Social Stratification
In Chapter 3 we discussed how individuals belong to various social groups. For the purposes of understanding socialization, we described how important it is for individuals to recognize the significance of these social groupings. For the purposes of understanding oppression, we must also understand that these groups are given different value in our society. This process of assigning unequal value is called social stratification.
PERSPECTIVE CHECK: Figure 5.1 is not intended to imply that these are the only forms of oppression in society. For example, we have not included oppressions such as adultism, ageism, linguicism, or sizeism, nor have we separated out the way that anti-Semitism is both a form of religious oppression and also