Socialization and Social Class

Kelley Delaney

Arizona State University

OGL 350: Diversity and Organizations

Dr. Emily Mertz

June 3, 2021
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Socialization and Social Class

Throughout this module, I have learned about how the social class my brother and I

were raised in has given us an advantage over the average American. Our experience would

have been quite similar to Clark’s in the Social Class exercise (Harvey, 2011). We were able to

do whatever after school activities we wanted, play whatever sports we wanted, and get any

tutoring we needed. Whether or not we realized it as kids, these privileges allowed us to

develop our professional skills, such as team building, communication, and critical thinking

skills. This put us at an advantage over those who did not get the same educational and

extracurricular opportunities we did. This allowed us both to naturally blend into corporate

environments and quickly rise to leadership positions. In this social class exercise, Justin and

Clark’s experiences would change if they were non-white or female. Knowing that my brother

and I would be most similar to Clark, I can even reflect on how my brother and I’s experiences

differed slightly because I am a female. There were certain sports that I was not allowed to play,

and there were certain clubs not available to me. We both entered heavily male-dominated

industries, and he was offered leadership positions while I had to ask for and fight for them,

despite having a better performance record.

Lacy’s (2015) study reminded me of how my hometown of Frisco, Texas has gone

through a cultural shift since I was young. Frisco was not very diverse when I was growing up,

even my graduating high school class did not have many people of color. I remember hearing

about the local protests that occurred when they changed the local high school’s mascot from

the Frisco “Coons” to the Frisco Raccoons. The mascot is still the same animal, same colors,

same image. The word “Coon” has no positive significance to white people, but most of the
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residents felt like it was a personal attack and were outraged that the black community would

“destroy their heritage” like that. I specifically remember my father complaining about the

claims Lucy (2015, p. 1247) discusses, like how minorities were going to steal our jobs, overrun

our schools, and destroy our neighborhoods. None of which was true of course, the opposite

actually occurred with the surge of new businesses further stimulating Frisco’s economy. Now,

Frisco is 64% white, and has grown significantly in its Black population (7.9%) and Asian

population (20.9%), and there have been many new growing cultural additions, such as temples

and mosques. However, we are starting to see gentrification occur in downtown Frisco, where

the small low-income community that is left is now across the street from high-end apartments,

luxury business offices, and high traffic shopping centers.

In the NPR interview, Alston (2017) speaks about the volunteer-based health services he

saw in West Virginia that provides services for 21,000 patients annually. What I found

interesting was his thoughts around how these initiatives take pressure off the state, which

causes them to dismiss the need for funding in those areas (NPR, 2017). It made me think about

the stories you hear where a middle school kid sells crafts to fundraise for his hungry

classmates or something along those lines. On one hand, it is a sweet news story, but the reality

is that the middle school kid should not have to do that for his classmates, those kids should

have government funded meal assistance.

Spent Reflection

I was mortified from my experience playing Spent. My first job was a minimum wage

seasonal position at GameStop, but I had the luxury of working my way up the ranks over ten
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years into a well-paying position that has given me experience for life. I eventually was laid off

from that job during a restructuring of their corporate and field positions, but they paid me

severance and my resume quickly landed me another job, while many Americans do not get

that same experience when they lose their jobs unexpectantly. Although I became the primary

caretaker of my little brother at sixteen, I was still fortunate enough to not have to worry about

rent or utility bills, and our mom would get us food and clothes occasionally at least. I was

making about $15 and hour by the time I was truly on my own, which was still difficult, but not

nearly as difficult as the experience I got a glimpse of from playing Spent. In this game, we were

making $9 an hour, but many Americans have to try to survive on $7.25, and the disparity is

even worse now since the game was made a decade ago. Especially since I just recently became

a mom, not being able to pay for my virtual kid’s lunches or allow them to play sports broke my

heart. I tried to make it work, but then it resulted in not being able to pay my bills. The times in

my life that I struggled to pay bills were because of my own childishness, never because I had

no other choice. I truly did not understand the value of a dollar.

Personal Social Class

The Pew’s Research Center Calculator showed me how distorted my views of where the

economic classes fell were (Bennett et al., 2020). I grew up in Frisco, where the average

household income and value of a home is double that of the United States’s (US Census, 2020).

