The Culture of Class in America
By Madie Lee (2012)

Class is a fundamental social aspect that is unmentioned and actively avoided because it brings up the prominent financial divide in American society, which is connoted by many people as inevitable. Wealth is highly associated with class, and strained tension appears once the conversation turns to fiscal stability and security because although money isn’t everything, it does guarantee benefits and opportunities, and especially in American society, is inextricably linked with respect and power. Complementing that idea, Donna Langston says in her article, Tired of Playing Monopoly?, that “class is…culture” (Langston 398), and that statement resounds truthfully on many levels; it is culture at its most complex. Class encompasses wealth while also dictating clothing choices, housing locations, occupations, and mannerisms- the very essence of individuality. When there is class discrimination, it is “because of our lack of money…and because of the way we talk, think, act, or move- because of our culture” (Langston 398). Although class is not a popular topic to be recognized and spoken about, it is still acknowledged by the few. What isn’t as frequently acknowledged or thought of are the institutions in place in our society that affect class as well as class perceptions, which many people believe to be original, individualistic choices and decisions. In actuality, the creation of structural and systemic realities on the macro level shapes personal class identities and directly impacts people’s attitudes and mentalities about class in American society.
Capitalism is a very tangible systemic reality on the macro level that affects all aspects of the nation- governmental policies, the media, the education system, etc., and is the very heart of the American nation because it is not only an economical system, but also a philosophy. By being a capitalistic society, the United States of America makes a statement to other countries and to its own people, what the expectations and limitations are for everyone, and takes pride in its decision when capitalism is compared to the systems of other countries, China’s communism in particular. Like all other economic systems around the world, capitalism holds a unique perspective that can accurately predict the nature of its society.
In What is Capitalism?, Ayn Rand clearly states that “capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned” (Rand 19). Capitalism is based on the premise of recognizing the individual and rewarding them for their hard work and effort, emphasizing the idea of “individual rights”, the concept of which is “the social recognition of man’s rational nature” (Rand 18). This led to the idea of meritocracy; anyone can succeed if they work hard enough. However, although capitalism’s ideals are admirable, no society is flawless, and America is no exception. As individuals strive for their own customized ideas of perfection, there is social stratification that occurs because there is a specific skill set that is valued in America. The people who are meant to be equal in every way are quickly separated into upper and lower classes no matter how hard they work. However, the concept of meritocracy is so instilled and ingrained into the mind that the lower classes are blamed for being lazy; stereotypes and generalizations are formed, and those classist attitudes are passed from generation to generation, picking up embellishments and exaggerations along the way.
Out of these ideas, the middle class was born; it was the class that people could comfortably identify with without being judged because of its encompassing spectrum. In her short film, Enough, Zoe Greenberg interviews nearly a dozen people of different ages, housing locations, and lives, but “there was not one person who told me[her] that they were below middle class”. When she asked for their definitions of “middle class”, “the definition seemed to change accordingly so everyone could fit in”. In addition to that, when asked “Should the wealth be redistributed?”, a young black man answered, “No, not really because for people who worked really, really hard to earn what they want, they got what they want…and some people who didn’t work hard enough to get what they needed, they’re probably in lower class”, exemplifying the persisting belief in meritocracy. This is why people choose to identify with the middle class; there is a degree of shame and self-blame in the lower class that people don’t want to be associated with. The media only shows success stories, in which people are able to pull themselves out of poverty by sheer luck, and labels those stories as plausible and circumstances that everyone can achieve; the ones still stuck in poverty are seen as failures and those who didn’t try hard enough, but as we know now, that is not the case because meritocracy is a myth.
Because capitalism is individual-based, inherent human nature forms mentalities in which profit is the main source of motivation, not conscience or morality. The education system in America reflects this idea; lower class schools have statistically more underequipped teachers and therefore, students are unable to learn to their full potential. Their lack of knowledge is then attributed to their class, and fed into the class stereotypes in a vicious circle. The education system is also very deeply involved in the variation of knowledge taught to different classes or cultures.
In Behaving Versus Blooming, Barbara Jensen illustrates the contrast in teaching at a certain school because of teachers’ lack of understanding of students’ culture as well as their own unconscious persisting typecasts. The African-American students at this school lived in Trackton, a “rural all-African-American working class community” (Jensen 82), and as a result, developed quite differently in accordance with their community’s valued beliefs. They grew up learning that “they must push themselves into a situation, not wait their turn” (Jensen 88) because of the history and culture of that specific environment. Consequently, they sometimes would “burst out in the middle of someone else’s speaking, showing they are appropriately aggressive and entertaining” (Jensen 89), but would be scolded because the teachers and the school took those actions in light of their own perspectives instead of putting them into context.
This misinterpretation was highly detrimental in the educational aspect as well; the Trackton children were used to different emotional and nonverbal signals, and therefore reacted in what seems to the teacher to be an “unintelligent” way because how could they “base answers on interpretation of others’ desires and expectations when none of the usual signs are present?” (Jensen 89). These teachers thought that they were helping these children to grow, when, in fact, that goal was unachievable because they had white middle class mentalities that they weren’t even aware of.
