Racism in the Elevator

funny, yes, but true. and sad.

Let's face it: in 2008, racism is still very much alive in our country. While we may have taken a step forward with the recent presidential election, look at the distribution (or lack thereof) of wealth in this country. As a result of generations of white-dominated governmental policies, predominantly black communities are being cast further and further away from the high reaches of the economic spectrum. The percentage of children in the Bronx public school system who go all the way through to graduate is staggering: barely 27. That's less than 3 out of every ten kids making it just through high school. While that's a jagged pill to swallow, it's no wonder when you stop to look at the factors that could and oftentimes do coerce them out of the classrooms.

In my time as a mentor in the Bronx, I had the privilege to get to know some of the brightest kids I've ever met by being a mentor with Morris Academy Mentors. Kids from all over New York City spent their Saturday mornings with us because they knew they wanted more than just what their school system could give them. They were intelligent, charismatic, funny, and especially in tune with the nature of their environment in relation to the rest of the country's. Together, we spoke of hopes, dreams, their lives, and of the world as we all saw it.

It was the Saturday after Super Tuesday, 2008 for the U.S. democratic primary race. We broke off into smaller groups to discuss our political views during a time of political headwinds. Keeping in mind that none of these kids were old enough to vote, I began my small-group discussion by asking these young adults, in their eyes, what the most important political issues were. Of the five people I asked, four of them said gun control was their main issue. Three of them said their second most important issue was health care.

Many of these kids live in the projects. Illegal handguns are a part of their reality. Since they've never really been a part of mine, this response was surprising to hear at first. I mentioned what the kids said to my supervisor. He told me that if I truly wanted to understand where these kids were coming from, that I should visit one of their homes. I told him that I would probably feel pretty vulnerable, and he just said to me, "How do you think they feel? It's a miracle these kids are even here right now."

"But health care?" I asked Charlie. He pursed his lips and sighed deeply, "A lot of these kids' parents are single, and nearly all of their parents can't afford to get sick. When they do, weight falls on the shoulders of the kids to earn money for their households. The parents are the number one reason kids drop out of school. Money is of higher importance than going to school."

Class polarization is immanent. The nature of it, though, is such that it continues to occur at an increasing rate if measures aren't taken to halt it. The election of Barack Obama may prove to be a step forward for blacks in the United States to finally gain equal representation, but my guess is that it probably won't do too much in just four years. The change that this country seems so desperate for needs to come from within people, not a president. Whether we admit to ourselves that we're subconsciously racist or not, our simple adherence to society as it is makes all of us, myself included, accountable for how the impoverished groups of people in our society are treated.

I am willing to admit that I, like many born in this country, was born into and thus unknowingly adhered to the hegemonic social predisposition that whites in the United States were more important, or "better" than blacks. Despite the fact that progress had been made in the United States in regards to civil rights, there were still those subconscious subtleties that remained in our culture and in us. This video demonstrates exactly what I'm saying. Sure, my mother may have told me not to be racist, but why, then, did she lock the car doors when we drove through a black neighborhood?

In my most humble opinion, I think that in order to truly understand that our culture's preconceived racial conception is false and unjustifiable, one must be able to identify and isolate the very events that led them to that conclusion in the first place. For me, my brief experience as a mentor in the Bronx was an event that opened my eyes in many ways. Mainly, the experience assessed, in me, how far I've come, and how far I still need to go in my understanding of how things relate to me, race included. This is to say, of course, that I realize the inherent hypocrisy of me even writing this.

More often than not, it is difficult for a person to change the way they view things just because other people tell them to. No one likes being wrong, myself included. But when the wool is pulled from our eyes, and the truth of things is laid out before us. It is difficult to continue going through life with the ideas and opinions we had once so blindly clung to. Racial inequality is just one of the things that the better of us struggle with every day to consciously try and rectify. In closing, I suppose the purpose of me writing this, if anyone has even read this far, is to say that I haven't forgotten my social responsibility as an individual: try to remember not to remember to lock my car doors whenever a black person walks passed.