Founded as the Co-operative League in 1919 by the progressive business leader Edward Filene, and later renamed to the Twentieth Century Fund, TCF is one of the oldest public policy research institutes in the country. As we left behind the twentieth century, we entered into the early 2000s with the same mission but a new name: The Century Foundation.
Over our long history, we have been at the forefront of positive change in some of the most critical areas of domestic and foreign policy. Today, TCF continues this legacy by researching issues that range from pursuing fairness and opportunity in education; protecting workers and further strengthening the social safety net; encouraging democracy and ensuring personal rights in the tech age; and promoting stability and prosperity abroad.
Our experts come from academia, journalism, and public service—all with a shared commitment to advancing progressive ideas that benefit the public good. Through our evidence-based research and policy analysis, we seek to inform citizens, guide policymakers, and reshape what government does for the better.
Stand clear of the pressure like Tribe Called Quest once said,
"We feelin' pressures in here
You know we feelin' pressures
Feelin' pressures in here
You know we feelin' pressures
We gotta stand clear
Jus' gotta stand clear
Gotta gotta stand clear of the pressure
The what?" Please put away all digital devices until everyone is finished with the test. Please have textbooks out for collection or turn them into room 2434 ASAP.
When finished, I have a few things I'd like to do:
Nothing Protects Black Women From Dying in Pregnancy and Childbirth
Not education. Not income. Not even being an expert on racial disparities in health care.
What’s more, even relatively well-off black women like Shalon Irving die or nearly die at higher rates than whites. Again, New York City offers a startling example: A 2016 analysis of five years of data found that black college-educated mothers who gave birth in local hospitals were more likely to suffer severe complications of pregnancy or childbirth than white women who never graduated from high school. The fact that someone with Shalon’s social and economic advantages is at higher risk highlights how profound the inequities really are, said Raegan McDonald-Mosley, the chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, who met her in graduate school at Johns Hopkins University and was one of her closest friends. “It tells you that you can’t educate your way out of this problem. You can’t health-care-access your way out of this problem. There’s something inherently wrong with the system that’s not valuing the lives of black women equally to white women.”
I wonder how much of a role epigenetics plays in this - which is even more of a case for white privilege. Epigenetics is a complex area of study but to simplify, the stress that someone's grandparent experienced might affect their grandkids 40 or more years later!
What is the problem with dressing up as a different race? For example, this post from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education explains an incident at SD State University; A student at South Dakota State University dressed in blackface and a wig to impersonate Colin Kaepernick, the NFL player who started the national anthem protests. The student had a sign around his neck saying, “Will stand for money.”
Why can't the student pretend to be black as a joke?
For years, Americans labelled as "black" were not allowed to act with white performers on stage. Instead, whites pretended to be black by wearing makeup. This action has become known as "black face." The white portrayals of blacks during this time became a caricature of stereotypes that were designed to make fun of people perceived as black rather than act like them. So, when a person dresses up in black face now, it harkens back to these stereotypes and denigration of people labelled as black, also called "people of color." It is not that different than dressing up as any other stereotypical costume designed to make fun of a race, ethnicity, nationality or religious group. However, an important piece of this is that people of color are a minority group. They have been denigrated and persecuted and continue to be marginalized to this day. That is why this is not just stereotyping but being racist. The website black-face.com has a thorough explanation of the history of blackface.
The Root is an online news site that addressed black face here. From the Root article, sociologist Joel Feagin explains the problem with black face and how it is connected to white privilege,
"...most important to the white racial frame is that it centers whiteness as a default. That it portrays whiteness as inherently virtuous. “It’s a pro-white subframe,” Feagin explains. And it’s often the hardest one for white people to dismantle. “In it, we whites are trained into seeing ourselves as virtuous. We have the most virtuous history. We have the most advanced civilization,” Feagin adds. “We speak the best-quality English. We have the best beauty images, especially for women. All of those things ... civilization, history, values, religion, virtues, work ethic.” The inability to see the ways in which American society has actively and historically been pro-white is part of a “white arrogance,” he says—the same arrogance that inhibits whites and nonblack people from seeing the harm of blackface. When white people are called out for racist behavior, they don’t hear that they’ve hurt a person of color. What they hear is that they’re not virtuous, Feagin says."
