People who come from low class families are always looked down. People believe that since we come from lower class income families that we can't change our status because we will fall into the trap of society which is telling us to either sell our bodies,sell drugs or join a gang to make ends meet.We know the importance of education and how valuable it is so we are going to college to and are going to have high paying jobs to change our economic status.In a novel called “Bodega Dreams” by Erensto Quinonez its taken from a perceptive of a Latino man called Chino trying to challenge society so he can change his status both economic wise and social wise.There was a time when Chino was taking a class that talked about changing the cultural identity
It does not matter where people come from, where they live, or their race they will always be judged by others causing someone with pride to feel shame. There are many occasions in which people feel desperation because they don't like where they come from. Others judge them because of their origin. Some people do not care what others say, they love their native community and will not leave their living area because they feel they belong there. In “Invasion” by Benjamin Percy he shows his anger towards others that come to his native town in Bend, Oregon because he feels some sort of invasion causing his town to become transformed by others. In “The Barrio” by Robert Ramirez he describes his barrio colorful meaning every house has it's own story and he would not leave his barrio for any reason because he loves it.
A student should never be denied the right to learn and become successful because of a different skin color, or because they speak a different language. “No saco nada de la escuela” by Luis Valdez is a play that discusses the racism in schools. The play starts with students going to elementary school and then ascending to middle school and college. At the beginning the students were not aware of what racism really was because of their innocence. However, the teacher that they had was very racist and bullied the students of color. That experience made the other kids realize that not everyone was the same and because of color or language they should be treated differently. There are five different students who take part of this play, two of those students were white, and there were two Chicanos and one black. That is great diversity of cultures. The teacher that the students have in elementary school was an example of the other professors they were going to have throughout their school years. Very arrogant and not understanding of the minority students. Their teachers were not really interested in teaching the minorities and always showed her discontent of having students of color. Their teachers didn’t believe that students who were part of a minority should be placed in the same classroom as the white students. Maybe that was because they didn’t know the potential a minority student could have. One Chicano student named Francisco never denied his roots and became very successful. He had many obstacles in his learning environment, but at the end he becomes a great example of perseverance. Francisco is the student who I think showed the greatest development in the play. He had to deal with racism all the time, but that didn't stop ...
In a country full of inequities and discriminations, numerous books were written to depict our unjust societies. One of the many books is an autobiography by Richard Wright. In Black Boy, Wright shares these many life-changing experiences he faced, which include the discovery of racism at a young age, the fights he put up against discriminations and hunger, and finally his decision of moving Northward to a purported better society. Through these experiences which eventually led him to success, Wright tells his readers the cause and effect of racism, and hunger. In a way, the novel The Tortilla Curtain by T.C Boyle illustrates similar experiences. In this book, the lives of two wealthy American citizens and two illegal immigrants collided. Delaney and Kyra were whites living in a pleasurable home, with the constant worry that Mexicans would disturb their peaceful, gated community. Candido and America, on the other hand, came to America to seek job opportunities and a home but ended up camping at a canyon, struggling even for cheapest form of life. They were prevented from any kind of opportunities because they were Mexicans. The differences between the skin colors of these two couples created the hugest gap between the two races. Despite the difficulties American and Candido went through, they never reached success like Wright did. However, something which links these two illegal immigrants and this African American together is their determination to strive for food and a better future. For discouraged minorities struggling in a society plagued with racism, their will to escape poverty often becomes their only motivation to survive, but can also acts as the push they need toward success.
Instead of loving and caring for her baby, and forgetting about Danny, she became worse than him. Rodriguez presents many aspects of the minority class that live in the United States, specifically the South Bronx. Even though the cases presented in Rodriguez’s short stories are difficult to mellow with, they are a reality that is constant in many lives. Everyday someone goes through life suffering, due to lack of responsibility, lack of knowledge, submission to another entity or just lack of wanting to have a better life. People that go through these situations are people who have not finished studying, so they have fewer opportunities in life.
Imagine seeing 10,000 of your classmates walking out of your school because they wanted a better education - a better way of life. In the 1960s’ Chicano students were being “pushed out”(Esparza) of school or being pushed towards vocational programs. East L.A was home to schools were “one out of every four Chicano’s completed high school”(Esparza). Instructors and the school board alike did not have an interest in helping Chicanos finish school to become someone other than a laborer and was expected of them to keep being a laborer. In “Taking Back the Schools”, Sal Castro a high school counselor claims, “I think the bottom line is the lack of concern of the teachers towards the kids and whether the kids were really getting an education or not...the reality set in that the teachers weren’t really concern for the kids.”(Esparza).
The book disputes that regardless of race, social economic class will determine how successful children will be in the future. Lareau, went as far to explore how middle class families with children, up to ten years old went through their daily routines and aggressively sought to enhance their children’s talents and schools through a series of organized activities, intense language training, and by overseeing their children’s experiences in these institutions. However, the working-class and poor families, both black and white, had no options but to use resources that was accessible to them in order to take care of their children, even if its at the
In the exert from Bodega Dreams by Ernesto Quinonez the author wrote about his encounter s with various teachers of Julia de Burgos. While attending Julia de Burgos a teacher by the name of Mr. Blessington was the type to talk poorly about the Latin students and their community. He would degrade and belittle the Latin students in his class. He would tell them that they would eventually end up in the penitentiary. He felt that if they were from the Spanish Harlem neighborhood that they should drop out of school because they were not white, and felt they would never amount to a certain standard of living. On the other hand another teacher by the name Mr. Tapia spoke life into his students to make them different about themselves and their situations.
