Short answers, pulled from the story.
Class discrimination, also known as classism, is prejudice or discrimination on the basis of social class. It includes individual attitudes, behaviors, and systems of policies and practices set up to benefit the upper class at the expense of the lower class.
Social class refers to the grouping of individuals in a hierarchy based on wealth, income, education, occupation, and social network. A person's standing in that hierarchy shapes who surrounds them and which careers and opportunities they encounter most often.
Personal classism is an individual's inclination to judge or treat others negatively based on rigid beliefs or emotions rather than objective evidence. Institutional classism is the way conscious or unconscious classism is manifest in the various institutions of society. Some writers add a third category, cultural classism.
Class discrimination intersects with racism and sexism, compounding economic disparities for marginalized groups. As of 2022, Black women were 6% of employed workers but 32% of home aides, earning on average $23,803 per year, and women make up nearly two-thirds of workers in the 20 occupations with the lowest median wages.
Media often depicts lower-income people as dirty, uneducated, ill-mannered, and homeless, and caricatures the working-class man as a buffoon or bigot in sitcoms such as The Honeymooners, All in the Family, and The Simpsons. High-grossing G-rated movies portray classism to children, and research cited points to overrepresenting African Americans in negative poverty narratives.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was designed to reduce class inequality through minimum wage and overtime rules, with the minimum wage rising from $5.85 to $7.25 per hour between 2007 and 2009. Other measures include the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the 1968 Fair Housing Act, and Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which covers social origin.