It is interesting that Feagin says that whites "hear" that they are not virtuous. I think it is more than that. I think that whites "feel" that they are not virtuous. This is really important because feelings are what prevent Americans from hearing each other and empathizing with each other.Acknowledging white privilege is not meant to make whites feel depraved or deplorable. Instead, we need to commend whites who are able to empathize with groups that have been or continue to be marginalized. And the whites who do empathize should feel virtuous for doing so. What about Miss Saigon at SHS? Didn't SHS run a production of Miss Saigon where they painted the faces of Asian characters yellow? I spoke with Ms. Rawitz the theater director of the SHS production and not only did she explain that this never happened, she explained that makeup artists are very sensitive to these kinds of issues. They go out of their way to not be offensive in this manner. Much like the broadway production of Hamilton, actors might wear wigs but are left to play the characters the way they look. If a character wore makeup himself, then a character might wear makeup similarly such as eye shadow or lipstick. But they do not try to change their skin tone or biology. Here are two pictures and a video from the performance for reference:
A larger issue? However, after researching the play a bit, there is quite a bit of controversy around some of the themes in it. Check out the ny times:
Mura's criticisms include a number of particular sociological concepts and also, one very important general concept. Mura explains the idea of privilege which is that if you are not one of the minority groups affected, it is easy to both not see the racism and not care about it.
So perhaps this musical struck a nerve with some people not because of how SHS portrayed it, but because of the musical itself.
The Takeaway Don't miss the overall point of the lesson that spurred this discussion. The overall point is that explicit racism does exist. Regardless of how you feel about Miss Saigon, there are so many recent examples of racism and prejudice.
This video explores the working poor in America. These are people who are struggling to make ends meet but they are working. They may not be below the poverty line, but they are working a lot.
I had a great talk with an anatomy teacher and another science teacher. I also spoke with a science department chair from another high ranking high school. They helped clarify that yes forensic anatomy can be used to help identify a person but that you cannot biologically separate people into distinct races. Here is what I found:
There are 2 very important caveats to understanding the forensic anatomy lab. First, forensic science is not determinative - in other words it is not able to distinctly place people into a racial group. It is more of an educated guess or a probability. Secondly, the data must be compared to the types of people in the United States. This is not a categorical definition that applies to people around the world. It only applies to people in the U.S. because of our heritage and our terminology, which are social creations.
The forensics analysis is really analyzing different gene pools of certain traits for groups of people who are in the U.S. Using forensic evidence, one can cross reference the likelihoods of different characteristics that a person might have. Then the forensic anthropologist correlates those characteristics to a region of the world. Finally, this region can be compared to how Americans define race.
For example, look at the genetic traits that are on the Race Power of Illusion website (see the maps below or click on the link then on physical appearance for more info). The maps show that certain traits (such as head size or nose width) are more likely in different populations of people. A forensic anthropologist might try to pinpoint what geographic region of the world has the highest concentration of the overlapping traits. In other words, he might put layers of evidence that do not line up with "race" on top of each other in order to determine the most likely location of genetic ancestry of the person. Then using this approximate location, the forensic anthropologist might take that geographic region and say, "What would someone from this region be called in the U.S.?" From that he might say black or white or Asian, but that doesn't mean that all people in that group would contain that combinations of traits.
Here are just two traits to correlate:
In the above maps, imagine forensic evidence that finds a large skull (see the head size map directly above). Where might that person be from? Scotland, West Africa, or Southern India.
Now, look at the top map and imagine that the evidence also showed that the skull had a broad flat nose (92-97). Where is the probability highest that this skull be from? Southern and Western Africa or Australia.
A forensic anthropologist might say then that the probability is most high that the person is of West African origin because that is where the two data points correlate. Then, the anthropologists might say that in the United States, a person from West Africa is likely called "black or African American". Note that this is only a probability and only works because of the population of West Africans who were forced to the U.S. in slavery. But if the evidence revealed a medium head size and a long narrow nose (66.9-71.9) the person might be from Scandinavia, Eastern Russia or the Horn of Africa. These places all have these genetic traits correlating in higher probability. Obviously this would be a much more difficult task. These traits help to point to a specific region of the world where there is a high probability that an individual's ancestors came from, but it doesn't define biologically what "race" is.