Even in daily conversation, because of their unconscious attitudes, teachers were making assumptions about these black children based on their class. When Susan, a student from Trackton, was absent from school, the teacher asked, “Where’s Susan?”, and another student responded that, “She ain’t ride de bus”. The teacher automatically corrected him, saying, “She doesn’t ride the bus, Lem”, but Lem answered that Susan regularly rode the bus, but not today; the teacher “frowned at him, then turned away, ending the exchange” because she assumed that “he was either too simple-minded to understand the question or that he was trying to be difficult” (Jensen 80). Thus, in such an environment, it was difficult for Trackton children at this school to imagine it as a place of learning and growth because all they had experienced was negative emotions and insulted culture. Yet, as children whose minds are expanding and starting to retain information are being exposed to more and more of the world, they grow up considering these classist ideas and values as “the norm” and therefore, the views and beliefs that they, too, should support and cherish. They lose their own community’s values, preferring the standard view, and not only are their cultural identities are partially lost forever but also the connection to their roots is permanently damaged.
“Tammy’s Story” from People Like Us portrays this denial of class as well as family divide in a white working class home because of differences in education and class perceptions. Tammy’s son, Matt, is ashamed of his home, with “the trailer in the yard” because his friends from school are “a class up from us[them]”; he is exposed daily to what the norm is and how he doesn’t fit that. However, just from going to his “preppy” school, “he thinks he’s high class…better than me[his mom] and his brothers”. He is ashamed of his brother and even of his mother because of their stereotypical working class appearances; his brother always goes around without a shirt and “she doesn’t fix herself up…she wears her Burger King uniform every day”; Matt mentions how he doesn’t “talk about him[his brother] and how he’ll deny that his brother is family, only recognizing him if “he starts looking good…looking better”. Clothes are a sign of class, and he perpetually wears his blazer and khakis even around the house to make a statement- he doesn’t want to be associated with the class that he lives in because of its connotations. However, his mother has different class perceptions; although she understands that she is in the working class, she says that her father “would be proud of me[her] just for trying”, and therefore she is unashamed of her lifestyle because she is doing the best that she can for her children.
Individual class identities are knowingly and unknowingly molded according to the surrounding environment and what values that environment instills in the mind. As seen in “Tammy’s Story” and Behaving Versus Blooming, children and teenagers are especially affected by these perceptions, going so far as to deny their native community and its ideas for those more popular or acceptable in the dominant culture of society because they want to belong and fit in to “the norm”. The disconnection and misinterpretations between class mentalities can be detrimental to the potential of the people of the lower class, leaving those in power only confused at worst. In turn, both parties reaffirm their opinions of the other, continuing the vicious circle of misunderstanding. Structural institutions in America such as capitalism and its many branches, education in particular, powerfully affect and deeply impact people’s daily attitudes and perspectives about class, prolonging the associated generalizations and assumptions on the micro level.

A Reflective Analysis on Native Americans
By Madie Lee (2012)

The social construct that is race permeates every aspect of modern society, leaving nothing untouched or unaffected by its existence. It is the air we breathe, invisible but always present. A seemingly inevitable part of who we are. Because we live in a very visual society, race is everyone’s first impression of anyone, and becomes the foundation for immediate prejudicial judgment. It appears to be an innate and integral part of humanity, and yet like all other social constructs, it has a time of origin and varied purposes. Race as a means of classification was first a European invention surrounding religious, political, and economic motives. However, even though it originated in Europe, America, being originally made up of English colonies, was severely affected by this way of thinking. Indeed, the very first people the English encountered, the Native Americans, would be harshly subjected to racialized perspectives, discourse, and policies because of their status as a dark-skinned indigenous population and what that status meant to the colonizing English.
Racial Domination, Racial Progress by Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer cites England and Spain as “two political and economic powerhouses of the early modern world” who would “give birth to the [modern racial] system” (Desmond and Emirbayer 52) because through their histories, they were the two main countries in Europe that were slowly “beginning to create a ‘people’, an ‘imagined community’, bound together inside artificially created political borders” (53).
Spanish history is held together with strong religious threads, and King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella consequently wanted their subjects to be “of one mind, one religion, and one culture” (53) in their efforts to secure the unity of the country. Because of this desire and the laws that followed, in the 15th century, the country began to change its mindset towards one of religious repression and exclusion, especially in the case of Jews and Muslims, who were given the “choice” to leave, convert, or die. Blood purity became crucial in determining worthy as well as loyal Spanish citizens, the whole country starting to believe in the concept that not only could “religious contamination” be passed down generation to generation but also that it was one of the most undesirable states of being.
England, on the other hand, has an extensive history with colonialism because of its Eurocentric imperialist ideology. Beginning in the twelfth century, England colonized Ireland, naming them “savages” that were in need of saving. Indeed, this important piece of history would “influence how the English would come to view America’s indigenous peoples” (52). The Native Americans in North America would be compared to the Irish as another uncivilized population that needed guidance and education.
