The Different Lens of Race, Class, and Gender

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To Distribute or To Not Distribute the Wealth

The way wealth is distributed within the United States is a big issue because it is distributed in an unjustly matter. The wealthy have money but do not enjoy paying high taxes and lower income households struggle to make ends meet. Therefore, the conclusion is that in order for all people living in the U.S. to live a simple and comfortable lifestyle, there needs to be a change in the way wealth is distributed. 

The reason this is such an issue is because there is no solution where everyone is happy. I’m not sure what the “just” distribution of money is because I feel that in order to understand the issue of the distribution of wealth and to take the steps necessary to get closer to a solution, one has to look at each circumstance individually and all the details that factor into its situation. This then makes everything much more complicated because those who are deciding how our wealth should be distributed do not care to look at those details, nor do they understand them. Also, not many people are not aware of the huge gap between the rich and the poor, and because of that, carry the notion that wealth is distributed pretty evenly in the U.S. This only adds to the problem.

With every decision affecting another in a different way, negatively or positively, the struggle is finding a way where everyone is happy. We all want people to have the basic resources, but with the issue of scarcity, it makes it much more difficult. The question is who gets the utilities created to help families who are struggling- people who cheat the system or those who work hard. Those who sit on their couch all day and cheat the system, do not deserve to get the utilities to help them. But, those who work multiple jobs, try to create a better life for themselves and their family, and are determined, deserve the utilities to help them. 

The article “Imagine a country” from Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, puts a few important issues into light. For example, “a country where one out of four children is born into poverty, and wealth is being redistributed upward”, “a country where worker productivity went up, but workers’ wages went down”, and “a country where some are paid so little their children go without necessities- while others are paid so much their grandchildren could live in luxury without having to work at all.” How is this fair? 

It’s not. 

That’s why as citizens of the United States, we need to inform ourselves of what is actually going on within our society. We need to STOP making assumptions and generalizations, and actually look at the facts to understand how severe this problem is. 

According to Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Social Class: Dimensions of Inequality and Identity by Susan J. Ferguson, “In the United States in 2004, the ratio of CEO pay to the average worker’s pay was 431 to 1.” That’s insane. The fact that there are people who are making so much money that it’s impossible to spend it all in their lifetime, all at the same time that there are people who work for the same company, in the same building, and can’t even afford to put food on table for their families. While the way wealth is distributed is clearly an issue, people argue that those CEO’s work hard and deserve that money. I agree, that CEO’s work hard for their money, but when you hear that a couple who are each working two jobs each, and still can’t afford the basic necessities, it makes you think.

“Race and Extreme Inequality” states that “Since 1968 the income gap between blacks and whites has only narrowed by 3 cents” and that “Income will only be equal between the two groups in the next 537 years.” Why should it take that long? I understand that nothing happens overnight and that finding a solution takes time and consideration, but is it fair that for the next 537 years, African American and white’s income will be drastically different. Is is fair that an “Army officer who worked as a security guard would have to work more than 20 years to earn what his employer earned in 1 hour” (“Meet the Wealth Gap”). This is someone who has served in the U.S. army, who has given up his life to serve and protect the citizens of the United States, and he’s struggling to support himself. 

In “Shh Don’t Say Poverty”, it expresses the idea that poverty is “killing the American dream” because people cannot afford to support themselves and their families. We need to try and fix the way that wealth is distributed, which  will be no easy task, but informing and educating people about this continuous issue is the first step. In addition, we need to make changes, especially to the degree where everyone living in the U.S. should be able to have the basic necessities. 

The American dream shouldn’t be a dream, but a reality.

Watch this very interesting video to learn more about how wealth is distributed within the United States: 

http://www.businessinsider.com/inequality-in-the-us-is-much-more-extreme-than-you-think-2015-6

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Look at all Sides of the Issue

Among the countless issues within our world, none are so simple. With each issue, one can choose to look at the surface or dig deeper and see what’s below. 

An ongoing issue in the world today is the debate of who receives merit-based scholarship- students who come from higher income households or students who come from low income households. There are multiple side to this issue.

One side of this issue is the understanding of the word merit. What does merit mean? Google defines the word merit as “the quality of being particularly good or worthy, especially so as to deserve praise or reward.” What makes one “particularly good or worthy” or “deserving of praise or reward”? To colleges this means test scores and GPA- a stupid number that makes a student “qualified” for certain schools. How do students get these high test scores?

This brings us to the next issue-money. With the wealthy being able to afford tutors, standardized test classes, and other aids to help their kids raise their numbers, these kids are ahead of those who can’t afford these resources. This means that low-income families can’t afford to provide their kids with these resources that others in higher income families get, so when the college process starts, the wealthy and lower-income students are on different levels. The students from higher income households are ahead of the race which skews the chance of opportunity for the students from lower income households. 