I hope this helps clarify the anatomy lesson for you and reconcile it with the idea that people cannot be grouped biologically into "races". However, it also validates the idea that forensics helps to identify the probability that a person is from a certain gene pool/geographic region.
Tomorrow we will explore how that gene pool gets labelled as a "race".
For more info, a number of experts answer the following question: If race isn't biological, how do forensics investigators determine a person's race using their bones or DNA? To see their answers click here.
Students always misunderstand their forensic unit in anatomy. Anatomy misleads students into thinking that there are 3 "pure" races based on evidence from hair, cranium and femur. There are 2 very important caveats to understanding this lab. First, forensic science is not determinative - in other words it is not able to distinctly place people into a racial group. It is more of an educated guess or a probability. Secondly, the data must be compared to the types of people in the United States. This is not a categorical definition that applies to people around the world. It only applies to people in the U.S. because of our heritage and our terminology, which are social creations. For clarification, Let us turn to the Lab, the textbook and other resources.
The Lab
Anatomy provides important disclaimers within the lab itself. However, it seems that these disclaimers get downplayed because students never mention them. Let me quote from the lab itself and emphasize these points:
It can be extremely difficult to determine the true race of a skeleton. This is due to several factors: First,
forensic anthropologists generally use a three race model to categorize skeletal traits: Caucasoid
(European), Mongoloid (Asian/Amerindian), and Negroid (African). Although there are certainly some
common physical characteristics among these groups, not all individuals have skeletal traits that are
completely consistent with their geographic origin. Additionally, there is the issue of racial mixing to
consider. Often times, a skeleton exhibits characteristics of more than one racial group and does not fit
neatly into the three-race model. Also, the vast majority of the skeletal indicators used to determine race
are non-metric traits, which, as stated earlier, can be highly subjective.
First of all, most of the above paragraph is explaining why race is NOT a reliable factor when it comes to trace evidence. The paragraph states that race is difficult to determine. Why would it be difficult if race was biological? Would it be difficult to determine whether a human, a chimp or a gorilla committed the crime? I believe it would not because biologically, those three creatures are different. But because humans are the same species and NOT biologically different, they cannot be separated distinctly into different races.
Let's analyze the paragraph closely. "...forensic anthropologists generally use a three race model to categorize skeletal traits: Caucasoid (European), Mongoloid (Asian/Amerindian), and Negroid (African)"
The three race model is an old, erroneous and racist model that biologists, social scientists and anthropologists all do NOT use anymore.
"Although there are certainly some common physical characteristics among these groups, not all individuals have skeletal traits that are completely consistent with their geographic origin....Often times, a skeleton exhibits characteristics of more than one racial group and does not fit neatly into the three-race model." Even if you still use the erroneous three race model, this says that it is NOT distinct. "Also, the vast majority of the skeletal indicators used to determine race are non-metric traits, which, as stated earlier, can be highly subjective."
Finally, read this sentence carefully! 'Non-metric traits' are a fancy way of saying that race is NOT scientific. "Non metric" means it is subjective and based upon the society and local circumstances surrounding the people; it is a social construction. Not only that, it says 'THE VAST MAJORITY', which means overwhelmingly, that race is determined by non scientific, non biological, subjective evidence.
Secondly, and this is probably the most important part, the forensics analysis is really analyzing different gene pools of certain traits for groups of people who are in the U.S. Using forensic evidence, one can cross reference the likelihoods of different characteristics that a person might have. Then the forensic anthropologist correlates those characteristics to a region of the world. Then this region can be compared to how Americans define race. For example if there is a high probability that the bones are from West Africa, the anthropologists might say that person has a high probability of being black because that is how people from West Africa are categorized in the U.S. However, this type of data also rules out people from East and Central Africa who would also be considered "black" by U.S. standards. So the forensic analysis is using probability to state whether someone is likely to be considered "black" in America, but it is not able to predict going the other way. In other words, forensic analysis is not able to say because you are considered "black" you must have a certain bone structure.