Racism: A Short History by George Fredrickson cites the dichotomy of the European perspective on the “Indian”, saying that “the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas represented either primal innocence or subhumanity” (Fredrickson 35). In Columbus’ first account of the Native Americans, which laid the groundwork of Native American imagery and perception in Europe, he noted them to be “simple children of nature who would be receptive to tutelage in civilization and Christianity” (Fredrickson 36). However, as he moved on to other islands and encountered other tribes, he observed other “Indians” and due to their hostile nature towards him, deemed them “cannibals who must be subdued by force or exterminated” (Fredrickson 36). They were considered irrational beasts beyond saving; in their eyes, extermination would be better for everyone involved. In both perceptions, the very basis of understanding for the Europeans is the assumption that the Native Americans needed help and direction. The Europeans did not question this sentiment. After all, the Native Americans were considered a “barbarous and inhuman peoples” (Fredrickson 37) because they didn’t subscribe to the European ideology of “civil” life and virtue or seem to have an overarching governmental system. Unfortunately, these two extreme characterizations along with the English history of colonization limited the Europeans from seeing them as equals as well as limited first interactions. Because of Columbus’ and other explorers’ accounts, the following settlers would approach Native Americans cautiously and with preconceived notions about their intelligence and cultural habits.
In the middle of the 16th century, Spanish scholars tried to decide “which of Columbus’ initial impressions was the more accurate and generalizable” (Fredrickson 36), in their decision homogenizing numerous tribes into a single category based on the color of their skin, even though many of the tribes “practiced different systems of government, employed different economies, spoke different languages, observed different religious traditions, [etc.]” (Desmond and Emirbayer 57). They determined that the “essential indicator” of whether Native Americans should be considered as full humans to be whether they possessed reason or not. Some argued that “Indians were [inherently] nonrational beings who could be made useful… [only] by being enslaved”, and then taking a step further, used biological determinism to apply the concept of “natural slavery” (Fredrickson 37) to the entire “race”. In this sense, before Africans were even brought to America as slaves, people of color had already been associated with slavery and helplessness in America.
Even though the Native Americans were not seen as cultural equals, they originally did have some political leverage over the settling Europeans because of their advanced agricultural knowledge, but soon lost that power once they imparted their knowledge. At the start of the colonization of America, treaties were made with different Native American tribes, but soon the cultural differences became too large to overcome without arguments. The Color of Wealth by Meizhu Lui et. al. notes specifically “the settlers’ lack of understanding of Native American Concepts of property and land use” (Lui et. al. 38). The Native Americans believed in the concept of “collective land use” and “harmony with the environment”, whereas the capitalistic Europeans strongly held on to their beliefs in “individual property rights and strict territorial boundaries” (Lui et. al. 38). With that capitalistic view, they also cheated Native Americans out of their ancestral homes or used other methods to obtain the fertile land that they were sure would benefit their economies. As a result, starting in the late 17th century, there were constant wars between the colonies and the Native American tribes, most of which the outnumbered and outgunned Native Americans lost, “resulting in a significant loss of Native land and increasingly weakened Native populations” (Lui. et. al. 39).
Interestingly enough, in the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson, a Virginia slave owner, originally saw Native Americans as not so different from white Europeans. In episode two of Race: The Power of an Illusion, he is quoted, “Their vivacity and activity of mind is equal to ours in the same situation. We shall probably find that they are formed in mind as well as in body, on the same module with the “Homo sapiens Europæus.” He considered them innately “white”, just tanned and darker from living under the harsh sun. He felt that the “problem” was not their race, but simply their culture and lack of “civilization”. However, as he had little contact with them, very few Europeans shared his view, believing in the “barbarous Other” (Desmond and Emirbayer 58) that was trying to desecrate their ways of living.
The 19th century marked the start of countless racialized policies for Native Americans. As wars were fought and more colonies were founded, because of policies such as the Indian Removal Act and the Homestead Act, Native Americans were “forced to sign treaties, removed from their land, or relocated to reservations” (Lui et. al. 39). Required to move from their ancestral homes, Native Americans became exposed to not only new European diseases such as smallpox, typhoid, and cholera, to which they had no immunity, but also to the loss of staple crops, resulting in “the greatest human catastrophe in history, far exceeding even the disaster of the Black Death in medieval Europe” (Desmond and Emirbayer 58). Indeed, in the space of only one century, “European-introduced diseases killed off nearly 80% of the indigenous population of new England and 98% of the Western Abenaki” (Desmond and Emirbayer 58), a statistic that they would never be able to recover from.
Assimilation became a key part of Native American history starting from the late 19th century and lasting until the present day. It was an ultimately devastating blow to a race that had already gone through much hardship and sacrifice. After all, what more effective way to defeat the enemy than transform the enemy into an ally, willing or not? Under the pretense of “civilizing” the Native Americans into their white society, the Europeans were able to “break up tribal governments, abolish Indian reservations, and allow white settlers and private business interests increased access to land and other Native natural assets” (Lui et. al. 46). Due to assimilation, Native Americans began to internalize the oppression they had faced, consequently holding the white culture and values as the “norm” or the “right” perspective.
