What Can We Do?

In order to change the world, I think first I have to change myself. I have to get rid of all the stigmas that I have learned throughout my life and start to think about what’s wrong on the media and society. Once I have looked into my own prejudices and privileges, I can start inspiring people by doing what any other person would do. Work hard so that my community could prosper and try to think of the consequences of my actions and words before I act on them. And not wait for somebody else do the work for me. It is true what June Jordan said: “we are the ones we have been waiting for”. We can make a difference.

If all of us would do that, then there would be no discrimination and no oppression. But we think that is just wishful thinking. That not everyone is going to do that because humans are greedy by nature. Even if that might be true, we can still do something to change things for the better if everyone gives their support, as little as it may be, as long as it helps our society. Just as Angela Davis said, “please get involved, please try to make a difference, please try to turn this country around”.

Classism

Privilege: When I was a kid, most people in my neighborhood  were part of the lower class. And my family were located in the middle class. I felt that I was the only one who noticed this but we were kids so the only thing in our minds was play.

Oppressed: After a change in my class status because of my family's business not producing enough as before, my family became a low mid class. We did have enough money for a proper education, but there was not enough money for other things. And as a 12 year old kid, I started to notice this without my family telling me. It was hard at the beginning, but we pulled through.

Incident of classism: When I was in high school, classism was really noticeable. The people with more money would hang out with their own and so would the lower mid class people. I also noticed that the people with more money were the ones taking the most challenging classes. For me, i did not affected me that much, because the only thing I had to worry was school so I was on the same classes as them.

People Like Us

Class has always been something interesting for me since I can remember. When I was kid, I lived in a lower class neighborhood, but there were some middle class people living too. I was one of them. Every time I would leave the house, I could see the difference immediately with the kids I played with. Some had cleaner clothes, and others were really dirty and old. But we would play anyways. I don’t think we cared about that kind of stuff when we were kids. At least I thought that was what everyone else was thinking, even though I felt like I was the only one noticing this.

The thing about my childhood is that I would not go to school anywhere near where my neighbors would go. I attended a catholic private school an hour away from where I lived. I think that’s what made it easy for me to identify classes. Most people at my school were living in a higher class. The neighborhood was cleaner and more modern than were I came from. My classmates had more toys and I think more than half of the people at my school were white. I would see my white friends and think to myself if being white has anything to do with being richer, or smarter, or better looking, or better people overall. This experience of all three kinds of classes had some sort of effect on me when I started to grow older. I became reclusive and was unable to socialize well with my peers. It felt awkward. But, when I became 12, everything changed. My parents couldn’t pay for my education for me or for my brother so we had to change schools in the middle of the school year to a nearby private school. That’s when I started to live real life with people of the same social status as me. It made me push harder and harder in school so one day I would have an education and have money to help the people living around me. I started to socialize more and became sort of popular. I had a bunch of friends. I felt like I belonged.

I’ve had my adventures with classism. And I still do. Even though I haven’t really experienced the extreme rich class society, I don’t think I would like to live like that. But it is highly improbable that I will become a millionaire anyway. I think that’s the reason why most people ignore the higher class society: most people don’t think they would ever experience it, so why bother. What we do have to worry about is our own social status and help each other progress.