For example, look at the genetic traits that are on the Race Power of Illusion website (click on physical appearance). They show that certain traits (such as head size or nose width) are more likely in different populations of people. A forensic anthropologist might try to pinpoint what geographic region of the world has the highest concentration of the overlapping traits. In other words, he might put layers of evidence that do not line up with "race" on top of each other in order to determine the most likely location of genetic ancestry of the person. Then using this approximate location, the forensic anthropologist might take that geographic region and say, "What would someone from this region be called in the U.S.?" From that he might say black or white or Asian, but that doesn't mean that all people in that group would contain that combinations of traits.
Here are just two traits to correlate:
In the above maps, imagine forensic evidence that finds a large skull. Where might that person be from? Scotland, West Africa, or Southern India.
Now imagine that the evidence also showed that the skull had a broad flat nose (92-97). Look at the top map. Where is the probability highest that this skull be from? Southern and Western Africa or Australia.
A forensic anthropologist might say then that the probability is most high that the person is of West African origin because that is where the two data points correlate. Then, the anthropologists might say that in the United States, a person from West Africa is likely called "black or African American". Note that this is only a probability and only works because of the population of West Africans who were forced to the U.S. in slavery. But if the evidence revealed a medium head size and a long narrow nose (66.9-71.9) the person might be from Scandinavia, Eastern Russia or the Horn of Africa. These places all have these genetic traits correlating in higher probability. Obviously this would be a much more difficult task. These traits help to point to a specific region of the world where there is a high probability that an individual's ancestors came from, but it doesn't define biologically what "race" is. Anatomy Textbook
I stopped into the ILC and looked at the anatomy textbooks. There was NOTHING in the entire book about race.
I checked the table of contents, the index and I thumbed through
chapters. Nothing. There is even a section on genetics that makes no
mention about race. Not a thing. The section about craniums and skeletal system makes no mention of any distinguishing characteristics. Other Sources Harvard School of Biomedical Sciences "there is no evidence that the groups we commonly call 'races' have distinct, unifying genetic identities. In fact, there is ample variation within races" The U.S. National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health published this article which explains, "Humans have much genetic diversity, but the vast majority of this diversity reflects individual uniqueness and not race." Race; Power of an Illusion Documentary FAQs answered by these experts. The American Association of Physical Anthropologists published this statement about race, including, "There is great genetic diversity within all human populations. Pure races, in the sense of genetically homogenous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past. " Contexts sociology blog The press release reports the results of this panel’s initial analysis of almost 500 cases. Most startlingly, it reports that FBI examiners gave inaccurate testimony in 96% of those cases.... As a 2009 review of forensic science by the National Research Council (NRC) put it, “No scientifically accepted statistics exist about the frequency with which particular characteristics of hair are distributed in the population.” Science Magazine "The study adds to established research undercutting old notions of race. You can’t use skin color to classify humans, any more than you can use other complex traits like height, Tishkoff says. 'There is so much diversity in Africans that there is no such thing as an African race'.” Science Buzz: "...there’s more variation within any racial group than there is between them...Our genes are constantly moving around the planet. We’ve had 100,000
years of genes moving and mixing and re-assorting in countless different
ways. We’re always mating outside our groups. [As a result, there’s]
very little variation among us." Live Science:
there
is only one human race. Our single race is independent of geographic
origin, ethnicity, culture, color of skin or shape of eyes — we all
share a single phenotype, the same or similar observable anatomical
features and behavior - See more at:
http://www.livescience.com/47627-race-is-not-a-science-concept.html#sthash.PdEUEzMO.dpuf
"...there is only one
human race. Our single race is independent of geographic origin, ethnicity,
culture, color of skin or shape of eyes — we all share a single phenotype, the
same or similar observable anatomical features and behavior..." Innocence Project and Unreliable Evidence: "...many forensic testing methods have been applied with little or no
scientific validation and with inadequate assessments of their
robustness or reliability. Furthermore, they lacked scientifically
acceptable standards for quality assurance and quality control before
their implementation in cases..." And from NPR,
We’re talking about a technology which the FBI and state and local crime
laboratories across the country have relied upon to associate an
accused to a piece of crime scene evidence for the last 40 years by
looking at hairs under a microscope that they found in a crime scene and
comparing it to a defendant’s hair. It turns out that for 30 or 40
years, they were exaggerating the probative value of those similarities
such that in, I would say a quarter, of all the DNA exoneration cases,
the people were originally convicted in part based on crime lab people
coming in and saying the hairs matched.
