Paper Example on How Race and Ethnicity Influences the Working Class

Race differences and inequalities have been a powerful tool in shaping the history of the United States. One popular but erroneous opinion is that the founding of the colonies in North America which was later followed by the Declaration of Independence of the US was inspired by the pursuit of freedom. Although such tenets as political, economic, and religious freedom are enshrined in the laws of the US, its society seems to have been equally founded on brutal forms of inequality, oppression, and domination. Paradoxically, the ideals of freedom and equality were made to coexist with slavery. The US still grapples with the ramifications of that paradox in contemporary times as issues of race and ethnicity pervade all facets of its society. This paper investigates the influences that both racial and ethnic factors have influenced the working class in the United States.

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The working class of the United States consists of working individuals without degrees. These make up 66 percent (almost two-thirds) of the US workforce. As such, it is considered by many to be the mainstay of the US economy. In the past, the working class has been blended with white and masculine identities about the archetype of white men working in manufacturing. However, those who make up the US working class are the individuals who have no college degrees for various reasons. Key among these is the inability to pay the increasingly expensive college fees.

The unequal access to education among US major races influences the composition of the working class significantly. Since the onset of slavery at the birth of the colonies, people of color have experienced significant barriers to education. During slavery, schooling was prohibited for black people. Coles and Zandy clearly posit that the slaves worked all week long with no chance for schooling in the story A Georgian Negro Peon (170). As such, these individuals had no chance of upward social mobility. Weak and poor workers in the United States have virtually no hope of upward social mobility in their lifetime.

From the onset, American society was designed in such a manner as to subjugate the weak. People of color were, in the 17th century hardly represented by labor unions. The narrator of A Negro Nurse says, “Of course, nothing is being done to increase our wages…We have no labor unions or organizations of any kind that could demand us a uniform scale of wages” (Coles and Zandy 179). Although African Americans experienced representation in labor movements of the 20th century, the collapse of this institution has had serious impacts on the economic inequality of the US as it has exacerbated the position of ethnic minority groups.

When slavery was eradicated, the lawfully enforced ethnic subjugation was not completely abandoned. Former slaves and other people of color were given fewer rights than other people. As such, second-class citizenship was institutionalized which further exacerbated the practice of racial and ethnic bias at all levels of the society. In the story, A Negro Nurse, the narrator says, ‘tho today we are enjoying nominal freedom, we are literary slaves’ (Coles and Zandy 178). These second-class citizens had no time for ‘going to church, lecture, entertainment, or anything of the kind’ (Coles and Zandy 179). Such individuals could not attain the necessary academic qualifications to attain jobs that would drag them out of the socioeconomic doldrums of the working class.

In any case, Native American, Latino, and African American students were educated in fully segregated schools as late as the 1960s. It is important to point out that these segregated schools operated at levels of funding that were several times lower than schools serving Caucasians and were almost entirely cut off from institutions of higher learning (Darling-Hammond 1998).

In the contemporary American job market, access to and completing university is vital. A college degree is almost a guarantee that one will end up in the middle class. However, college education in the United States is very expensive. Steeped in their slavery heritage, African Americans have found it difficult to have similar levels of access to institutions of higher learning because of poverty. In the story, A Negro Nurse, Coles, and Zang paint a grim picture of how poverty could not have allowed for the schooling of black children in the years following the civil war. The narrator says, “How far will 24$ go towards housing and feeding and clothing ten or twelve persons for thirty days?”(Coles and Zandy 181). Many of those born and raised in poverty have fewer opportunities for going to college. Thus, African-Americans and other marginalized ethnic groups in the US will continue making up the bulk of the working class. A policy that will ensure that similar educational opportunities are made available to poor individuals despite their race would be a start in easing barriers that make African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans so dominant in the US working class.

Although there are some white people in the working class category, the majority are people of color. The non-white races in the US have suffered generational ethnic inequality and injustices that have made their socioeconomic status in the US society inferior. As a result, they lack the resources and sufficient academic opportunities to make the jump from the working class to the middle class.

Works Cited

Coles, Nicholas, and Zandy, Janet American Working-Class Literature: An Anthology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Darling-Hammond, Linda. “Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education.” Brookings, 1 March 1998, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-opportunity-race-and-education/. Accessed 30 Sep 2020.