Now in the 21st century, race has morphed into a deadlier, subtler form which enables America in particular to be able to deny its present existence. Race is still used to distinguish groups of people from one another, but racism in the present day is not nearly as overt as it was even a few decades ago. Native Americans were one of the first groups of people to be homogenized and classified by race in America and suffered tremendously not only because of clearly racialized policies that hindered their progress in life, but also because of the psychological effect forced relocation and assimilation have on a person’s approach and outlook on life. Having been deculturalized and severely affected by Western imperialist ideology, Native Americans are one of many oppressed groups that unmistakably demonstrate how different motives can incur the implementation of race as well as how history can be so easily molded by that fateful implementation.

Bibliography:
Fredrickson, George M. (2002) Racism: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Desmond, M. and Emirbayer, M. (2010) Racial Domination, Racial Progress. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Lui, Meizhu et. al. (2006) The Color of Wealth. New York, NY: The New Press.

Thoughts on Race
By Madie Lee (2012)

In the book Racial Domination, Racial Progress, the authors, Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer state that we must not only “acknowledge how we benefit and suffer from racial domination” (Desmond and Emirbayer 49), but also “strive to historicize our thinking” (Desmond and Emirbayer 50) because our seemingly innate thoughts about race are in actuality “the product of hundreds of years of thought” (Desmond and Emirbayer 49). From the moment we are born, we are bombarded with both subliminal and overt messages about race- which race is beautiful, which race is violent, which race is the ultimate standard, etc. We are taught to be unconsciously prejudicial and discriminatory even if our teachers are unaware as well. However, we must realize that over the centuries there have been and still are institutional realities which have trickled down to shape our everyday perceptions. All six of my interviewees confidently told me that racism still exists; however, that was the only consistency. Because of their different first experiences with race and familial values, they all had varying perspectives on who the true “victims” are, how race is perceived on the societal level, and what can be done about racism.
The first interviewee was a 52-year-old Korean female named Mrs. Kim* who immigrated to America in 1975. During the 1960s in Korea, there were countless white soldiers from the Korean War; she saw one for the first time at age 3, and immediately started crying. Because the society in Korea is not culturally or racially diverse, she thought that the “soldier must be a leper” from his pale skin tone. As a teenager, she immigrated to Seattle, but even there, she and her family stayed within all-Asian communities. She had always been taught within those restricted communities that African-Americans were inferior not only because they “originally came from less civilized areas”, but also because “they came as slaves” to America; however as time went on in America, she found that “black people were more empathetic with our racial discrimination than white people were” because they understood what it meant to be a minority in America.
Although Mrs. Kim’s opinions on black people changed drastically over the years, it was clear that she was unaware of the institutionalized racism that in many ways affected black people more harshly than it affected her. When asked about a preferable racial make-up for her neighborhood, she stated that “[she] was more comfortable with white because [she] had lived with them”, rationalizing that it wasn’t because she disliked black people, but rather that, simply put, all of the neighborhoods that she had lived in were mostly white. These neighborhoods were “private wooded areas and suburbs”. Her family had been one of millions who considered the life in suburbia to be safe and a crucial part to achieving the “American Dream”; however, black people weren’t in the suburbs because they didn’t enjoy the suburbs. On the contrary, black people had been discriminated against for even trying to live in the suburbs because of white people who tried to keep their neighborhoods closed communities.
A prime example is shown in Levittown by David Kushner in the immediate racial hatred shown by the homeowners in Levittown when the Myers tried to move in; The Myers’ new home was perfect for them; it “had everything they needed and more” from “the three bedrooms” to the “new washing machine” (Kushner 88), and yet soon after they moved in, they were treated with intense hostility. Cars would drive by with “Confederate flags in the windows” (Kushner 90) and not long after, violence broke out, their new home turning into a victim to litter, damage, and robbery. These events happened in suburbs across the nation, and even after a several decades, there are still few black families who live in the suburbs or other private communities.
In addition to Mrs. Kim’s comment about neighborhood choices, she declared, “We’re blessed in this country; we’re lucky to enjoy and share culture. I can be honorary black for a day”, pointing to her unfamiliarity with what “being black” really means in American society and with the structural realities that force them to experience different treatment than other races. This shows that as a Korean-American, she felt not only that it was a blessing to be in America, but also a freedom to share and express her culture with non-Koreans, a freedom that not all races are allowed.
Mrs. Kim named herself as one of the “model minority”, the minority that seems to challenge even American standards and expectations. However, even as part of the “model minority”, she claimed that as a Korean-American there was very much a sense of being a mascot for not only the race, but also more specifically for the family because the Korean culture is very family-oriented. She felt many times, especially in all-Asian communities, that family honor and pride was more important to her than race because she grew up learning traditional Korean culture.