We have to ask ourselves this question: merit-based scholarships are mostly based on academic achievement, but should financial need be taken into account? The issue is that wealthy students are getting these merit scholarships versus students who are in financial need. But, wealthy students are only getting these scholarships because of the aids that their money buys them to raise their tests scores and GPAs. So, is that really merit if someone is helping you “cheat” the test or writing your essays? 

The author Jay Mathews of the article Wealthy Often Win the Race for Merit-Based College Aid (found in Race, Class, and Gender in the United States) gives the statistic that “from 1995 to 2000, scholarship aid to students from families making $40,000 or less increased 22 percent in 1999 dollars. At the same time, scholarship aid for students in families making $100,000 or more a year increased 145 percent.” While scholarships to students from lower income households increased, scholarships for students from higher income households increased by 6 times. This is because the wealthy’s money can buy them resources that lower income families cannot afford to provide for their children. 

Personally, I find this issue tricky because I believe that students with exceptional or above average numbers should receive merit scholarships because of what they have accomplished during their high school academics, not for financial need. That’s is why there is financial need/aid scholarships. As I said before, wealthy kids who are given the resources are ahead of the race, but how can colleges know that a student got help? They can’t. Colleges won’t be able to figure out which students got help from outside resources or which students work hard for their grades or who are just smart. In the end, colleges should use a more holistic approach when assessing students’ applications because not every student has exceptional grades, but each student offers something another student does not. 

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Deciphering “Crash”

Crash is a movie that illustrates many social injustices that are present in our world today. Throughout the movie you see many stereotypes between all kinds of people and how that has an effect on society.  There were many examples of  prejudice throughout the movie, especially through aspects of race, ethnicity, and minority groups. 

Racism held a big presence throughout the movie. In one of the final scenes, a young white police officer offers to drive a black teenager who he saw walking on the street late at night. Throughout the movie, this specific police officer is portrayed as unprejudiced which stood out because most of the police officers were discriminatory, especially towards African Americans. This police officer felt disrespected by the black boy and told him to get out the the car. The black boy wanted to explain as to why he was laughing; he was laughing because both he and the police officer had the same kind of toy with them. When the boy was trying to pull the toy out of his pocket, the police officer, overcome with fear, shot the black boy. The police officer then realized that this boy didn’t have any weapons, but rather the same toy as he did. He acted as a coward by pushing the boy’s body out on the street, leaving him for dead. The issue of blacks being shot, especially by police officers, is a controversial topic in the world today. 

Another racial issue from the movie was between these two polices detectives, who happen to be lovers. Both are part of minority groups: Latino and African American. As they were getting ready, the African American man made a rude and prejudice comment about Mexicans. Even though they are lovers and co-workers, the black man still made a demeaning comment towards his girlfriend and the rest of the Mexican people. I was surprised because I thought that since many African Americans are aware of all the racism towards African Americans and the race as a whole, he would have more sympathy and know that that comment was simply not okay. 

From all the issues presented within Crash, this particular scene stood out to me. In the scene, a film company was shooting a film and one of the white TV producers looked frustrated. Why? He thought that one of the actors wasn’t speaking “black” enough. Then, this man had the audacity to turn around and complain to the TV director, who happened to be black, about this “issue”. The white TV producer thought that because this character was not acting “black” enough that his character would be perceived as smart to the audience.The black TV director definitely got offended but kept his cool and didn’t make a scene. I was shocked when watching this scene because telling someone to act in a certain way in order to represent a specific race, culture, or gender is the reason why there are so many stereotypes today in the world. 

After this upper class white couple got their car jacked and a gun pointed to their heads by two African Americans men, the wife became very frantic. When she got home after this unfortunate event, she immediately wanted all the locks in her house changed. The man who was replacing the houses locks was Mexican, and she had this paranoia that this Mexican man was going to sell their house keys to one of his “homies”, as she states it. The fact that she was worried was understandable because she had just gone through a traumatic event, but the fact that she was assuming that this man was bad because he was Mexican was not nice. Also, the fact that she was not discrete about her opinions of this man and yelled it in front of her husband, his associates, and the Mexican man was very rude because they all overheard what she had said.  

I really enjoyed Crash because even though the movie was fiction based , there was a sense of realism to it. The racial, sexual, cultural stereotypes and prejudices illustrated in the movie were a reflection of what has happened in our society in the past and what is still happening today. Sometimes we are  oblivious to what is going on around us and how we treat others because we think that they are “different”, but that is not acceptable and needs to stop. This movie is represents a strong realization of many problems within our world which is important because the people of the world need to be informed of all these problems to later take action and stop them. 

