1. The reading says owners are people who make money from what they own, like stocks, land, or companies. They don’t need to work to earn a living. Employees are people who have to work to get paid, like doing a job in a store, office, or factory.
Example of an owner: someone who owns a big company and makes money from it.
Example of an employee: someone who works at a grocery store or in a warehouse.

2. Adam Smith is saying that labor (work) is what makes things valuable. A tree is just a tree, but when people cut it, shape it, and turn it into furniture, it becomes something useful and valuable. So it’s not the money that matters most—it’s the work people do.

3. I think the reading is saying class is not just who you think you are or how you live. It’s more about your position in the system. If you own things that make money, you are in one class. If you have to work for someone else to survive, you’re in another class. So class is more about your relationship to work and money, not your personality or style.

4. The reading means that workers and owners depend on each other in a close way. Owners need workers to run their business and make profit. Workers need jobs to pay for food, rent, and other needs. But this relationship is not equal, because the owners usually have more power and make more money.
Example: A factory needs workers to build products, and the workers need the job to survive.

The statistic that made the biggest impression on me was how the bottom 80 percent of taxpayers saw their share of income drop from 50 percent to about 40 percent. This means most people are getting less of the country’s wealth while a small group keeps getting richer. I think this is important because it shows how uneven wealth is in the US, and it feels unfair.

Living in a society with such huge wealth inequalities can cause many problems. It can make it harder for people with less money to get good education, healthcare, or even basic needs like food and housing. It also creates more stress and division between rich and poor.

I see this happening every day. For example, I notice many people working long hours in low-paying jobs but still struggling to pay rent or buy groceries. Meanwhile, some people live very comfortably with lots of money and don’t worry about these problems. This gap affects the whole community and makes life harder for many families.

The diagram M–C–M’ shows how capitalists keep and grow their wealth. It starts with M, which means money. The capitalist uses that money to buy C, which stands for commodities. These commodities are things like raw materials, machines, and most importantly, labor power (workers’ time and energy). Then those workers make products that get sold for M’—which is more money than what the capitalist started with.

The reason M’ is bigger than M is because of surplus value. This means the workers create more value than they get paid for. For example, if a worker works 8 hours, they might only get paid for 4 hours (that’s enough to cover their food, rent, etc.). But they still work 4 more hours—that extra work is called surplus labor, and it’s unpaid. The value created in those extra hours goes straight to the capitalist as profit.

This is how capitalists stay rich. They invest money, use workers to make products, and then sell those products for more than they paid. The key is that the workers’ labor power creates more value than it costs, and the capitalist keeps the extra. This process repeats, so their money keeps growing, and that’s how they stay wealthy and powerful in the system.

1. Why do you think Southern racist politicians chose to frame their defense of racial segregation through the language of “law and order”? What special advantages was this choice of words going to give them?

Southern politicians used the phrase “law and order” instead of openly defending segregation because it sounded neutral and non-racist, even though their real goal was to maintain white control and limit Black freedom. After the Civil Rights Movement, it became harder to speak openly about racism. So instead of saying “we want to keep Black people in their place,” they said things like “we need to stop crime” or “we need to restore order.”

Using this language gave them three main advantages:

• It made their ideas more acceptable to the general public, especially to people who didn’t want to think of themselves as racist.
• It allowed them to win political support from white voters who were upset about civil rights changes, without sounding openly hateful.
• It laid the groundwork for policies like the War on Drugs, which seemed fair on the surface but were really used to control and punish communities of color.

So, “law and order” was a way to hide racism behind legal-sounding language.

2. Do you think the Southern Strategy is still influencing American politics? Give an example supporting your answer.

Yes, the Southern Strategy still affects American politics today. The Southern Strategy was about using fear and racial division to get white voters — especially in the South — to support conservative candidates.

An example is how some modern politicians talk about crime, immigration, or protests. They may use strong language about “inner-city crime,” “building a wall,” or “cracking down on looting” to create fear, especially among white voters. These messages often focus on Black and brown communities without saying so directly. It’s the same idea: using coded language instead of open racism.

For example, during the 2016 and 2020 elections, some politicians used phrases like “law and order president” or described protests against police violence as “riots” — which made it sound like Black-led movements were dangerous or out of control. This kind of messaging continues the Southern Strategy by using fear to gain political power while avoiding openly racist language.

1. M. Alexander claims that the main explanation of why so many people are sent to jail in the U.S. today is deeply wrong. Explain her argument by referring to the various examples she mentions to back up her point.

Michelle Alexander says that many people believe the War on Drugs started because of a big drug problem in poor Black neighborhoods. But that’s not true. She explains that President Reagan started the War on Drugs in 1982 — before crack cocaine became a problem. Later, the government used the media to show scary images of Black people using or selling crack. This made people support the drug war even more.

Alexander shows that this wasn’t really about stopping crime. It was about creating fear and support for harsh drug laws. These laws mostly hurt Black and brown people. Some people even believed the drug war was a plan to hurt Black communities. At first, people thought that idea was crazy, but later, the CIA admitted that it helped smuggle drugs into the U.S. while fighting a war in another country. So, Alexander says the War on Drugs was more about politics and race than safety.

2. Why is it that racial disparities in the rates of incarceration “cannot be explained by rates of drug crimes”?

Alexander says that white people and people of color use and sell drugs at about the same rate. Sometimes white youth do it even more. But police focus mostly on Black and brown communities. That’s why so many Black people are in prison, even though drug use is the same across races.

She gives examples: in some places, Black men go to prison for drug charges 20 to 50 times more than white men. In cities hit hard by the drug war, 80% of young Black men now have criminal records. This makes it hard for them to find jobs, housing, or go to school. The justice system unfairly targets people of color, not because of crime, but because of how the system is set up.

3. How do you understand the phrase: “the American penal system has emerged as a system of social control unparalleled in world history”?

This means that prisons in the U.S. are used to control people, especially poor Black people — not just to stop crime. When the War on Drugs began, drug use was actually going down. But arrests and jail time went way up. That shows it was never really about crime.

The number of people in prison went from 300,000 to over 2 million in less than 30 years. The U.S. now puts more people in jail than any other country. It also locks up more Black people than South Africa did during apartheid. In Washington, D.C., 3 out of 4 young Black men are expected to go to prison. Alexander says this system is a way to keep certain people down — to take away their rights and keep them out of normal life. It’s a form of social control that’s bigger than anything seen before in modern history.