In contrast to Mrs. Kim, her 16-year-old daughter, Chloe*, has developed a very different ideology about race simply because she was born in America. Because she was raised in all-white neighborhoods since she was born, she felt the pressure to assimilate to the dominant culture, ingraining unconsciously into her that “white is right”. In addition, the racial make-up of all her schools was of mostly white students, and she noted that white people were constantly in the media; they seemed to “be everywhere”.
The Color of Wealth by Meizhu Lui et. al. states that “education continues to be an important part of the Asian strategy for social and economic advancement” because it not only helps children to learn what they need to know to succeed, but also because statistically, those with higher education can receive more opportunities; because of this knowledge, “one in seven API (Asians and Pacific Islanders) over the age of twenty-five, or one million people has an advanced degree” (Lui et. al. 215). Mrs. Kim made sure to send Chloe to the private schools that she never went to. In all of the schools that Chloe went to, Asians were a minority, and there were expectations and assumptions from everyone. White students seemed to brush off her achievements, assuming that it was “because [she’s] Asian” and “undermining [her] efforts”; they gave no credit to her individuality or perseverance. The other Asian students expected not only the stereotypical intellect but also a certain level of visible Asian culture; for example, the other Korean students expected that she know all of the Korean bands and TV shows.
Assimilation is a key part of Chloe’s story because it directly affected how she viewed others and how others viewed her. She says that she “[doesn’t] know whether it’s bad or good” because there is an ever-swaying balance to maintain concerning it; minorities facing the question of assimilation usually do so because “they are afraid to be defined just as their race” instead of by individuality, and possibly become even more isolated. Minorities, especially teenagers, are able to be recognized by their individuality once they share a commonality with the dominant culture; that commonality is usually behavior. They act white to be accepted so that they’re not stigmatized as being solely another member of their racial group. Chloe states that to the older generation, assimilation is seen as “admirable but not necessarily desirable” because of their simultaneous wish for their children to succeed in America without losing their heritage and culture.
Kristen* is another 16-year-old at Chloe’s school, except she is a black female who lives in Germantown, which drastically changes her perspective of the school as well as of society. Constantly being surrounded by her own race, Kristen said that “[she] had always known about race”, especially because her family made sure to teach her “the history of black people”, which included “slavery, [her] roots, culture”, etc.
Kristen says that her family also taught her to “blame white people for [their] situation”, but that she herself is not racist; on the contrary, she would scold her father for openly saying racist slurs. She has white cousins in the family, but called them “distant”, implying that her immediate family was not in friendly or constant contact with them. This more liberal thinking compared to her family’s mentality can be partially explained by the private school education that she was receiving. Like Chloe, she was part of a minority; there were only 8 black kids in her grade in high school. However, she became closer friends with white people, and having that immediate experience, found it hard to blame them for her own family troubles.
Angela* is a 43-year-old black public educator who grew up with similar experiences as Kristen, but still has a unique view because of the generational gap. Angela’s parents grew up in the segregated South, but were “very active in the Civil Rights Movement”; as a result, once they came to the North with their child, they made sure to emphasize black culture, giving her black dolls, and teaching her not to trust white people. Angela says that her mother “didn’t want [her] to hate [herself]” for being black.
In the 1970s, she went to a high school that had been forced to integrate because of the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling in 1954; it took decades for the ruling to be properly enforced and followed. The school was a predominantly white Christian school, but had a “large community of color”; Angela said that “[she] never felt alone”. Interestingly enough, the kids were very accepting of race and of each other; the teachers were “the crazy ones”, who made the racial slurs and subtle innuendos. They justified themselves with Biblical passages. Angela was the first person in her family to go to an integrated school, and although her parents rejoiced in the idea, they still “felt like white friends might be a problem” because they had lived through direct white power and authority. It was too soon for them to forgive and forget the injustice that they had experienced in the South.
Joe R. Feagin, in his book Racist America, calls this injustice “unjust impoverishment” (Feagin 11), which African Americans were subject to when they were exploited by whites. He names this term as a parallel to an old legal term: “unjust enrichment”; it is an idea that was made to “discuss the reality and impact of racial oppression” (Feagin 11). The concept is reminiscent of a parasitic relationship in which one species benefits as the other either stays in the same state or decays. Specifically in the United States, racial oppression has left African Americans “relatively impoverished as a group” and the whites, the profiteers, “relatively privileged and affluent as a group” (Feagin 11). This division still carries on today, and directly affects people like Angela’s mother, who remember that oppression.
Her parent’s teachings of black empowerment followed to college. She was adamantly taught that historically black colleges are not inferior in any way, and so when she was accepted into Spellman College, her parents were overjoyed. However, for personal reasons, she soon transferred to Friends World College, a Quaker college that Angela describes as “a radical 1960s hippie experiment”. Their message was to “create the world’s citizens”, people who would become global leaders; the first step to this goal was for people to live outside their own country for extended periods of time in order to understand different cultures, and so she did.
