Zweig & Greider- Connections/Argument

I think Michael Zweig’s Six Points on Class was an excellent choice for the last reading because it tied everything we have learned in class all semester long. I know that had I read this the first day of class I would’ve been pulling my hair out trying to understand what Zweig was walking about. The six points he discusses in the article took me back to think of some of the other texts we have read in class this semester. The first point that stuck out the most to me was the one listed as number two on page 176. I don’t have the list of reading we have done all semester so I apologize for not having the names of the texts, but poverty has been one of the main topics in class this entire semester. We’ve discussed extensively how we “blame the poor” for being poor judging by what we see in the media, read in some books and view even on some TV shows.  “19 percent of Americans believed themselves to be in the top 1 percent, and another believed they would be there in the next ten years” This to me made me think of the mobility that we all are told we can achieve by working hard yet people don’t actually realize how mobility can be impossible without a variety of elements beginning with inherited monetary benefits. “Too many people think we are attacking them and their future” how can we attack a future that will never exist for the working class hard worker with a dream?

The next point that stuck out to me was the third point, the reality of race and class. Zweig talks a lot directly about the Katrina catastrophe, which relates directly to the article we read by Ransby. The media leads us to believe that the poor are black people or minorities, which is incorrect. I know before taking this class I would have never imagined that the majority of the poor population in America are actually white families especially women and children. We have also discussed in class why it was that the poor community was affected worse by this catastrophe and it all boils down to the same idea- the middle class population have options, while the poor do not. The statistics in the reading are too many to reiterate in this blog but I think will be surprising for someone with no knowledge about this topic to read.

I think the main argument of both Greider and Zweig is that we need to make America a place where equality is possible. We need to find a way to get rid of all the injustice and unfair systems.