Heads I win, Tails You Lose; Flipping Out Over Social Class

Today we played a coin flipping game from the ASA's Teaching Sociology that is a metaphor for social class in the United States.  

Rules:
You must find someone to wager against and continue wagering until I say stop or someone goes bankrupt.

Take turns flipping and wagering (one person picks the wager and one calls heads/tails).

If you go bankrupt, take a reflection sheet - you may work on this alone or with a partner.

Predictions
What are the chances of winning each flip?

Everyone starts with three coins, what do you think will happen as the contest goes on?

Debriefing
The exercise was a metaphor for social class.

The exercise resembles real life in a number of ways:

Fair and Equal
1. Like life in the U.S., the  exercise had the appearance of being fair and equal - everyone had a 50% chance of winning.  The U.S. is an open system - not a caste system or closed system of slavery.  It gives the impression that everyone has an equal chance and that the system is fair.  The coin flip metaphor seems like everyone has a 50-50 chance to succeed.  This is true for U.S. society too.  From Jen Hochschild's book, Facing Up to the American Dream,  Americans believe in the "American dream;" success is attainable for anyone.  However, just like real life, the coin game takes a little luck.  If you are lucky enough to be born in wealth, it is an advantage just like being lucky to win early in the game.

Rules
2. However, our system is called a social class which is made up of unwritten rules.  The way the rules are written, the money will flow to the top with just a few having most coins and most people having very little.  (See the graph at the right from here)

More Money, More Problems?
3. The more money you have the more opportunities you have.  Donald Trump's corporation filed for bankruptcy at least 4 times, but he had enough wealth and power and prestige to recover from the bankruptcies.

Middle Class
4.  The difficulty of the middle class.  Most Americans claim to be in the middle class.  People making $30K per year to people making $200K per year claim to be in the middle class.  However, defining the middle is difficult because there is so much money skewed to the top and there are so many people at the bottom.  Even though the game has the appearance of being an equal 50-50 chance, the rules favor a channeling of wealth to the top.  Everytime we play this, the outcome is similar: most money at the top and most people at the bottom with very little money.  This is true in real life as well as the metaphor.  Here is a graph showing wealth distribution in the U.S.:

Compare this graph to a graph of the coin distribution at the end of the game.
Some of the specific similarities include:
How difficult it is to define the middle class.
The huge disparity between those at the top and those at the bottom.
The large number of Americans who have no wealth/no coins.

Because Americans hate the idea of a class system, most Americans prefer to think of themselves as middle class.

However, rather than being a society of equality or a society of people in the middle, American has the highest rate of poverty among the 17 leading industrial nations.  Most wealth is at the top in the hands of very few people and most people are at the bottom with very little.  

In Summary
To summarize, most U.S. citizens do not like the idea of social class. They will not acknowledge the rules that create the distribution of wealth that we see in the exercise. But the reality is that our wealth and even our income in the U.S. resembles that of the coin flip metaphor; a few individuals at the top with enormous wealth and income and most people at the bottom making very little (comparatively).

And the "rules" of our society help to create that dynamic. By "rules" I mean the opportunities and obstacles that we face based on our social class.

Takeaway:

How is this activity a metaphor for the American class system?

Open System-

Lorenz Curve -

Just Mercy and Deviance

Please take a self assessment and look it over before we begin the discussion.

1.  What are examples of how deviance/crime is relative (to time, place and perception)?

2.  What are examples of how the criminal justice system stigmatizes and labels individuals as deviant? Who gets this label?

Here is a link to Equal Justice Initiative and how stigma affects individuals leaving prison.

3.  Similarities to Saints and Roughnecks?

Criminal Justice System:

Here is a link to Antonio Nunez's Story.


Here is a link to Trina Garnett's story and here is a video about her:


Here is what Equal justice Initiative says about mental illness in prison.

Deviance: Saints, Roughnecks and Patriots?

Please answer the following:

1. Describe the Saints.
2. Describe the Roughnecks.
3. How does money play a role with the Saints and Roughnecks?
4.  How are they affected in life after high school?
5. Are there Saints and Roughnecks at SHS?  Who (no names, please) and why?



Besides time and place, deviance is also relative to perception. Deviance must be perceived to be real. And in a capitalist society that values money, perceived deviance is related to social class. This is one revelation in William Chambliss's study called "The Saints and the Roughnecks" Chambliss argues that money was a key factor. If you have enough money it helps you cover up the deviance. Do you think this applies to kids at our school (no names please). Who is deviant? How do they hide it? Does money play a role? Is everyone at school a "saint"? Another important revelation in Chambliss's research is that the kids who accept the label of "deviant" then act upon that label. In other words, if I think that everyone expects me to be deviant, I may accept that as the truth and then I act deviant. Once you are labeled as "deviant", that becomes a stigma or a badge of disgrace that you carry with you. Sociologists who study this perspective call it the labeling theory.