The experience was “life-changing”; she lived abroad for 3 of the 4 years of college, and with an “expanding perspective” and worldview, she gradually became a social justice-minded person, deciding to major in women’s studies. She had always been taught that “becoming a teacher was the first step out of poverty”, and with the middle class role models around her all having been “teachers, preachers, and nurses”, it seemed only natural that she herself become a public educator.
The first white person I interviewed was a 62-year-old Irish man in the working class named Tim*, who got as far as community college and is now self-employed as a historical tour guide. His first experience with a person of color was at age 4, when there was a little black girl in the bed next to him; she was very loud, and kept trying to get his attention. This started to shape from a young age his opinions on black people. There were no black people in his neighborhood, although it was multiethnic, housing Irish, Polish, Jewish, and German immigrants. In the household, although nothing was explicitly said, Tim got a clear impression that black people were “inferior”.
Tim went to a large public high school which was predominantly black, and was a victim of what he called “reverse racism”. There were only 29 white kids of the 3000 student population, and he was picked on and beat up many times simply because he was white. Because of these violent encounters, Tim became convinced that “blacks were not the only victims of racism”, but also that the majority always picks on the minority because they “want someone to look down upon”. Tim also recounted numerous stories of this reverse racism, including SEPTA drivers slamming the bus doors in his face. When asked about neighborhood choice, Tim immediately answered “all white” because “people prefer to live and be with their own kind”; equally, when the subject of mixed schools was brought up, he said that race would “be too much tension in schools”, that it would “complicate” things for students who were already dealing with a lot. These responses were most likely fueled by his harsh experiences with black people; there were not very many positive instances or relationships between Tim and a black person.
Tim was very proud of his Irish Catholic identity not only because of how it shaped his own identity, but also because of Irish’s perseverance and determination in America- how they essentially “became white”. Tim is a gay man who is partners with an Asian, and being gay in the Catholic Church was hard for him and his family to accept; he was once told by a classmate, “How does it feel to be one of the people you grew up to hate?” That was the ultimate question for him, and to this day, although he goes to a Catholic Church that accepts gay people, it still bothers him because his family background was very traditional and religious. Along with a strong religious background, a love of history is very present in Tim’s story, especially the history of the Irish. To Tim, the Irish in America are the immigrant models of meritocracy and hard-earned success in America. Even after being considered foreigners, they soon gained class mobility and now are considered “white”. Tim believes that willpower and persistence should also apply to black people, which greatly affects his views on policies like affirmative action.
This concept of immigrants “becoming white” is addressed by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva in his article Racialized Social System Approach to Racism; he states that “neither light- skinned nor, for that matter, dark-skinned immigrants necessarily came to this country as members of X or Y race”. However, soon after coming to America many realized that being “members of the white community allowed Americanization and class mobility” (Bonilla-Silva 35), key factors in achieving the American dream. As a result, all immigrants were desperate to be seen as white; the court cases like Bhagat Singh Thind vs. United States and Ozawa vs. United States proved that desperation. Because light-skinned Europeans could pass as “white”, they jumped at the chance to do so, resulting in them essentially “becoming white” while dark-skinned immigrants had no choice but to continue to be seen as foreigners.
In his book Two Nations, Andrew Hacker expands upon this idea of assimilation, stating that “most contemporary citizens associate themselves to a greater degree with Anglo-American culture than with their ancestors’ country of origin” (Hacker 9); this is consistent with the idea of shedding old identities in order to embrace the new. Many immigrants, in their desperation, completely abandon their past culture and heritage in an effort to “become white” or “fully American”. Hacker uses German immigrants as an example, noting how they “quickly learned English and studied the customs of their new land” (Hacker 10) because they had no wish to return to a disconnected Germany after the war.
The last interviewees were a white couple in my neighborhood. Bill* is 72-years-old, and Christa* is 68, but both are retired; when they did work, they worked at working-class jobs like in manufacturing plants and industrial factories. Both grew up with black people; Bill lived in Manayunk during his childhood, playing with his black neighbors all the time, and Christa had mostly black friends while she was attending Germantown High School because she was very shy and only the black kids reached out to her.
However, while working at their jobs, Bill and Christa mainly saw one type of black person- the working-class black person, and that definitely shaped how they thought black people inherently behaved. Because they were only exposed to these certain people, they started to classify that small community as an accurate representation of the black race, attributing their class to a natural product of their race. Desmond and Emirbayer classify this type of thought as biological determinism, where “social and economic differences between races” seem to be the “result of immutable, inherited, and inborn distinctions” (Desmond and Emirbayer 13). However, this thought is fundamentally incorrect because these differences are not genetic at all, instead merely shaped by institutionalized racism.
These racialized realities inevitably led to white people believing in their “superiority”. Feagin believes this sense of superiority to be the beginning of what he calls “extreme deference rituals”, where black people were forced to show “deference” to whites by “pretending ignorance, tipping hats, bowing their heads” (Feagin 56), etc. White people were also allowed to use “denigrating language” (Feagin 56) for black people, language that still evokes fear and anger in many black Americans. DuBois is quoted in citing this superiority as a “public and psychological wage of whiteness” (Feagin 56), an automatic benefit based on skin color.
