It's Awfully White Outside

It's often easy to think that in our modern world of Condoleezas, Bryants, and Cents (50) that race relations have improved and that all people, regardless of color, have a fair shot at the good life. Nowhere is this falsehood more appearant than in a big city, for example, New York City. Ride the subway in Brooklyn and you'll find that the vast majority of passengers throughout most of the day are African-American, and a great deal of Hispanic people as well. A young white man such as myself stands out as a minority here. As the train moves up into Manhattan though, get off at Wall Street and what you'll see is a sea of white, mostly male, faces staring back at you. Sure, you may see one or two non-white people, and yes, some women do work on Wall Street, but for the most part this is the stereotypical social club of Middle-Aged Caucasian Males.

The question then becomes, is this an intentional state of affairs, one race kept at arms length by the actions of another, or is it something else. Maybe a person's race determines their inclination towards certain professions, though in reality I think it far more likely that a person's race determines the opportunity and likelihood for them to get certain jobs. Don't get me wrong, I believe every person is, for the most part, a master of thier own destiny. Your place in life is your own doing and your own responsibility. That being said, though, the odds are really stacked against some people, but in ways far subtler than most people even realize.

For instance, the American dream (has been co-opted). As a white, middle-class child in the United States, you're told that one day you could be a doctor, a lawyer, a politician, or just about anything else and you're told this with conviction and support to back it up. Though this dream is shared by all races, it's toned down for some. Minority youth are fed the idea that the best opportunities they have are to join the military or own a store, or at the upper echelons to become a professional athlete or entertainer. Sure, those can be good opportunities, and yes, this isn't true for all minorities, but given that a greater number of minority children are born into lower economic classes, they start life with a fairly serious deficit.

Then, in large part because of economic status, neighborhoods become polarized. Certain parts of the city become dominated by people of a certain race, and that only serves to fuel the idea that you do in fact live in a seperate world and can't be a part of anyone else's. So, you create your own identity. A lingo or style of communication all your own. Perhaps you dress a certain way, or devote your time to certain pastimes, and hang out in certain places. Sure, it creates a community, but a community separate from every other, from which you are now making it harder for you to extract yourself. This "your culture is different" idea is not simply created from within but fostered from without. When different music is promoted to black youth than white, when movies of the all-new blaxplotation are created with all African-American casts and a hip-hop soundtrack and then promoted to and shown primarily only in African-American neighborhoods what they are saying is "here you go, all the junk you like because you can't understand our movies, so fork over your money and we'll insult you some more." The modern segregation doesn't say "you can't drink from this water fountain" it says "you don't like our water".

Racial issues have again been brought to the fore by the recent immigration legislation brought up in our federal government. It's bad enough that the politicians and the media mischaracterize the situation, but even worse than that is the fact that immigrants are playing into it. What we're told is that Mexicans are stealing our jobs and clogging our nation, which is in fact untrue. Firstly, there are an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in this nation, from dozens of nations. Many of them come from Latin America due to poor economic circumstances, political strife, and the close proximity to the United States, however every day we have Irish citizens who overstay their Visa, Chinese citizens who fly in for good, or take the example of just this week when several Canadians were arrested for smuggling Pakistani expatriots into the United States. People come from all over, and despite what you've been told, they are not all swimming across the Rio Grande and they can't be stopped by a fence. Most illegal immigrants enter this country legally, via plane, with a visa, but then don't leave when they are supposed to. They generate billions of dollars in revenue every year, not to mention that they then spend a lot of the money they earn in the United States.

The problem is that while protests take place all over this nation, they are simultaneously telling people exactly what they are pre-disposed to believe. They've called for a boycott on May 1st of all U.S. businesses by immigrants in the U.S. and...wait for it, in Mexico. Nevermind the fact that many of the businesses they've called to boycott in Mexico are actually owned and operated by Mexico, or the fact that most U.S. business interests are supporting the immigrant cause because they like having a large workforce that will work for lower wages. The real point is that with calling for this boycott they've said exactly what Americans watching Fox News fear..."Yes, we're all Mexicans and we've come to destroy your economy from the inside".

We have all accepted our roles without question, and finally the cracks are starting to show. Maybe if we started reaching outside of our own "culture" (and believe me, the fact different races tend to watch different t.v. shows does not, to me, denote culture) we could make it a little less easy for people to so quickly turn us against one another for political gain. Let's stop talking about Hispanics overcrowding our schools and start talking about the real problem that our schools are underfunded, poorly run, and that the only reason illegal immigrants are able to use our school system is because no one is really paying the close attention that our children's education deserves. Let's stop talking about affirmative action and start talking about the real issues of cultural gentrification and disparity. Let's stop talking about the portrayal of minorities in the media and start talking about the portrayal of minorities in our daily discussions and by minorities of prominence (not just rappers and pervert athletes, but liars and nutcases in politics) And let's stop talking about things that SEEM like a big deal, and start talking about things that ARE
.
P.S. Don't think I haven't noticed that this immigration bill which was written by Republicans, voted for by a majority of Republicans, and passed despite the efforts of Democrats to block it (only 36 Democrats, the minority party, voted for this bill in the house) is now being blamed on the Democrats. Republicans are trying to claim that the Democrats didn't put up a serious fight because they knew it was a bad bill that would turn people against the Republicans, so they wanted it to pass, as though they also forced the Republicans to write the bill and all vote for it too. The problem is that while we should be paying attention to this, we're too busy talking about borders and welfare. The problem is not in our fences, but in the people who build them.