Growing up, I made sense of the world in a very meritocratic centered way of thinking. As immigrants, my parents were sold under the farce that is the American Dream, that all we needed to do was work hard and the rest would fall into place. Unfortunately, my family and I have learned the hard way that that is not the case. The world has, and continues to favor, a white, middle class, male dominated society. This favoring rises out of years of racism, segregation, and discriminatory practices that see Eurocentric characteristics, traits, and culture as dominant and, thus, superior. As a result, social inequalities started to rise. It is important to acknowledge that race was not a thing before slavery, race was used as a way to justify slavery and in turn slavery, segregation, and discrimination were born. Further, although race is a social construct, it has real implications for those who are not of the dominant race (white), especially those who are evidently not white.
All that being said, I now make sense of the inequalities of the world from a sociological and historic perspective that sees the inequalities of today as a product of centuries of discriminatory practices. These inequalities are related connected to race because that – to me – is where the first division arises. Post-Civil War, non-whites started to face sets of both de facto and de jure segregation practices that prevented them from being able to advance in society such as being denied housing at higher rates, attending segregated schools, having voting requirements, and being denied jobs with livable wages at higher rates than their white counterparts, and thus social inequities were born. Combined, these practices resulted in generational gaps that were not present for whites and continued to instill an ‘otherness’ to all races that were not white.
As activists, laws, and politicians began to fight against these injustices, social inequities started to form around other social differences. I see gender and the second social difference division, when women entered the workforce during the World Wars and arguably held up the economy, the last thing they expected was to be treated as ‘other’ when it came to an end. As the society began to see the arrival of women to the work force, the gender pay gap started to make its appearance to sustain a man’s role as head of the household. Nation and Nationality come along with the World Wars, where Japanese Americans were held in internment camps and Mexican Americans supported the US through the Bracero Program but were excluded when the war ended. Nation and Nationality is something that to many is deeply personal but also something that is hidden in an effort to avoid an otherness, I find this to be a case for people who can pass, because why would anyone want to be othered?
These social inequalities form a social identity from which peoples intersecting identities come together and formulate their way of thinking. As mentioned above, my parents grew up instilling a meritocratic mentality, and I fell for it. If my parents as immigrants, non-English speakers, non-citizens, and high school drops out where able to offer my brothers and I everything, why would I not believe that hard work would pay off? Three major events, all occurring in the span of my high school years, changed how saw, and interacted with my social identity. The first was my eldest brother dropping out of college, this was something that I could not (maybe even refused) to wrap my head around. There was no way my brother didn’t ‘make the cut’ how could he not? He was smart! He was a hard worker! Why did he get the short end of the stick?
The second and third are entwined. During my senior year the 2016 election began and suddenly – in a school that was predominantly Hispanic – I felt like ‘other’ because of my immigration status. I couldn’t vote, I saw as people on national tv talked about how immigrants were lazy, ungrateful, criminals, and so on. I heard people talk about the ‘right way’ to come to the US, and I began to ask myself: what is the right way? I didn’t come the ‘right way’ but nothing we did was inherently wrong. My parents raised us to do no wrong, to be exemplar students, children, and members of society, but how could I be any of those when we didn’t come the ‘right way’ and when my status in the US was conditional?
The third major event occurred towards the end of my senior year where my mom and I took a trip to Mexico and I forgot my green card and suddenly all the things I had worked for: being a perfect student, child, member of society, none of them mattered because I still was not a citizen and did not belong in the country without my green card. My sense of security was tied to a plastic card for years, and even now when I have undergone naturalization, my passport card sits in my wallet – just in case.
I lived in fear for so long that now that that fear is abstract and distant, I don’t know how to live without it. In trying to do positive social change occur, I draw on my fears and the ways I wish I would have been reassured and supported. I was complicit for a long time because I was afraid one day someone would wake up and decide I stepped out of line and my legal status in the US would vanish. I painted the prettiest picture so that people could look at it and not see me for me but see me as a model minority and someone worthy of the American Dream. This speaks to some of the complexities and tensions associated with social change: fear. People might not be afraid of change, but people are afraid of the consequences and ‘what if’s’. For a long time, I felt like I couldn’t take risks and that made me complicit but it’s not that I didn’t want to take risks, it’s that I feared repercussion and consequences if something went bad.
Over a year after being naturalized and originally writing these theories, I want to work and live in a world where I am able to live with this fear instilled in me without being so emotionally draining. I don’t want to overcome my fear because it has made me who I am, it is a part of me, but I don’t want it to be who I am anymore. I want the world to create greater justice by focusing on equity, support, and second chances. In a world where so much is still based on how much money you have in your bank account, how you dress, where you work, where you live, etc. it is important to think about how those things came about and fight against the systems that established them.