New Scientist: "With the exception of nuclear DNA analysis, no forensic method has been
rigorously shown able to consistently, and with a high degree of
certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific
individual or source." The Atlantic How unthinking racial essentialism finds its way into scientific research. Newsweek There is no such thing as race; The troubling persistence of an unscientific idea.
Let me be upfront about my own reading: These two new studies
are the most powerful demonstration yet that neighborhoods — their
schools, community, neighbors, local amenities, economic opportunities
and social norms — are a critical factor shaping your children’s
outcomes. It’s an intuitive idea, although the earlier evidence for it
had been surprisingly thin. As Sean Reardon, a professor of education
and sociology at Stanford, said of the study, “I think it will change
some of the discussion around how where children grows up matters.”
The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Project
Abstract:
The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment
offered randomly selected families living in high-poverty housing
projects housing vouchers to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods. We
present new evidence on the impacts of MTO on children's long-term
outcomes using administrative data from tax returns. We find that moving
to a lower-poverty neighborhood significantly improves college
attendance rates and earnings for children who were young (below age 13)
when their families moved. These children also live in better
neighborhoods themselves as adults and are less likely to become single
parents. The treatment effects are substantial: children whose families
take up an experimental voucher to move to a lower-poverty area when
they are less than 13 years old have an annual income that is $3,477
(31%) higher on average relative to a mean of $11,270 in the control
group in their mid-twenties. In contrast, the same moves have, if
anything, negative long-term impacts on children who are more than 13
years old when their families move, perhaps because of disruption
effects. The gains from moving fall with the age when children move,
consistent with recent evidence that the duration of exposure to a
better environment during childhood is a key determinant of an
individual's long-term outcomes. The findings imply that offering
families with young children living in high-poverty housing projects
vouchers to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods may reduce the
intergenerational persistence of poverty and ultimately generate
positive returns for taxpayers.
The data from Princeton University: Eviction Lab The Eviction Lab at Princeton University has built the first nationwide database of evictions. Find out how many evictions happen in your community. Create custom maps, charts, and reports. Share facts with your neighbors and elected officials. Here is a guide to using the Eviction Lab in class.
Here is Desmond speaking about his work (about 1 hour).
Excerpt:
Jori and his cousin were cutting up, tossing snowballs at passing
cars. From Jori’s street corner on Milwaukee’s near South Side, cars
driving on Sixth Street passed squat duplexes with porch steps ending at
a sidewalk edged in dandelions. Those heading north approached the
Basilica of St. Josaphat, whose crowning dome looked to Jori like a
giant overturned plunger. It was January of 2008, and the city was
experiencing the snowiest winter on record. Every so often, a car
turned off Sixth Street to navigate Arthur Avenue, hemmed in by the
snow, and that’s when the boys would take aim. Jori packed a tight one
and let it fly. The car jerked to a stop, and a man jumped out. The boys
ran inside and locked the door to the apartment where Jori lived with
his mother, Arleen, and younger brother, Jafaris. The lock was cheap,
and the man broke down the door with a few hard-heeled kicks. He left
before anything else happened. When the landlord found out about the
door, she decided to evict Arleen and her boys. They had been there
eight months.
The day Arleen and her boys had to be out was cold. But if she waited
any longer, the landlord would summon the sheriff, who would arrive
with a gun, a team of boot-footed movers, and a folded judge’s order
saying that her house was no longer hers. She would be given two
options: truck or curb. “Truck” would mean that her things would be
loaded into an eighteen-footer and later checked into bonded storage.
She could get everything back after paying $350. Arleen didn’t have
$350, so she would have opted for “curb,” which would mean watching the
movers pile everything onto the sidewalk. Her mattresses. A floor-model
television. Her copy of Don’t Be Afraid to Discipline. Her nice
glass dining table and the lace tablecloth that fit just-so. Silk
plants. Bibles. The meat cuts in the freezer. The shower curtain.
Jafaris’s asthma machine.
Arleen took her sons—Jori was thirteen, Jafaris was five—to a
homeless shelter, which everyone called the Lodge so you could tell your
kids, “We’re staying at the Lodge tonight,” like it was a motel. The
two-story stucco building could have passed for one, except for all the
Salvation Army signs. Arleen stayed in the 120-bed shelter until April,
when she found a house on Nineteenth and Hampton, in the predominantly
black inner city, on Milwaukee’s North Side, not far from her childhood
home. It had thick trim around the windows and doors and was once Kendal
green, but the paint had faded and chipped so much over the years that
the bare wood siding was now exposed, making the house look camouflaged.
