Social Mobility... (For Some)

“a limousine passed us… in which sat three modish negroes… I laughed… ‘Anything can happen now’... I thought” -The Great Gatsby, page 69.

In modern times, many Americans like to believe in Mr. Carraway’s comical thought that “Anything can happen” or as my father has often told me “Anyone can be successful.” That's the American dream, is it not? People usually cite examples of wealthy or powerful minorities, such as our current president. However, they neglect to mention the discriminatory social obstacles that they had to overcome to get there. These factors that lead to this lack of social mobility include, discrimination in the criminal “justice” system, and a subconscious, as well as, conscious, racism held by many Americans.

As the tragic events that took place in Ferguson made clear to many Americans, discrimination is still very prevalent in law enforcement. For example, “45% of non-whites are frisked when pulled over compared to only 29% of whites, even whites are 70% more likely to carry a weapon”. This racial profiling by law enforcement results in more incarcerations for minorities. A Huffington post article confirms this saying, “One in every three black males born today can expect to go to prison at some point in their life, compared with one in every six Latino males, and one in every 17 white males” (Knafo). Racial profiling by law enforcement results in more incarcerations for minorities, and being incarcerated undoubtedly keeps you in the lower-class. Thus, we can conclude that the myth of justice being blind was not, and is not, true in America. Which, results in lower-class minorities staying in the lower class.

In addition to the discrimination of law enforcement, discrimination by everyday American citizens also hampers the social mobility of minorities. In research for an older post I found that minority homebuyers are offered roughly 10% fewer units than their white counterparts. Additionally, minorities were often offered a higher rent. Both the higher rent, and secrecy when it comes to properties in certain neighborhoods is because realtors want to keep minorities out of the wealthier white neighborhoods. One of the consequences of this is allow parents to give their kids the best education because the schools in the North Shore receive much more funding than the CPS. As you can see from the image below, this secret form of segregation unfortunately seems to be working.

From the demographics map on the left, one can clearly see just how shockingly divided Chicago really is by race. I took the liberty of drawing in some lines to make these divisions stand out. And after overlaying this map of divisions on to the map of income on the right, I found that race undoubtedly correlated to income. The predominantly white northern suburbs are blanketed in red dots (100k+) while the predominantly black communities to the south and west have a clear trend of dark blue (20k-). If America was as equal as many American’s would like to believe, then why do we see such clear divisions between different races and different classes, and furthermore, why do we see a correlation between the two?

While the racism of realtors is a very conscious decision to keep minorities out of wealthy white neighborhoods, a more subconscious racism exists in the minds of many Americans. The article Professors are Prejudiced, Too showed that professors are more likely to respond to an email from a white student than a minority student. According to the data from the article, “87 percent of white males received a response compared with just 62 percent of all females and minorities combined” (although the data includes information on gender, focus on information on race for the purposes of this paper). What’s even more shocking is that it made no difference whether it was a black student emailing a black professor or a white professor, they were discriminated against regardless. This leads me to believe that it couldn’t have been a conscious choice to discriminate, rather they didn’t respond to the students of racial minority because they subconsciously view minorities as less than, and thus don’t feel like they have a responsibility to respond. Evidently, many Americans identify a person’s class by their race, and treat them accordingly. 

Many minorities cannot rise from the lower-class due to a number of factors in American society that encourage inequality and discrimination rather than social mobility. Chris Rock illustrates this, in a quote from his stand up routine Kill the Messenger, "I live in a place called Alpine New Jersey. My house costs millions of dollars. In my neighborhood there are four black people: me, Mary J. Blige, one of the greatest R&B singers to ever walk the earth, Jay-Z, one of the greatest rappers to ever live, and Eddie Murphy, one of the funniest actors to ever do it. Do you know what the white man who lives next door to me does for a living? He's a fucking dentist." So while yes, the passengers of the limousine in The Great Gatsby, the President, a number of celebrities, and many other American citizens of various racial minorities have achieved success, they have done so despite the hidden yet powerful forces of discrimination that continue to hold minorities in this country back even today.

