Race and Class
A big question in today 's society is whether race and/or class will help you succeed more in life or will it hold you back from accomplishing your goals. From what we know, we can see that both of these factors play a large role in our everyday lives. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are always being judged and discriminated against by these factors and others such as religion, sex, ethnicity, age etc. So we ask ourselves, how do these factors affect us personally?
Growing up as a white male in the upper middle class in Texas, I have never really faced any issues where I felt like these factors were holding me back from something but for others, it 's not always the same story. Depending on where you are born geographically, …show more content…
You go to school, get an education, graduate and then you’re ready for all the opportunities life has to offer. I mean it makes sense, right? Actually, where you go to school can affect this too. If you attend a school in a low-income area, the education will actually be less than average therefore limiting your success from the start making it that much harder. A study done by Americas Promise Alliance showed that a quarter of black students will attend a school where more than half of the school 's population won 't even graduate and the ones that do graduate will hardly ever apply to college because they either can 't afford it or because they won 't be accepted. In fact, private schools can actually deny you based on your race as long as they aren 't receiving federal funding. This was the case in 2010 when a school in Hawaii denied a white student from attending their …show more content…
That 's not to say however that these are mutually exclusive. A white family can be just as impoverished as a black family and vise-versa. What it really boils down to are your parents and their decisions. There is not much you can do at a young age to increase your chances of success. If you 're born black, you will stay black and if you 're born white you will stay white just like if you 're born in poverty you will most likely stay in poverty. These factors make up your background and who you are as an individual, as a human. We can 't change them. What we can do is change how institutions and the system perceive us. We need to remove these racial and financial barriers that separate us into these categories by creating mixed-income schools and neighborhoods that are open to everybody and accepting to all races and classes. This way we can move forward in unity to abolish these forces that have separated us for so long. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
A big question in today 's society is whether race and/or class will help you succeed more in life or will it hold you back from accomplishing your goals. From what we know, we can see that both of these factors play a large role in our everyday lives. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are always being judged and discriminated against by these factors and others such as religion, sex, ethnicity, age etc. So we ask ourselves, how do these factors affect us personally?
Growing up as a white male in the upper middle class in Texas, I have never really faced any issues where I felt like these factors were holding me back from something but for others, it 's not always the same story. Depending on where you are born geographically, …show more content…
You go to school, get an education, graduate and then you’re ready for all the opportunities life has to offer. I mean it makes sense, right? Actually, where you go to school can affect this too. If you attend a school in a low-income area, the education will actually be less than average therefore limiting your success from the start making it that much harder. A study done by Americas Promise Alliance showed that a quarter of black students will attend a school where more than half of the school 's population won 't even graduate and the ones that do graduate will hardly ever apply to college because they either can 't afford it or because they won 't be accepted. In fact, private schools can actually deny you based on your race as long as they aren 't receiving federal funding. This was the case in 2010 when a school in Hawaii denied a white student from attending their …show more content…
That 's not to say however that these are mutually exclusive. A white family can be just as impoverished as a black family and vise-versa. What it really boils down to are your parents and their decisions. There is not much you can do at a young age to increase your chances of success. If you 're born black, you will stay black and if you 're born white you will stay white just like if you 're born in poverty you will most likely stay in poverty. These factors make up your background and who you are as an individual, as a human. We can 't change them. What we can do is change how institutions and the system perceive us. We need to remove these racial and financial barriers that separate us into these categories by creating mixed-income schools and neighborhoods that are open to everybody and accepting to all races and classes. This way we can move forward in unity to abolish these forces that have separated us for so long. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their