Freedom and Equality for Americans

Privilege is an uncomfortable topic for Americans at the top of their social groups. Our cultural mythology paints the founding fathers as bastions of freedom and equality, and as such, equality of opportunity is something we like to claim among our values. However, bias is a long-held American tradition, stratifying our society into groups based on race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexual orientation, among other qualifiers. Privilege sits above like a deity, shuffling things about to ease the paths of its chosen few, smoothing wrinkles from the shadows. It hides from those it favors and flaunts before those it abandons. As a white person, I have received a great deal of assistance from this deity that people of color have not. This essay seeks to examine the structural inequalities between whites and people of color through the lens of my own experiences and offer two structural changes our society could make to lessen the level of inequality faced by people of color.

Race is a large part of American society. It affects how one lives and is viewed as well as who they interact with and how those interactions occur. Because of this significance, inequality occurs between races, with white people claiming the top of the social hierarchy in the United States for themselves. As such, they are born with more benefits than people of color, also known as privilege. White privilege is the series of economic and social advantages white people and are given solely based on their race. This system of ingrained social privilege severely disadvantages people of color, making their lives far more difficult and dangerous than the lives of white people. These disadvantages are perpetuated by the government, mass media, and individually-held beliefs and stereotypes (Sims 2 Oct. 2018).

Literature opened my eyes to my white privilege. In middle school, the novels we were assigned to read included Bud, Not Buddy (1999) and The Watsons Go to Birmingham 1963 (1995), both by Christopher Paul Curtis. They introduced me to perspectives outside my own and showed me instances of hate that I hadn't noticed before. We continued to study racially motivated acts of violence and injustice, such as the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham in 1963 and the Scottsboro Boys trials in the early 1930s. In ninth grade, we read To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee, and the pieces that had been handed to me began to connect. It led me to the realization that Tom Robinson wouldn't have been convicted for the beating and rape of Mayella Ewell or killed by the prison guard if he were a white man. It also introduced me to the concept of a double life as demonstrated by Calpurnia, the concept that people of color must act differently among different groups because of the expectations of white people.

After reading To Kill A Mockingbird, I began to see the structural inequalities within our society, and social media helped me learn how to deconstruct the prejudices I had been taught since I was a child. Twitter and Tumblr let me see the experiences of people of color as they occurred. I got to read stories of racism and discrimination from the perspective of the victims. They gave me insight to their condition and showed me how situations that were everyday occurrences to them were completely foreign to me. Once I got out of the bubble of white culture I was raised in, I saw how my privilege affected not only my life, but theirs as well.

Structural inequalities are prevalent within the beauty industry, especially concerning cosmetics. Mainstream companies such as Maybelline, Revlon, and Neutrogena typically make far more shades of foundation and concealer for light skin tones than they do for dark skin tones. I can walk into any drug store in the US and know for a fact that there is foundation, powder, and concealer in the same shade that match my skin tone. Women of color, especially those with darker skin tones, do not have the range of options that I have and cannot guarantee there is a shade that matched the overtones and undertones of their skin. To get a shade that matches their skin tone, they also must pay more than I do. In Cosmopolitan's list 14 Flawless Foundations for Dark Skin Tones, only three products are under $15, while the rest fall within the $25-$65 range (Allen 2017). This disproportionally affects poor women of color who cannot afford these products.

People of color have been economically disadvantaged in the United States since before it was founded, especially in the South. According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 16%, or 795,800, Alabamian households live in poverty. When analyzed by race, 12% of white Alabamians live in poverty, while 25% of black Alabamians and 34% of Hispanic Alabamians live in poverty (Poverty Rate by Race/Ethnicity 2017). This affects where and how people of color live and their opportunities for education. As a result, white people received 54% of bachelor's degrees during the 2013-2014 academic year, with black and Hispanic students receiving 19% of bachelor's degrees each (Degrees conferred by race and sex 2017). One's education affects one's job and income, therefore affecting one's housing, health, and quality of life. This creates cycles of poverty that are incredibly difficult to end.

