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Ain 'T No Makin' It By Jay Macleod Analysis

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Jay MacLeod’s book Ain’t No Making’ It is a treatise on social reproduction theory, that is, the ways in which class inequality is reproduced across generations, and is equally relevant and informative to understanding the cycle of poverty today as it was in 1987 when it was first published. The explanations of the life trajectories of the men studied in this book are especially important in light of the inflamed rhetoric and intense debate that characterize the interactions between the two distinct ideologies that have bifurcated the theorists of educational reform: Economically deterministic theories and the theories emphising the autonomy of the cultural level. Though the attempt of the author is to provide a perspective which allows for the simultaneous existence of the two theories. We will see that neither perspective can be said to be entirely endorsed by the conclusions found in Ain’t No Makin’ It. Building off previous scholarship of Bowles and Gintis, Bourdieu, Bernstein and Heath, Willis and Giroux, McLeod seeks to investigate the tension between personal agency and structural barriers to social mobility, or in his words, how “class based institutional mechanisms set limits on mobility, thereby ensuring social reproduction, while cultural innovations can be at once both functional and dysfunctional for …show more content…

Unlike the Hallway Hangers, the Brothers have higher aspirations for their future, aspirations that include finding stable employment and sustaining a middle class life style. Viewing ability and hard work as integral to educational and occupational attainment the Brothers committed themselves to school and engaged in extracurricular activities, rather than substance use. These differences in aspirations provided the foundation for MacLeod to fashion his own social reproduction

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Then fifteen years later when MacLeod came back to interview the Brothers for the third time, he found many of the men to be achieving the same life as the Hallway Hangers. Some men were in and out of jail. Some of the Brothers were still in the Heights while others moved away. Most of the men had children and full time jobs and were making a good

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POLITICAL • Tawantinsuyu: Inca government, monarchy, ruled by the Sapa Inca • Sapa Inca: emperor and king of the Inca Empire, means “sole ruler”, most powerful person in the empire • Coya: wife and queen of Sapa Inca • Government Organization: - Viceroy: most trusted and closest advisor to the Sapa Inca, usually a close relative - High Priest: thought to be second in power due to the heavily regarded importance on religion - Governors of a Quarter: Inca Empire divided into four quarters, each ruled by a governor called an Apu - Council of the Realm: council made up of powerful, noble men who advised the Sapa Inca on important matters and assisted in major problems - Inspectors: people who were in charge to watch over the townspeople to make sure they paid their taxes -

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Social mobility is within the grasp of each person so long as they earnestly invest themselves. There exists, however, a dissonance between the achievement ideology and reality as discussed in Jay Macleod’s Ain’t No Makin’ It. In his book, Macleod perfors a longitudinal study over a group of young black men, the Brothers, living in the projects of Clarendon Heights and reveals the insidious social factors that

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Ehrenreich learns and also hopes to teach her audience, which is anyone who has not experienced a low wage job or does not believe that low paying jobs are very difficult, that all the successors should credit the hardest workers at the bottom of the ladder. She calls “the 'working poor' [...] the major philanthropists of our society [because] they neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high” (120). Ehrenreich simply aims for the privileged audience to understand why they are living such comfortable lives and where all of it comes from. Also, the author implies that the upper class is perfectly kept in balance by the lower class, and that it is owed to the single mothers, poor parents, and uneducated hard workers for others’

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1318 Words | 6 Pages

The American dream is a dream of a land in which one can prosper with ambition and hard work. This idea has created many illusions for some because in reality the American dream is proven to be something that is rarely achieved. No individual is guaranteed success or destined for failure, but it is apparent that women, people of color, and those born into poverty will face greater obstacles than others, despite being a greater part of the American population. An author that tackles the issue of class in the United States is Gregory Mantsios. In his essay, “Class in America-2009”, Mantsios aims to prove that class affects people’s lives in drastic ways.

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In James W. Loewen’s “The Land of Opportunity,” he states that social class affects the way children are raised. He discusses the inequality in today’s society and how the textbooks in high school do not give any social class information. The students in today’s time are not taught everything they should be taught. He states that your family’s wealth is what makes up your future. Loewen discusses that people with more money can study for the SATs more productively and get a better score than someone who has less money.