Many students were upset about an investigation a while ago  that lead to the suspension of many students. But it might surprise students to learn that this was actually a relatively tame investigation. Here is a podcast from This American Life about a real drug investigation in a high school in Florida. Click on the link below and click on Act Two and play.

Act Two. 21 Chump Street.
Last year at three high schools in Palm Beach County, Florida, several young police officers were sent undercover to pose as students, tasked with making drug arrests. And this, this is the setting for a love story, reported by Robbie Brown. Robbie works for The New York Times in Atlanta. (13 minutes)
After listening can you see how our school handled the investigation the way the Saints were treated in the Chambliss reading instead of how the Florida school handled it (like the roughnecks)? You can read along on the transcript here.

This American Life turned the story into a short broadway act written by Lin Manuel (star and creator of Hamilton).


A second way that we see this relativity in drugs depends on who is getting caught using them. In a landmark study, The Vicious Circle, the Chicago Urban League wrote about how a Chicago Police drug sting operation was handing out felonies to impoverished minorities busted near the projects, but upper middleclass white kids from Naperville who were being caught there (instead of being given a felony) were having their parents called by the cops, or in some cases having their license suspended, but then they were released with no felony on their record. Dr. Paul Street of the Chicago Urban League writes,

Perhaps nothing reveals more dramatically Illinois authorities’ penchant for waging the War on Drugs in…disparate ways than the state’s enforcement of two 1989 bills mandating that a 15 or 16 year-old youth automatically would be prosecuted as an adult if he or she was charged with selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school or a public housing project. Under the state’s Automatic Transfer laws…youth who have been convicted as adults can be transferred to adult prisons upon their 17th birthday and are automatically transferred on their 18th birthday….Of the 393 young people automatically transferred to adult facilities in Cook County from October 1999 to October 2000, 99.2 percent of them were minorities….
These findings are disturbing in light of evidence that white youth use illicit drugs at the same or higher rates as youth of color. They are doubly troublesome in light of recent reports on how local and state criminal justice authorities have chosen to deal with the rising number of ‘young [white] suburbanites’ purchasing heroin and other illegal narcotics on the city’s predominantly black West Side. In August 2001, The Chicago Tribune reported that city police and DuPage…drug cops… had selected a rather mild sanction for the suburban offenders. ‘Officers,’ the Tribune noted, ‘have seen teens make drug buys, traced the license plates of their cars and notified the registered owner, often a parent, where the vehicle has been.’
Last June…Cook County prosecuters and police had increased the level of punishment for the young suburbanites, threatening to impound their automobiles and suspend their driver’s licenses. William O’Brien, Chief of Narcotics for the State’s Attorney’s Office gave the following rationale for this ‘new crackdown,’ which contrasted sharply with the prison sentences faced by 15-year-old inner city youth caught selling narcotics next to a public housing project; when it comes to young and automobile centered suburban kids, O’Brien explained, ‘driving privileges may resonate more…than the threat of jail.’
The Vicious Circle by Dr. Paul Street, The Chicago Urban League, 2002. (pp.13-14)

Some other examples of how this applies to life beyond high school are the ways in which our society focuses on street crime as opposed to white collar crime.  Most of the news each night is spent on street crime: murders, burglary, robbery and rape.  The popular media likes reporting on these because they are action-oriented, personalized and fearful.  Each crime is presented like a mini-drama story.  However, white collar crime is far more costly and perhaps more dangerous.  White-collar crime includes tax evasion, bribery, embezzling, negligence.  For example, a department store defrauded poor customers of over 100 million dollars;  tire company executives allowed faulty tires to remain on vehicles despite recalling the tires in other countries - 200 people were killed before the tires were removed; an oil company skirted safeguards which resulted in an explosion and environmental disaster killing 12 people and costing billions of dollars.  In each of these cases, there may have been fines imposed on the companies involved, but no one went to prison.  No one received a felony record.  I bet you cannot name an individual person involved in the incident because no one person was labeled as deviant. 

In the criminal justice system, at every stage those with more money and power are able to avoid the system while those who are poor are funneled through it.

Because social class is related to deviance, the criminal justice system is more likely to target the poor.  This article  details how this is happening in Detroit.


Another example of this is Freaks and Geeks episode 13 is an example of Chambliss's thesis. Lindsay is experimenting with pot but she does not get caught, but her freak friends get caught. They are expected to be deviant. They may have even accepted the label of being deviant and they now see themselves as deviant and that influences their actions.

Takeaway:

How is deviance related to social class?

What is labeling theory? What is stigma? Self-fulfilling prophecy?