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Jasmine Barragan
Professor Koning
English 113B
29 March 2014
Education
Unlike today, segregation between class structures was a difficult obstacle to overcome in
the education system during the time bell hooks attended college. The book, where we stand:
CLASS MATTERS by bell hooks, explains the way race plays a significant role in the education
system, and to some extent income as well. Hooks illustrates her unique definition or idea of
social classes. She views social classes as a separation of the races and to some degree, income.
For most, the idea of social classes is where an individual stands according to wealth, income,
and education, however to hooks, class is simply a division of whites and African Americans.
While this might be a controversial viewpoint that can certainly be argued, hooks makes the
assumption that the privileged whites have more access to education and that although income
provides access to higher levels of education, the real obstacle of upward mobility in social class
is race. There is truth in hooks argument because whites have more access towards school
material, colleges are less prone to accepting colored people because of the parents annual
income, and parents who intervene less in the education of their children tend to have those kids
bring home poor grade marks.
Bell hooks argues that whites, the high-class individuals, have more access to materials
needed for success in various academic classes. Hooks came from a low income family and she
struggled going to certain classes because her parents could not afford supplies. Hooks states
Then there were folks like me, full of passion and talent, but without material resources to do
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art. Making art was for people with money (30). When bell hooks was in high school, she was
very limited with what she owned because her father was the one that supported their family
financially. Hooks father never found it necessary to pay for material for school or supply his
children with clothes. Growing up, I was raised by a single mom that struggled to pay rent for
our single bedroom apartment. It was difficult for my mom to buy me all the school supplies I
needed and for the majority of the school year I would only have two pencils with one notebook.
As I was entering high school, I did not find it necessary to do well in school because I focused
more on working and helping my mom make rent. Low class individuals, such as myself, do
poorly in school because of the material their parents cannot provide. Higher class people, whites
in general, have an abundance of one crucial source, parental finance. Hooks elaborates on the
widely known fact that whites, having a more secure and competent income, are far more likely
to be able to supply their children the things they need, in this case; materials for school.
In the American society, people are segregated not only by the class materials available
to them but also by the color of their skin and by their annual income. Low income people have a
lower chance of getting accepted to a good competitive college because of their parents lack of
educational experience. Furthermore, they are not readily capable to pay for tuition, books, or
transportation from their own pocket. Bell hooks explains that When I was choosing a college
to attend, the issue of money surfaced and had to be talked about (25). As hooks was applying
to college, her parents wanted her to attend a college near home because although the college
was going to pay for tuition, they needed to keep in mind the amount of money spent on
transportation, clothing, etc. According to www.collegestats.org, less than fifteen percent of
students that attend the top five Ivy League schools use financial aid. According to the website,
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the amount of Brown University students that use financial assistance for school are around 10.9
percent and students at Duke University that use government assistance are around 8.3 percent.
Despite the disadvantages of coming from a low income family, as hooks was searching
for a college to attend that challenged her level of academic ability, she delineated that Poor
students would be welcome at the best institutions of higher learning only if they were willing to
surrender memory, to forget the past and claim the assimilated present as the only worthwhile
and meaningful reality (37)
According to the article "Reexamining Social Class Differences in the Availability and
the Educational Utility of Parental Social Capital" by Robert K. Ream and Gregory J. Palardy,
they explain how lower class people only interact with their children when they are in trouble.

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Works Cited
Hooks, Bell. Where We Stand: Class Matters. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.
Ream, Robert K, and Gregory J Palardy. "Reexamining Social Class Differences
in the Availability and the Educational Utility of Parental Social Capital."
American Educational Research Journal, 45.2 (2008): 238-273.
Where The 1% Send Their Kids to College." RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.
<http://collegestats.org/articles/2012/07/where-the-1-send-their-kids-to-college/>.