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In this era of colorblindness, it is not acceptable to talk about race nor class. Conversations about class, Alexander argues, tend not to be talked about because one tends to see class as a reflection of one’s character. With that, the premise of American ideology is the idea that if one can work hard enough it is guaranteed that one will make it—AKA meritocracy. Hence, when one does not have the “proper discipline” nor “drive” to move from the lower to upper class—it is a reflection of one’s moral character. Alexander maintains that what is missed in this debate is that Blacks are not free to move up at all; yes they also do not have the same opportunities and are plagued by poverty, but they are prevented by institutions to move up.

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Nicholas Kristof once said, “ In effect, we have a class divide on top of a racial divide, creating a vastly uneven playing field, and one of its metrics is educational failure”. Human Rights Activist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof is a very profound writer. Nicholas Kristof is known for his powerful and emotional passages that really gets in the audience 's thoughts like, “Is a Hard Life Inherited”. The purpose of this passage is to inform the upper-class families and society of the struggles of the lower middle class and the hardships that they need to overcome in order for success. The strategies Nicholas Kristof used can be separated into three important segments which are pathos, logos, and cause and effect.

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Externality equates with marginalization, in that institute and sociocultural divisions in Millennials question the strategic role of social capital within the institutional constructs of class, race, and cultural identity. Gest clarifies that human capital creates agents who become more productive through their acquisition of knowledge, cultural interaction, and increased skills. However, in East London and Youngstown, the death of the industrialization was and is also the death of social capital and advancement of the current generation. The abandonment of industry equates to the decimation of education, class and ethno-racial opportunities in both East London and Youngstown. In addition, Gest also finds the lack of and/or no occupational identity equates to lower class ethno-racial identity in both locations.

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Social reproduction can be defined as the continuance of social life and institutions in an unchanged way (REFERENCE). An example of social reproduction is children from a lower class falling into a cycle of poverty, homelessness, and unemployment as that was what their parents experienced. Social reproduction has a powerful impact upon life and educational pathways. It can be proven that schools are not foundations of equal opportunity, but frameworks for proliferating social disparity (REFERENCE). The impact of social reproduction was illustrated by the speech by Dr. Elizabeth Tailby.

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The figure on page 206 is a “path diagram” created by Blau and Duncan demonstrating how the family income of sons’ resembles their fathers’ to a similar degree. This is known as intergenerational mobility. When preparing the diagram pictured on page 206 only the white men were questioned. The father’s education level, father’s occupation, son’s education and occupation are the four key variables (Kimmel & Aronson, 2012, pg. 206). According to Kimmel and Aronson, 2012, while studying Blau and Duncan’s research they found that the sons’ education and occupation is dependent upon the ascriptive and achieved characteristics.

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1984 Synthesis Essay Poverty negatively influences how the minds of people work in the world. The fact that poverty exists itself, obstructs people from changing their circumstances in what is known as “the cycle of poverty.” The lower class is incredibly disadvantaged in that it lacks the necessary social and economic resources needed to increase chances of social mobility. In return, the absence of these resources may increase poverty. Therefore, the lower class is unable to change its situation because the majority believes that any efforts to climb the social ladder is highly inefficient.

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Right now you're probably thinking, "Wait a minute, that doesn't sound right. How can rejection be a form of protection?" But I'm not talking about rejecting by God. The Lord will never reject you - He will always love and accept you! The rejection I'm talking about is the rejection you sometimes face in your own life.

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Growing up every one hears about the story of the two brothers. The older brother was smarter than the younger one mainly, because he was older, and he had more school experience. Their lives were so different that it made the younger brother feel left out, because his big brother was an athlete and he had a large amount of popularity. On the other hand, the younger brother was a loner who didn’t really socialize with anyone. He was considered an outcast, and this was coming from all of his peers.

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In order to support these claims, I will discuss the characterisitcs of social moblity, while providing the necessary examples. Social Mobility On the topic of social classes, the question of social progression ought to rise: is it possible for people to move within a society 's stratification organization? In other words, is there some possibility of social mobility, or the improvement from one social level to another?

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