Bill and Christa kept emphasizing that “there is good and bad in everybody” and people should be treated according to their actions, regardless of race. In addition, they believed strongly about the effect parents can have on their child’s views, going so far as to attribute black crime and supposed violence on “how they were raised”. However, they did try to rationalize and justify reasons for more minorities to turn to crime, saying that “they have better reason” and that “some people just have to survive”. They, like Tim, strongly believed in meritocracy, dividing black people into those “who want the easy way” and those “who take the chance to better themselves”.
Everyone’s definition of racism varied in word choice, but what stood out was that all the people of color, Mrs. Kim, Chloe, Kristen, and Angela, noted racism to be institutionalized. Both the couple and Tim categorized racism as a personal insult; Tim defined it as “putting down the dignity of another person because of who they are or what their background is”, while Christa added the element of what is taught, saying that “a racist is somebody who doesn’t know any better or somebody who wasn’t taught to not be a racist.” However with Christa’s definition, it is clear that she holds the assumption that racism is an inherent notion by saying that we must be “taught” not to be racist.
When asked if the media puts too much emphasis on race, there was a clear pattern in the responses. The white interviewees confidently replied that there was too much, and both even went as far as saying, “That’s what keeps [racism] going.” They were stuck on the micro-level personal race relations, not seeing the macro-level realities that shape those relations, such as the media; they also were oblivious to the many other factors of racism, only examining their own perspectives on race. Tim even said that there was too much emphasis on white stereotypes, such as the dumb working class white man, clearly focusing only on the persona that strikes closest to home.
The two teenagers, Chloe and Kristen, on the other hand, both felt that there was definitely not enough emphasis on race. There is probably not only not enough emphasis, but also not enough emphasis on the positives in the people of color community. Being teenagers, it’s especially important to see role models of their race in the media; however, many times whenever race is mentioned in the media, it is in the negative context of a hate crime. Mrs. Kim felt that there was too much emphasis as well, but also acknowledged that being “the model minority” may affect that opinion; for other minorities, “it may not be so overly done”. From her social justice perspective, Angela said that there is definitely “too much emphasis on race”, but that is was from the white people in privilege, not from people of color. In allowing them to control the media, she says that “we’ve given whites too much racial privilege”.
White people overcompensate for history through the media by continuing to broadcast hate crimes and racialized events to “show” their awareness of race in our society, and yet don’t even know the history of those they’re trying to help. Tim Wise addresses this white privilege in an encompassing phrase: “We don’t know what we don’t have to know.” He points out the fact that minorities are taught white history, whether it be in school or at home, because white is the dominant culture which everyone seems to want to conform to; however, most people know nothing about African or Middle Eastern history because they don’t have to know. It’s not necessary knowledge for them to succeed in American society.
Another piece of unnecessary knowledge for whites is affirmative action; all of the people of color who were interviewed saw affirmative action as a needed policy for America because the disparity concerning wealth, opportunities, and resources between whites and people of color is still so large. However, all of the white interviewees considered affirmative action to be pointless because they are so deeply entrenched in this idea of meritocracy. Tim says that affirmative action was “good in the beginning, but it’s now past its prime”. Bill and Christa did not know what the term “affirmative action” was, but when it was explained in the context of the workplace, they immediately understood and replied that only “the qualified” should get the job, regardless of race. All of the white interviewees believe that opportunities and resources are now equal between blacks and whites. They attributed the wealth gap and class disparity to be a choice of people of color, not a result of institutionalized racism; having been people of the working class, it makes sense that they believed in meritocracy and its power.
The authors of The Color of Wealth cite a 2004 poll “that [revealed] ethnic differences in perceptions of opportunity” (Lui et. al. 2); 77% of the white respondents said that they believed African Americans have “as good a chance as whites do to get any kind of job for which they are qualified”, while only 41% of black people agreed. Many white people believe that black people are simply taking advantage of the government and its programs by emphasizing the wealth disparity. The interviewees noticeably reflected this sentiment; Tim considered black people “the welfare people” who “are taking the taxpayers’ money” while Bill and Christa stated outright that “black people have just an equal chance as white people”.
The distinction is not only race, but also what Chris Rabb calls in his book, Invisible Capital, “invisible capital”. It is the “collection of largely intangible assets” that can contribute to future success, such as “skills, knowledge, language, networks, and experiences”. Not only do white people have more opportunities simply because of the perception of “whiteness”, but they also have more resources because of it. For example, white family members who are middle class professionals can be humongous assets because they have invaluable knowledge from their experiences that they can then pass on to the next generation. Black working class family members would not have the opportunity or the means to pass on such knowledge.