My hometown is blindingly white. Our school, KDS DAR School, is a privately-funded public school, and as a result, very little of the poverty in our town was visible. I remember receiving an application for free or reduced-price lunch, but only one or two of my friends had to fill it out. In the US, around 77% of black and Hispanic students go to schools where more than half of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, compared to 33% of white students ("Public school students eligible for free or reduced price lunch" 2018). This is partially due to white flight, white Americans fleeing inner city areas for suburban neighborhoods, and non-existent integration and redistricting measures (White 2015). Add biased funding into the mix, and a perfect example of colorblind racism is demonstrated within our school systems.

People of color interact with the police differently than white people do. My friend, a 20-year-old African-American man, has been searched at traffic stops three times within the past year for no apparent reason, with all three searches failing to turn up any illegal substances or weapons. In comparison, another friend's father, a middle-aged white man with multiple DUIs, was not searched when he was pulled over to perform a field sobriety test. The Stanford Open Policing Project found that police require less suspicion to search black and Hispanic drivers than they do to search white drivers, with these searched being less successful, or finding no illegal items, for Hispanic drivers than for white and black drivers. (Findings 2018). Overall, the arrest rate for black youths is more than twice that of white youths, and that gap has not changed with the lowering youth arrest rate (Gase, et al. 2016). The Gase study also suggests that the difference in arrest rates are not caused by a difference in delinquent behaviors but may be influenced by neighborhood racial composition.

When arrested, sentence lengths vary according to race. In an analysis of data from 2005-2012, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that, over this period, sentences for white males and females were becoming more lenient as time progressed. This analysis also found that black males receive longer sentences than white males. There is no reported difference between black and white females (Rhodes, et al. 2015). Race also plays a role in wrongful conviction. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, African Americans make up 47% of the registry as of 2016, and this disparity holds true for all major crime categories. Since 1989, more than 1,800 defendants have been cleared in group exonerations that followed 15 large scale police scandals in which officers systematically framed innocent defendants. The great majority were African-American defendants who were framed for drug crimes that never occurred (Gross, Possely, & Stephens 2017).

These structural inequalities may be lessened by a push from consumers and adjustments to governmental policy. Consumer demand affects which products get placed on store shelves. We, as consumers, must demand that a wide variety of products be made and placed on shelves in chain stores. We must implement a system that gives more money to our poor schools than it gives to our wealthy schools. We must urge the government to focus on training our law enforcement officers to treat every American the same and to apply justice evenly. We must elect officials that will focus on reforming our court and prison systems. If nothing in the structure our society changes, Americans of color will continue to be disadvantaged.

But if white Americans examine their lives closely, they may see their inborn privilege. They may see how the deck is stacked in their favor. They may see the deity for what it is, a god of hatred and fear. If we all work together, we may strip the deity of its power. We may give all Americans equal footing and truly fulfill the dream the founding fathers had. Every American deserve to be equally represented and fairly treated by their government and society for the day they are born to the day they die. Together we can destroy the system of stratification and make America well and truly free.

Works Cited

1. Allen, Maya. 14 Flawless Foundations for Dark Skin Tones. Cosmopolitan, Cosmopolitan, 13 July 2017, www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/beauty/advice/a18876/foundations-for-dark-skin/.
2. Degrees Conferred by Race and Sex. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Home Page, a Part of the U.S. Department of Education, 2017, nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72.
3. Findings. Openpolicing.stanford.edu, The Stanford Open Policing Project, 2018, openpolicing.stanford.edu/findings/.
4. Gase, Lauren Nichol, et al. Understanding Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Arrest: The Role of Individual, Home, School, and Community Characteristics. Race and Social Problems, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Dec. 2016, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5509345/.
5. Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1960.
6. Possely, Maurice, and Klara Stephens. Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States. Edited by Samuel R Gross, National Registry of Exonerations, 2017, Michigan Law - University of Michigan, www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race_and_Wrongful_Convictions.pdf.
7. Poverty Rate by Race/Ethnicity. Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 22 September 2017, https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/?dataView=0?¤tTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D.
8. Public School Students Eligible for Free or Reduced Price Lunch. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Home Page, a Part of the U.S. Department of Education, 2018, https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=898.
9. United States, Congress, Bureau of Justice Statistics, et al. Federal Sentencing Disparity: 2005??“2012. Bureau of Justice Statistics Working Paper Series, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 22 Oct. 2015. www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fsd0512.pdf.
10. White, Gillian B. The Data Are Damning: How Race Influences School Funding. The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 30 Sept. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/public-school-funding-and-the-role-of-race/408085/.

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