Even then, the houses that I grew up in were more than double of Frisco’s average value, and

the houses around us were even higher. My husband and I do not make nearly what the income

levels I was exposed to growing up, so I would have assumed we fell into the middle-class

category. We do not; we are considered upper-class. I do not feel like we dress, act, or belong
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to what my perception of upper-class is, but this does show that we have a lot more privilege

than what I perceived. As Megivern (2005, p. 21) states, one must constantly examine their own

privileged status and practice critical consciousness. For a long time, when I reflected on my

upbringing, all I could think of was the “woe is me” card for my parents having traumatic

circumstances of divorce. Even through that, the circumstances that my brother and I were

surrounded with were far comfier than that of which those without our privileges had to face.

I always thought it was funny that my husband and I had very different opinions of what

a “big” or “nice” house was while we were house shopping. I did not think to dig into it until

now. He grew up in Madison, Indiana, a very small town where the average income is 30% less

than the United States and the average value of a home is half (US Census, 2020). He was

impressed with some houses while they made me feel unsafe and uneasy, but they would have

been considered upper-class houses where he came from. This exercise has challenged me for

what I take for granted, and how quickly I judge things that are not as new and nice as what I

am used to. Now that I understand how distorted my perceptions were, I have been inspired to

spend more time with my in-laws to get a better understanding of how they live and appreciate

what they have to the fullest.

Organizational Application

Ohja’s (2020) article titled “Is Pandemic a Class-Ridden?” hit home to me, being an

essential worker during Covid-19. I noticed a few weird patterns that I was not able to put the

pieces together for until now. My Starbucks is located in a very high-income area, higher

income than my hometown of Frisco. My partners (employees) who were local and went to
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local schools seemed to almost completely be immune to the impacts of Covid-19. My partners

that commuted from the low-to-middle class surrounding cities were facing a different battle.

They were struggling to come in to work because either they were sick, their families were sick,

or they were exposed to Covid-19 at school. At Starbucks, we also required partners to isolate

themselves if they had Covid-19 symptoms. My local partners were able to recover quickly if

they did get sick, and they were always able to afford rapid tests to ensure they were not sick

with Covid-19. Many of my commuting partners were out longer and were not able to afford

the rapid test options near them, so they had to isolate longer and miss out on work.

Thankfully, we work for an incredible company that provided financial support for partners that

were forced to isolate, but they missed out on tips, which was a significant blow to some

partners. While my partners were being paid to isolate and provided free food and drink from

our company, many of their friends were experiencing lay-offs or forced unpaid isolations. It

was hard enough to watch my partners experience the financial stress, loss of loved ones, and

additional tension from our Covid-denying customers, so I can only imagine how devastating it

is for people who do not have such a generous employer.

The interview with Julia Taylor Kennedy (2020) made me further appreciate what

Starbucks does around diversity and inclusion. In the interview, they talk about what companies

can do to continuously ensure they are improving, including auditing themselves and being

transparent with their opportunities. I recently learned that Starbucks is audited by the EEOC

and a former US Attorney General around its diversity and inclusion policies and practices, and

publicly shares its action plan for improvement with its employees at all levels. When I look

around me and at our corporate executives, I see a more diverse company than most. I know
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that GameStop was not nearly as diverse as Starbucks, but if they were audited at any point, we

never knew about it. I appreciate that Starbucks is so transparent about their strategies, but

they are a rare occurrence from what I have experienced.

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References

Bennett, J., Fry, R., & Kochhar, R. (2020, July 30). Are you in the American middle class? Find out

with our income calculator. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-

tank/2020/07/23/are-you-in-the-american-middle-class/.

Harvey, C. (2011).  Does Social Class Make a Difference?, Pages 155-157. Understanding and

Managing Diversity: Readings, Cases, and Exercises. Fourth Edition. Pearson.

Kennedy, J. T. (2020, December 13). How to Support Belonging, with Julia Taylor Kennedy

[Audio blog interview]. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from

https://coachingforleaders.com/podcast/support-belonging-julia-taylor-kennedy/.

Lacy, K.  (2015). Race, privilege, and the growing class divide, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38:8,

1246-1249

Megivern, D. (2005). Supposed To Know Better - Accepting Privilege, Explorations in Privilege,

Oppression, and Diversity.

NPR Story, Dec. 15, 2017. An Outsiders View of How the U.S. Treats its Most

Vulnerable. https://www.npr.org/2017/12/15/571199941/an-outsiders-view-of-how-

the-u-s-treats-its-most-vulnerable.

Ojha, A. (2020). Is Pandemic a Class-Ridden? An Appraisal from New York City. Journal of Ethnic

and Cultural Studies, 7(3), 129–141. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejecs/535

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US Census. (2020). Explore Census Data. https://data.census.gov/cedsci/.