... social class marginalization in a major U.S. inner city culture. Bourgois did well explaining the social problems as well as his ideas of solutions and temporary solutions to the problems faced by most people who live in poverty. As a nation the United States must take a long, hard look at its inner cities, where the most severe poverty is found. There are many solutions to the problem of crime and violence that are being used today and yet they seem ineffective. This is due to the fact that the root cause of the crimes and violence is extreme poverty. As Bourgois said most of those who live and “work” in the barrio are looking or respect and a sense of dignity. (Bourgois, 2003) The problem is that they will never reach the success they are looking for without first helping other Americans to realize that the social status of the poor is what is holding them back.
People from lower classes try to achieve success but tend to struggle depending upon their foundation. The problem that people don’t want see is that we all want to become successful, and have the capability to do so but are just restricted by the lack of income.
In the book Drink Cultura by Jose Antonio Burciaga talks about how it is not easy to get into one place and get anything you want in this world or something you wish for, but it’s something you have to work for, like any other person. It also explains how it is being an immigrant, and how it is to grow up in the United States as in immigrant and how had it is, and the obstacles that as in immigrant we have to overcome. Antonio Burciaga specifically talks in his book the Chicano history, the language that we speak as a person, the family values and how we as a Chicano stick together. One quote of Burciaga is “Naces pendejo, mueres pendejo --- You were born a pendejo and you will die a pendejo (Burciaga10)”. This particular quote caught my attention because the author gives you a taste of what he experienced, and what kind of language they used. “When the wells of emotion are filled only by resentment, a crying sense of injustice, racist, affronts, deliberately designed frustrations to personal development and social worthiness (Burciaga131)”. This quote talks about how we as Chicanos have the motivation by bringing in our passion from the past, but as soon as someone brings that wall down of us having that one positive outcome, we can go into a lot of resentment towards other people, and think to ourselves at some point that we are worthiness. In chapter “The Motherland” the author talks about the pride people take about being Latinos, he talks about being back in Mexico and how it’s all so different once you’ve lived on the other side, a quote that gives you a mental picture would be “Many white Euro-Mexican will shrug their shoulders, declare they are 100 percent Mexican do not partition or categorize their ancestry. On the contr...
The novel “Women Without class” by Julie Bettie, is a society in which the cultural you come from and the identity that was chosen for you defines who you are. How does cultural and identity illustrate who we are or will become? Julie Bettie demonstrates how class is based on color, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. The author describes this by researching her work on high school girls at a Central Valley high school. In Bettie’s novel she reveals different cliques that are associated within the group which are Las Chicas, Skaters, Hicks, Preps, and lastly Cholas and Cholos. The author also explains how race and ethnicity correspondence on how academically well these students do. I will be arguing how Julie Bettie connects her theories of inequality and culture capital to Pierre Bourdieu, Kimberle Crenshaw, Karl Marx and Engels but also how her research explains inequality among students based on cultural capital and identity.
Years of isolation due to their race, a subculture has developed that promotes violence, the selling of drugs, and public assistance as a source of income. Because it is vital for the inhabitants of this community to conform to its culture, little time is spent expanding upon their ability to socialize effectively enough to grow. Because of this social incompetence, awareness and access to the vital building blocks that make one successful are not easily obtain and require much effort. Therefore, the path of an African-American from “The Hood” to success is one less paved as the obstacles to reach success, as a contributing member of society, tends to outweigh the ease of
Some Hispanic people try to go their whole life denying who they really are. Like in Passing when Joan Steinau Lester tells us that all of us developed different ways of coping with stereotypes of our groups and of ourselves (260). Most Hispanic people chose to pass because they grew up around hardship and racial slurs from other that thought themselves to be better. Others chose to pass because they seen it done to other Hispanics and did not want to encounter the same reaction. So rather than face who they are and were they come from these people chose to pass and avoid all the negative reactions. Instead of trying to pass Hispanic people should overcome and try to better themselves by getting a good education and get those good jobs. So they wouldn’t have to pass they could be proud of who they are and were their family comes from. So they don’t have to feel like an airborne plant, flourishing without roots (Holman 258).
Bourgois argues that the racism inflicted by the dominant race unto the inferior race is supressed to a personal level. The structural racism in inner city is so extreme that the only ‘legal’ job available to them are ones that are considered as the least desirable jobs in the US, offering low income and racial abuse from their racist bosses. Since the self-reinforced marginalization is destined to keep them powerless and at the bottom of the US economy; the likes of working in an illegal, underground economy may sound appealing as it not only offer
All my peers were white middle class children and I never saw myself as being middle class. My father worked construction and had his own landscaping business on the weekends and my mother was a stay at home mom then became an insurance agent. We never owned extremely luxurious things but we did not struggle paying the bills either. It was when I moved and reflected on my old neighborhood that I realized my family actually was middle class. Although my parents do work, I do not consider my family to be working class because both my parents have completed college degrees. The reading on page 71 opened my eyes to a new perspective of class. I always knew class effected an individual’s potentials however, the reading made me think about “social