In the Western port city of Houdieda, Yemen’s class system is evident in a slum area where the Akhdam community live. The term Akhdam translates to “servant” in Arabic and they are also known as “the marginalised ones,” as they are only given the poorest paid jobs and they are looked down upon. Reuters writes:

Yemeni Akhdam, or servants, are similar to hereditary castes, but are distinguished by their African features and the menial jobs they perform. Widespread prejudice places the Akhdam at the bottom of Yemen’s social ladder. Asked about the origins of the Akhdam, Yemenis say they are descendants of Ethiopians who crossed the Red Sea to conquer Yemen before the arrival of Islam some 1,400 years ago - making them outsiders in their own country. Most live in slum areas in the outskirts of the capital Sanaa and other main cities. They reside in small huts haphazardly built of wood and cloth, without basic services such as running water, electricity and sewage networks. 

Photos October 2012 via Reuters/Khaled Abdullah.

Nona Willis Aronowitz analyses the portrayal of “poor” young white women in the American version of Shameless and in the U.S. show Girls. Writing for The Nation, Aronowitz makes a distinction between being “privileged poor” and being born into an underclass. “Privileged poor” are (usually) white middle class people who have experienced downward mobility due to the financial crisis. Aronowitz argues that these young people seek to unionise and they feel entitled to a better life. Aronowitz argues that life-long working-class people who have been disadvantaged all their lives have a precarious sense about their working conditions and their futures. TV shows portray poverty in a more rigid sense, without exploring how working class relations are changing. Aronowitz writes:

For the most part, both shows are stuck in the old model of strict class segregation. In Shameless’s universe, you’re either rich and smug or poor and righteous. Hannah mostly interacts with her own kind, and when her free-spirited friend Jessa suggests to her fellow nannies that they all join a union, it’s played for laughs rather than inspiration. But in the real world, the labor movement may indeed benefit from the class mixing that’s already going on. Last year, when I reported on a group of young, mostly educated, mostly white kids trying to organize the sandwich chain Jimmy John’s in the Twin Cities, I spoke with Macalester College professor Peter Rachleff. He compared the organizers to certain Occupy kids who are “entitled,” “aware of their rights,” and have a safety net in case they get fired. I met a young woman who was galvanized by the realization that her middle-class aspirations may end up being pipe dreams. “What are the real dreams that we can actually accomplish? Fucking building a union,” she told me.

Compare this mentality to that of the working class employees I spoke with at Walmart last month, when reporting for The Nation on the workers who did not join the strikes, many of whom were terrified about retaliation or just happy to be making money at all. These workers are also hanging back from organizing at places like Burger King, Domino’s and Target.

Via The Nation.

awesomepeoplehangingouttogether:

Craig Ferguson and Stephen Fry

“There are some British people who are cool [Mick Jagger, for example], and then there are people like me who seem to be made of tweed.”

This interview is really great. Stephen Fry talks about class in England and how punk changed notions of what Bourdieu calls “distinction”. That is, different classes reinforce social norms and social order through their activities and interests. People generally tend to think of their individual preferences for music, fashion or their manner of speaking as a sign of their personality or family upbringing. Bourdieu shows that the things and ideas we like actually represent the aesthetics of our class. Working class “distinctions” not only set this group apart from upper class groups, their activities are often set up in opposition to other classes. Popular culture nowadays might seem to transcend class, but in essence, our tastes still reflect social hierarchies. To an outsider, Stephen Fry might represent the quintessential British culture, but as Fry actually notes, growing up in 1970s, he embodied all the aspects of British culture that the general public hated: he was highly educated, he liked Latin poetry, and he dresses in tweed. In summary, his personal aesthetic or distinction represented upper class British culture.  

I thought that I was from a generation that was born at least 20 years too late. That maybe if I’d been born in the 50s, when wearing a tweed jacket and smoking a pike and talking about Catullus and Ovid was somehow acceptable and you were admired for it. Whereas I felt that I was born into a post-punk era in which the idea of even speaking in sentences that didn’t break up at the end and go “sort of”, and “like” and “oh I wonder”. Just having an articulate voice was in itself was an offence. It was like rubbing people’s faces in the dirt. And I was hated for it. 

In contrast, Scotland-born Craig Ferguson embodies the opposite distinction: his casual style, self-effacing humour, his swearing and dishevelled presentation evokes his working class background, which he often references directly. Ferguson, who has often discussed his affinity to the British punk movement (he was once in a band), talks about how he disliked Fry precisely for all the things he stood for: well-spoken, widely-read, affluent charm. 

This exchange is a lovely example of how Bourdieu uses distinction to analyse class systems. Fry also discusses his addiction and psychological definitions of being bi polar, so the video is one that keeps of giving. Enjoy, think and discuss!

“One manifestation of systemic inequality was a two-track welfare system rooted in a “family wage” ideal that figured the worker as a full-time breadwinner who supported children and a dependent, non-wage-earning wife at home-an ideal from which most people of color were excluded. When unemployment insurance was enacted in 1935, for example, it did not extend to agricultural and domestic workers, whom reformers did not see as independent, full-time breadwinners, and on whom the South’s low-wage economy depended. As a result, 55 percent of all African American
workers and 87 percent of all wage-earning African American women were excluded from one of the chief benefits of the New Deal.”

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall                                   

(via willnotgoquietlyintothenight)

(via sociolab)

“We pretend that “almost everyone has food and can scrape by, and anyone who can’t is just a shiftless waster, anyway” is good enough, and we pretend that the government and upper classes in wealthy countries aren’t constantly conspiring to wage a civil war of economics and access against people living lives of quiet desperation who are accused of being irrational and crazy and savage and uncivilized by their oppressors if they have the temerity to object to their oppression, and we pretend that a sustained campaign of marginalization and denial and subjugation doesn’t amount to a lifetime of abuse committed against vulnerable people by their own government. And we pretend that a government in service to an ideal that ostracizes many citizens by virtue of poverty and others by virtue of indifference to its ostensible rewards is a functional government and not simply a tool of privileged elites. Those pretenses are going up in smoke across the UK.”

Shakesville: On the UK Riots, Part Two (via robot-heart-politics)

(via socio-logic)

African-American Boys Receive Less Attention, Lower Grades And Harsher Punishment In School

socialworky:

“A recent study by the Yale University Child Study Center shows that Black children — especially boys — no matter their family income, receive less attention, harsher punishment and lower marks in school than their White counterparts from kindergarten all the way through college. A subsequent article published in “The Washington Post” reported that Black children in the Washington, D.C. area are suspended or expelled two to five times more often than White children. It’s a national trend that needs to be addressed.”

occupyonline:

Submission by OccupyMovie.com:

This inspiring documentary highlights the unified voices of Occupy movement participants. This compelling look into the perspectives of citizens rallying for change sits in stark contrast to the out of context portrayal of the Occupy movement falsely created by media corporations.

Occupy Movie has been released as a social film experience! You can now INTERACT with each of the speakers in the film. 

To learn more about Occupy Movie and social filmmaking, please visit: 
http://www.OccupyMovie.com