Social class=Social polarization

English 110

26^th/09/2011

So-Young Park

What kinds of ideas rise in your mind when you think social class? For me, the word stimulates to think about group polarization. I was barely aware the meaning of social class or social group until I graduated from the middle school and moved to Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia.

Before I moved to the country, I thought everybody contained the similar life style and finances as me without any hesitation because I had not seen people who were extremely affluent or enormously deprived. However, as I migrated to Indonesia and began my life in there, I bitterly realized the meaning of social warfare and social group. The country never possesses the middle or average. To be honest, there is a group marked as middle group, but the reality doesn’t prove that the people are actually included in the group compared to the other residents live in the developed countries. People involving in the middle class of Jakarta, people in the middle class usually work as a maid or car driver or employees of a company, earn $300 in a month, while the impoverished residents earn less than $300 and the novels produce uncountable incomes.

Since I witnessed the actuality of social class, I have embarked my interest in people’s subsistence level and social group polarization of countries, and have focused myself on watching news and documentary narrating about the problems social polarization and the solutions to solve the difficulties. For example, when I took Asian studies class in the high school, I did research a lot about the social gap, gained numerous primary sources mentioning the issue and published essays foreshadowing the phenomena of the social polarization happens in Asia. After I finished the project, I increased my tendency in choosing primary sources issuing the negative phenomena of the social class, mostly from the news, and solutions can improve the unpleasant conditions.