For the past few weeks, Americans have been confronted by the realities they do not wish to acknowledge—that race and class remain divisive issues in our country. The rallying cry of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” rang through the towns of the 13 colonies while their economy was driven by slave labor. Horatio Alger popularized “rags to riches” stories where protagonists succeeded because of American meritocracy, while child labor was rampant in American cities and the poor lived and died in filthy slums.
People can claim that these examples from the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries have no bearing on life in America now, but to think this way is a fallacy. Since its founding, America has been a great country, but has also been a hypocritical one, and this duality and the historic socioeconomic situation in America have colored contemporary Americans’ lives and culture. We value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but find no problems incarcerating 1.6 million Americans, the largest number of incarcerated people in any country in the world. We boast of world-famous American universities, but when an African-American male between the ages of 18-24 living in inner-city Boston is more likely to get killed than to attend any college—forget about an Ivy League one—, we as a society have a problem, and this problem has everything to do with race and class.
These are cold, hard truths in the American story. The differences in lifestyle between those of certain races and classes are painstakingly obvious to the conscious observer. The African-American population that has been historically repressed for centuries cannot suddenly achieve a high quality of life after the end of segregation. The immigrants who were spat upon and told to return to their country and whose college degrees gathered dust in the closet while they drove taxis to make ends meet did not make the leap from rags to riches. Those without feasible economic opportunities cannot compete with a class of society that has an abundance of resources. Yet people do not wish to hear these truths. It is as though racial integration, affirmative action, and financial aid at universities are enough to assuage our consciences and to assure ourselves that we have done all we can to remedy the blights of racism and class privilege. Yet who are we really helping with these initiatives?
Recently, Harvard Medical School unveiled a new financial aid plan whereby students from families making less than $120,000 will receive more financial aid. As a first-year at Harvard Medical School and as a student whose family falls firmly into the category of making less than $120,000, I was thrilled to hear that my six-figure debt might be reduced to a five-figure one. Imagine my surprise when I read in the same article that only about 1/3 of Harvard Medical students would actually be affected by this financial aid policy. How is it possible, I wondered, that 2/3 of some of the smartest future doctors also come from incredibly privileged backgrounds? Are only wealthy people smart? Obviously not. Then the next question is: why aren’t more children who grew up in working-class or middle-class families at Harvard Medical School?
The tangible connection between wealth and future success has manifested itself even at Harvard Medical School, with its need-blind policy of admission, for the obvious reasons: wealthier parents can afford personal tutors, private lessons, and tuition at exclusive high schools. We have to face the facts that people are exposed to different opportunities depending on their socioeconomic status, and that, in turn, depends upon race to a certain degree. I’m not saying that all minorities are poor and disenfranchised, because that would be a gross miscategorization of the problem. What I mean is that socioeconomic status—in other words, one’s class—shapes the path one’s life takes. For many years, the upper echelon of society had its doors closed to all racial and religious minorities, and now that is gradually changing. In many ways, it is easier to break the barriers of race than of class. There are many minorities represented among my peers at Harvard Medical School, but fewer people hail from working class families. Money cannot buy you everything, but it can smooth the way to success regardless of the color of the hand holding the dollar bills.
Faced with this conundrum, we must ask where we as a society have failed. We have provided life and liberty to people but have not given them the means to live. We offer financial aid at universities but neglect early education. We decry Jim Crow Laws but do nothing to address the contemporary, continuing ghettoization of American cities. Race and class are firmly interwoven into the narrative of American history, and it is time we address them.
No comments:
Post a Comment