Check out the film’s website for more info: http://www.crashfilm.com

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Counter Your Thinking

When reading “Patriarchy”, a chapter in Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, the conclusion was that men are dominate and women are submissive.

The way that society is perceived in the chapter is: “a society is patriarchal to the degree that it is male-dominated, male-identified, and male-centered”. It started off by saying that men are at the top of the social hierarchy in regards to gender. It then added that many jobs within society are in the control of men. For example, lawyers, doctors, school principals, and corporate jobs. Even in family scenarios, they are the “head of households”. When a woman is one of those positions, she is then questioned if she will be able to do the job as well as a man.

With society viewing me, a woman, incapable of being as efficient as a man, it makes me angry. I think that I can do most things that a man can do, especially become a provider for my family. Both of my parents share the role of being a provider for our family. My mom started her own business and works to provide for her family. Also, my dad doesn’t just decide things and except my mom to accept it; they are a team and they work together. 

When a group of both men and women are called “guys”, a male pronoun, it doesn’t bother me. In fact, I didn’t even realize it until I took the class, RCG (Race, Class, and Gender). But what does bother me is when “society promotes the idea that men are superior to women” and women are perceived to be incompetent. I don’t like that society influences people to consider women below men, when in reality they are not. 

The common thread that I also never noticed until I took RCG is that when most people think of a doctor, they think of a man. While there are a lot of male doctors in the world, I don’t think of a man- I think of Meredith Grey, the main protagonist of Grey’s Anatomy, who is a kick-ass female doctor. 

Both men and women play a big role in the world and neither should feel pressured to obtain certain qualities that society deems they should have. Women and men should both be looked at as respected figures within society and not objects of sexual desire or dominance, but as distinct individuals.  

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Different is Boring

After reading Part 1 of Race, Class, and Gender in the United States by Paula S. Rothenberg, my eyes were opened to the word that controls our social hierarchy and defines us all: Difference. Each and every individual is different. Different race, ethnicity, religion, gender, class- the list can go on. We all have our differences, but instead of using our differences to separate each other, we should use them to come together and be introduced to the uniqueness of each individual.

Throughout Unit 1, the question I continued to ask myself was why we’re always looking at differences in a negative light and as a reason to separate ourselves from one another. 

I learned that before the world was more open to difference, people who were different were “disabled”. They were “disabled” because they were different. They were “disabled” because they were African American, Jewish, homosexual, or a woman. Personally, I do not see these as differences- I see them as identity.

Difference is not a concept that you can pack up and shut tightly into a “box”. The concept of difference should be like a can of worms. There should be DIFFERENT colorful worms flying all around you, introducing you to new ideas, and learning to appreciate what’s around you. 

At the end of the day, despite all our differences, experiences, and personal situations, we are all human beings. Yes, we are all different, but we should all be able to set our differences aside, coexist and educate each other about our differences. I feel that difference will never go completely unnoticed, but I hope that one day it will not be the reason for division between people. I hope that one day difference will not define who we are, but individuality will. 

The word difference leaves me with a question I want you to think about: What defines someone as different and why should that have an effect on how they are perceived as an individual?

Just remember: 

I’m different. You’re different. We all are different. 

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Unit 1: The Ethics of Living Jim Crow

While reading The Ethics of Living Jim Crow, a chapter in the book, Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, the hardships that many African Americans had to endure in the past came to light. The author of the passage, Richard Wright, expressed several experiences that a individual African American man had to face from the time he was a young boy to a man, or as Wright states it, “ [the] lesson in how to live as a Negro”. 

The passage states how this man had to live his life according to being a black man; he was restricted in many ways, and therefore had to live a different life than whites. After being physically hurt by a bunch of white boys at young age, this fear of white men grew inside of him. He tried to avoid and isolate himself from whites, but one day he had to face them. 

From this man’s experience of discrimination as a young boy, he thought to himself, “When was I ever going to learn to be a good boy?” He blamed himself for the the physically and mentally painful encounters between himself and whites, even though HE DID NOTHING WRONG; it was not this man’s fault that he was born into an African American family. 

Through the many experiences of being traumatized by whites, this African American man needed to learn how to survive or go unnoticed in a world where he was looked at differently or as inferior. This was no easy task; each day was to be taken one day at a time. 

This passage made my head steam, for while reading the multiple stories of the passage, I was appalled that whites could treat African Americans this way and still live with themselves and their actions. I also hated seeing this man just having to stand there and let these horrible things happen to him and African Americans in his community. The pain that this African American man had to deal with his entire life frustrated me because no one- African American or white- should ever be treated in such a horrific way.