Reading Response #2 - "And Yet"

1) Marx and Engels wrote: "Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat" (10). If only that were true, things might be more simple. But in late twentieth-century America, it seems that society is slitting more and more into a plethora of class factions - the working class, the working poor, lower-middle class, upper-middle class, lower uppers, and upper uppers. I find myself not knowing what class I'm from.
In my days as a newspaper reporter, I once asked a sociology professor what he thought about the reported shrinking of the middle class. Oh, it's not the middle class that's disappearing, he said, but the working class. His definition: if you earn thirty thousand dollars a year working in an assembly plant, come home from work open a beer and watch the game, you are working class; if you earn twenty thousand dollars a year as a school teacher, come home from work to a glass of white wine and PBS, you are middle class.
How do we define class? Is it an issue of values, lifestyle, taste? Is it the kind of work you do, your relationship to the means of production? Is it a matter of how much money you earn? Are we allowed to choose? In this land of supposed classlessness, where we don't have the tradition of English society to keep us in our places, how do we know where we really belong? The average American will tell you he or she is "middle class." I'm sure that's what my father would tell you. But i always felt that we were in some no man's land, suspended between classes, sharing similarities with some and recognizing sharp, exclusionary differences from others. What class do I come from? What class am I in now? As an historian, I seek the answers to these questions in the specificity of my past.

Julie Charlip, "A Real Class Act: Searching for Identity in the Classless Society"

Italicized phrases are showing ideas which are possessed by the author
Bold phrases are showing ideas possessed by others



2)
a) In my letter to a Michigan Representative in Congress I used two perspectives, that which is believed by the general public and mine own.
b) In order to make my piece more persuasive it would have been wise to include a perspective from an individual that has a expertise in the subject of the letter, such as a sociology professor from a well renounced university.
c) I was able to clearly distinguish my views by using clear transitions. It was also helpful that for this particular piece the views were opposing with no overlap.
d) I was able to use clear voice-signaling phrases.
e) Some options I have for clarifying whose view is being presented would be to clearly define by name whose spoken view is is being presented instead of relying on the phrase "the public".
f) I believe that to best improve this piece at least one expert view of the subject needs to be added as well as a new way of phrasing "the public".