I have a part-time minimum wage gig for the summer. This might sound like every college student, except that I work in a private yacht club as a receptionist.
The yacht club itself is beautiful, full of grand paintings, grandfather clocks, and ornate chandeliers. There’s also a stunning view of the water and rolling manicured lawns maintained by a crew that is there from 6 in the morning until 11 at night. It may look like paradise, but only for the members. I’m stuck behind a counter with another receptionist, and we’re chained to our computers for a few hours at a time until our backs are sore.
Just last Wednesday night I was working the night shift, toiling away with a smile plastered on my face and a chirpy greeting for every member and guest of the club. There were two older couples leaving for the night, and as they walked by me I heard them debating something. From my little office I can hear just about everything in the place. Both things I do and do not want to hear.
“I gotta move out of this country. The poor will rise up the way they did in France and blow all our heads off. That’s why I’m armed!"
There were a few things I really wanted to say to him, but I had to bite my tongue in the moment.
When he mentioned that he was armed, I just thought about all the things I've heard about in the media about police brutality and its victims. People of color and the poor are much more likely to be shot at than he would be. It's been researched extensively, and shown that white people tend to perceive poor whites as a threat and respond negatively toward poor White people. In general, subjects are faster to shoot armed low socioeconomic status individuals as compared to armed high socioeconomic status individuals.
And then he went on to say, "You know, it's easy. If you want to be successful, get a damn education."
From my understanding, to earn more money you typically go to school for more years in order to get a diploma that allows you to get a better job. However, the path to higher education is inherently biased against the poor. Although many colleges in the U.S. are 'need-blind,' meaning the colleges do not factor in the applicant's financial need when making an admission decision, they still look for standardized testing scores, which are also biased against the poor. Students who have the money to provide a tutor tend to do better on these tests than students who may not have the resources, or even the time. Families that are poorer may need to send their kids out to work during the time that other kids can read, do homework, or even just talk with their parents, which has been found to be critical in a child's early formative years.
The prejudices don't stop after school, though. In the job market, it's been found that employers, even including 'Equal-Opportunity Employers,' discriminate against race and even against what neighborhood an applicant lives in within a city.
So if life were as easy as that member thinks it is, then yes, one would just go to school and then magically get rich through the high-paying job that you'll land after getting a degree. I'm not trying to bash this particular member, I just think that he didn't understand the privilege he has that many other people do not have.
Not everyone in the yacht club is like this member, thank goodness, because I don't know if I could handle that. In the end, there are going to be people like him anywhere I go. People who don't understand their own privilege trying to act like they do. I know that I have privilege from a lot of things, including the fact that I can attend a private college and that my parents are educated. I'm going to try my best to understand and appreciate my own privileges though.
Sources:
http://www.mintpressnews.com/1100-civilians-were-k...
http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
