation retrieved from: 

Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensiblity. N.p.: Oxford University Press, n.d. 285. Print