Throughout history in every class society there has been an oppressed class and a ruling class. The oppressed class creates the wealth of the society and the ruling class who controls that wealth. In The New Class Society, Robert Perrucci and Earl Wysong (1999) argue that a new ôdouble diamondö class structure equates to a system that will create more poor Americans and keep them powerless to correct the situation. The bottom part of the class structure represents 80% of the population, including the comfort class, the contingent class, and the excluded class. The top of the double diamond is smaller and represents the privileged class, about 20% of the population made up of the super class and the credentialed class. The authors argue that the class system is organizationally based, with the privileged class able to rely on their class status and the workings of the class system (policy, army, judiciary) to maintain advantage: ôLarge organizationsùthrough various levels and groups of ægatekeepersÆ within themùdirect, channel, and legitimate the distribution of...resources to individuals and groupsö (Perrucci and Wysong, 1999, 8). In the face of globalization and the loss of manufacturing class stratification has become even more pronounced in the U.S.
Despite the reality of class stratification, Americans are politically passive. Social and political issues are undermined by ôOprahficationö, what the authors term the phenomenon of the media ôcontributing to the demise of critical thinking about current and past social, cultural and political events and issuesö (Perrucci et al, 1999, 232). Instead of blaming the government, social stratification, or poverty reinforcing mechanisms in a hierarchical society for issues like drug violence, the authors contend the media, owned by the privileged class, help manufacture consent of the public to class inequality: ôDARE promotes the acceptance of individual-level explana...