At one point someone had started repainting the house plain white but
had given up mid-brushstroke, leaving more than half unfinished. There
was often no water in the house, and Jori had to bucket out what was in
the toilet. But Arleen loved that it was spacious and set apart from
other houses. “It was quiet,” she remembered. “And five-twenty-five for a
whole house, two bedrooms upstairs and two bedrooms downstairs. It was
my favorite place.”
After a few weeks, the city found Arleen’s favorite place “unfit for
human habitation,” removed her, nailed green boards over the windows
and doors, and issued a fine to her landlord. Arleen moved Jori and
Jafaris into a drab apartment complex deeper in the inner city, on
Atkinson Avenue, which she soon learned was a haven for drug dealers.
She feared for her boys, especially Jori—slack-shouldered, with
pecan-brown skin and a beautiful smile—who would talk to anyone.
Arleen endured four summer months on Atkinson before moving into a
bottom duplex unit on Thirteenth Street and Keefe, a mile away. She and
the boys walked their things over. Arleen held her breath and tried the
lights, smiling with relief when they came on. She could live off
someone else’s electricity bill for a while. There was a fist-sized hole
in a living-room window, the front door had to be locked with an ugly
wooden plank dropped into metal brackets, and the carpet was filthy and
ground in. But the kitchen was spacious and the living room well lit.
Arleen stuffed a piece of clothing into the window hole and hung ivory
curtains.
The rent was $550 a month, utilities not included, the going rate in
2008 for a two-bedroom unit in one of the worst neighborhoods in
America’s fourth-poorest city. Arleen couldn’t find a cheaper place, at
least not one fit for human habitation, and most landlords wouldn’t rent
her a smaller one on account of her boys. The rent would take 88
percent of Arleen’s $628-a-month welfare check. Maybe she could make it
work. Maybe they could at least stay through winter, until crocuses and
tulips stabbed through the thawed ground of spring, Arleen’s favorite
season.
There was a knock at the door. It was the landlord, Sherrena Tarver.
Sherrena, a black woman with bobbed hair and fresh nails, was loaded
down with groceries. She had spent $40 of her own money and picked up
the rest at a food pantry. She knew Arleen needed it.
Arleen thanked Sherrena and closed the door. Things were off to a good start.
At the 2017 National Council for the Social Studies annual conference, I had the privilege of helping to facilitate a three session symposium on the teaching of high school sociology. Our keynote speaker was Arlie Russell Hochschild. Dr. Hochschild is a professor Emeritus of sociology at UC Berkley. She is a renowned ethnographer. At NCSS 2017, she spoke about her most recent work, Strangers In Their Own Land; Anger and Mourning on the American Right. What I found most intriguing in her book was the concept of the "deep story", or a story that shapes the way people feel. It doesn't matter if the story is real or true or not. What matters is that the story is believed to be true so people shape their feelings and actions as if it were real. Dr. Hochschild's idea is explained on NPR's Hidden Brain,
In her new book, Strangers in Their Own Land, sociologist Arlie Hochschild tackles this paradox. She says that while people might vote against their economic needs, they're actually voting to serve their emotional needs.Hochschild says that both conservative and liberals have "deep stories" — about who they are, and what their values are. Deep stories don't need to be completely accurate, but they have to feel true. They're the stories we tell ourselves to capture our hopes, pride, disappointments, fears, and anxieties.
1. How does social class make life difficult for Dana Felty?
2. What are some of the obstacles to moving up in class described in this segment?
High School
"Well, your CD collection looks shiny and costly. How much did you pay for your bad Moto Guzi? And how much did you spend on your black leather jacket? Is it you or your parents in this income tax bracket?" - Cake
3. How does class play itself out at our high school, or in high school in general? Does high school reinforce or prepare you for fitting into a social class? If so, how? Give some examples from our high school. Additionally, how do you think moving up or down would affect you? Which would be tougher? What if you married/dated someone who was very low income or someone rich? What difficulty would this cause in your family and friends?
