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Today we can firmly say that today racism still exists in the united states. But is it the same as it was 50 years ago? Was it the same as 100 years ago? What about 200 years ago? Over the course of the United States history racism has evolved from slavery to Jim Crow to injustice. In the United States we have pride in saying that everyone has an equal opportunity to get to the “American Dream”. In America we say hard work and persistence and you will be able to do anything and achieve anything you want. But is that really the case? We can easily point out times in history that people weren’t given equal opportunity to achieve the “American Dream”. These people were minority groups that were oppressed were oppressed by white people. Now white people are saying that now it isn’t blacks or other minority groups it is them. The middle-class white person. Now why are they saying this. There has to be a reason or are they just making it up. Why is the middle-class white class saying it is them that are the victims?
Arlie Russell Hochschild investigated into what these people are saying and why they are saying. Arlie spent five years in south west Louisiana where she met a lot of people and interviewed them about politics and everything in between. A woman named Sharon that Arlie interviewed said “I pay $9,000 every year and we get nothing for it.” This is a problem for a lot of Americans. And like a lot of Americans she “felt that the federal government—especially under President Obama—was bringing down the hardworking rich and struggling middle while lifting the idle poor.” In this article Sharon shared a story about a boy around 11 about his future plans and he said, “I’m just going to get a [disability] check, like my mama.” This brings up a lot of questions about how it got this bad. The little motivation of these communities that are mostly white. The people in these communities rely heavily on the middle class of the United States and we can see that people abuse the system in order basically to live. The bluntest way and simplest way to put it the government is paying someone to breath. Someone like Sharon that worked hard to where she is financially, feels used and she doesn’t want to pay for people that have made up disabilities to just take up space. These people are also taking away from people that have actual disabilities that can’t work.
Arlie interviewed a former assistant fire chief and his wife, and they said when they we working they “were making such low pay that we could have been on food stamps every month and other welfare stuff.” These were hard working Americans that were working but could have been on food stamps and getting a welfare check in the mail. I can see why these people are getting fed up with trying to achieve the “American Dream”.
