Jensen's main point in the second chapter of her book "Reading Classes" is to lay out how classism exists in how she defines separate classes for the sake of her writing. Like
Johnson's explanation of Individualism in "The Forest and the Trees" Jensen also points out how Classism (as other forms of systematic oppression) shift the attention away from the structural issues that contribute to class divisions, and toward individuals who are "too lazy" to attain a higher class. Jensen states that "classism says that people with more wealth deserve it because they earned it" and it is individualistic attitudes like this that ignore the hard work that working class people do (50).
On another note, Jensen also states that "classism sees and judges louder, more expressive and emotional human behavior as flaws of personal character, which is called tasteless rather than customs of class or ethnic cultures" (45). I found this interesting when thinking about how Johnson stated that "when blacks or women express anger in the workplace, for example, they risk triggering stereotypes of blacks and women as overly emotional" (65). I think that these two quotes are important when thinking about how race, class and gender are connected when examining classism. In all cases, being overly emotional is seen as a negative, while restrained behavior is seen to be "higher class"--all of this works to keep oppressed groups from acting out of their (justified) rage against the machine of systematic "isms" that the privileged are so unwilling to address.