Cultural Appropriation in Hip-Hop

Know anything about Hip-Hop? Cool, you should listen to this podcast. Don't know anything about Hip-Hop? Still cool, you should still listen to this podcast! It covers a history of Hip-Hop's beginnings, cultural appropriation of Hip-Hop today, and the consequences of this cultural appropriation. And it's all narrated by a privileged white kid from the suburbs (talk about fitting).

Prisoners of Poverty

2.8 million people walked the streets of Chicago today,

but while they were criss-crossing across those cracks in the concrete

not one of them noticed that they were passing through a prison

A prison where inmates of income do time in the dungeons of cardboard castles

Where the cafeteria is a trash can and the bathroom is a brick wall

Where the only occupation is an outstretched hand held up by the hinges of hunger

and a fleeting faith in humanity

Where the visiting room is divided by a one way mirror:

Made of excuses and explanations, it enables everyone to ignore the incarcerations

So a teen can sit seeking food front and center on the sidewalk,

while the human herd, unable to hear, hurries past him like livestock.

Too focused on our future at a suitable cubicle

to see that a donation to a juvenile is usually doable.

We’ll leave the heavy lifting up to legislation

in hopes that our nation

will stop its endless arming for wars

and start fighting the battle to bring its homeless indoors.

Instead of spending money making missiles long range,

I think it makes more sense, to use our dollars for change.

But, until the day we stop building bullet holes in our democracy

for citizens to fall through

Until that day,

The change will have to be made by you.

Drawing Up God

Over the course of history, different races have altered Jesus to resemble their own. If you look closely at the picture above you can see how each culture has tweaked his appearance to resemble their own.

So I asked myself, why did people feel the need to change his appearance? Why do I think of a white guy when I picture Jesus rather than a middle-eastern man? Well I think it comes down to relatability. People want to feel a connection with their religion. They want to feel like it is their own and so they will make every part of it as relatable to their own personal lives as possible. It really makes me think about how self centered humanity is at times. Especially when Jesus was first being depicted, races were far more segregated than they are now so people didn't want to be praying to someone who looked foreign. We always like to say that god created man in his image, but I wonder if it's actually the other way around.

"Korean Jesus" from 21 Jump Street

In addition to this, I would argue that a parallel can be drawn between the way people have depicted Jesus and memory. Now forgive me because I did get this from Wikipedia, but it brings up an interesting point. It states that, "his artistic depictions... are based on second or third hand interpretations". Now as I recently learned from a Radiolab on memory, each time you "recall" a memory, you aren't retrieving the actual event from metaphorical file cabinet in your brain, but rather recreating an entirely new memory based on your last recreation of that memory. It went on to say that the more times you recreate the memory the more you alter it to make it more about you. Just as how nearly if not every time Jesus was painted or illustrated he was recreated from a previous recreation. Not only this, but he was also tailored to be more like the race of the person doing the recreating. Clearly, there are some similarities between the two processes.

Spongebob filling memories in his brain (wrong!)

Another reason why I think people have altered Jesus' appearances was to further their agendas. In a fairly recent npr broadcast, author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and The Saga of Race in America, Edward Blum, discusses how different groups of people have used Jesus' race to further their causes. In the late 1800's as waves of Jewish immigrants came to the U.S. some religious artists decided to severe Jesus' appearance from it's Semitic roots. These artists in favor of immigration restrictions began to depict Jesus with blonde hair and blue eyes as apposed to dark brown hair and brown eyes. Again, we see this trend of people altering Jesus' appearances to benefit themselves.

What does this say about humanity that we alter religious figures to benefit ourselves and our own agenda's? What are some other possible reasons for altering Jesus' appearance? Are there any modern day examples of the power of people wanting to racially relate to people of power or fame? (for example in American T.V. shows there are very few lead actors who are a minority)