Everyone except for Bill and Christa supported President Obama; they stated that although they voted for his first term, “nothing has gotten better” and that for his second term, the public “voted color” instead of voting for “the most qualified”. They had very strong opinions on the economy, saying that it is the foundation for all the racial crimes, and that the president has not helped it the way he promised he would. When asked how President Obama may have changed the public’s mentality on racism, all agreed that it was “inspiring” for minorities to see a person of color in a position of power; Mrs. Kim even went as far as to say that black people were “validating their value through the president” instead of through themselves. However, no one was sure that the president improved racism; many said that it definitely “changed”, but they didn’t know if it was for the better. Kristen said that his election may not only have been inspiring for people of color but also a chance for others to become “even more racist”, masking their true intentions behind other characteristics that they dislike about the president. Angela revealed that although she doesn’t know how racism has changed, “white privilege is very profound and hasn’t changed much”. She cites the idea of crime; media always broadcasts violent crimes like rape, murder, and robbery, crimes mostly attached to the working class, which is mostly people of color. However, “the white business man stealing money” is also a crime; in fact, it’s a crime that can affect a lot more people than petty theft, but such corporate crimes are never publicized as much.
None of the interviewees believed that racism could be completely eradicated, and many of the reasons pointed to simple human nature. “Human nature is to find something different and isolate it.” “There’s always going to be someone to look down upon.” “Human nature is to put someone else down as inferior” However, another reason was stated by Angela: “The damage it’s done to people is so great that I don’t know”. Racism may keep going simply because people of color choose not to forget the injury that they’ve sustained; it might be too painful for them to forget. Kristen thought that it was “the older generation” and that once they’re gone, the next generation who hasn’t lived directly through historical racism in America can bring themselves to completely forgive their oppressors.
Interestingly, when asked what to do about racism, all the people of color considered racism on the macro-level, and stated that academic education and the media were the key factors for the persistence of racism. The idea of being educated is very prevalent in our society not only because it demonstrates your worldliness and higher understanding, but also because our society is becoming more and more technological and scientific. The people who are needed are therefore the technologically and scientifically savvy, and minorities understand the rigor it takes to keep up. The two black females especially expressed the need for the media to break away from stereotypical people of color; Angela said that we need to “change the aesthetics by consciously creating TV shows with less stereotypes”, pointing out in particular the stigma of violent black people. The opposite is also very present in American society; “the idea that white people are always nice is profoundly ingrained into our culture”.
However, all of the white interviewees, Tim, Bill, and Christa believed that the root of the problem was family-oriented and that people “need to be taught right”. They thought that this perpetual wrong teaching was based on ignorance. However, there exists a strange contradiction embedded within racism and racist stereotypes. Hacker describes it as times when “stereotyped judgments contain morsels of truth” (Hacker 28) because in reality, although we are taught in society that stereotypes are hurtful and generalizations, most stereotypes are based off of fact. For example, compared to white men, “a higher proportion” of black men “do have intentions that are in fact dangerous” (Hacker 28). This does not mean that all black men are dangerous, merely that when someone avoids a black man on the street, it may be out of concern for their safety, not that they’re racist.
James Baldwin once said, “Color is not a human or personal reality; it is a political reality.” American history is evidence to this quote; race was essentially invented in the 1600s in Virginia simply for political reasons. Before that time, there was no “white” or “black”; instead there were tribes and nationalities who had fundamental differences between them. It is also a historical reality on both the micro and macro levels; our personal past experiences inevitably affect our perspective of the world, but those experiences are already racialized because of American history as well as global interactions. This reality is shown by the above 6 interviewees; although they all had unique experiences based on family circumstances and individual developments, their own race played a large factor in shaping how they thought about race and what racism means on a societal level.
*The names of these interviewees have been changed for privacy.

Works Cited:
Kushner, David. Levittown. New York: Walker and Company, 2009. Print.
Desmond, Matthew and Emirbayer, Mustafa. Racial Domination, Racial Progress. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print.
Lui, Meizhu, et al. The Color of Wealth. New York: The New Press, 2006. Print.
Hacker, Andrew. Two Nations. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print.
Feagin, Joe R. Racist America. New York: Routledge, 2010. Print.
Rabb, Chris. Invisible Capital. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2010. Print.

The Importance of History
By Madie Lee (2012)

We live in a very visual society; our most reliable sources are our own inevitable perceptions and insights based on sight. Because of structural realities such as governmental policies and the education system, we are taught from the moment we are born to distinguish what does belong from what doesn’t belong; we are constantly bombarded with both subliminal and overt messages about the aesthetic of normality. We are taught to be prejudiced and discriminate against “the other” because of their abnormality. Race and class are two of the most sensitized discussion topics because they are blatant to the human eye, leaving too much room for assumptions, whether or not they are the perceived or actual race and class. These assumptions and perceptions carry much weight and power in our society not only because of the historical tension in America, but also because of their influencing descent from institutionalized to personal opinion. However, many times we are unaware that our opinions or even circumstances arose from institutional policies.
In 1962, my father was born in Seoul, Korea. Because everyone is the same race in Korea, the determining factor for family honor and pride was education status. The Confucian Teachings were very influential in Korea and cited education as an important tool for betterment and understanding; to this day, government officials are selected according to official merit-based exams. However, for years, only well-off families could afford that education because Korea didn’t have a public school system until the 1950s. My grandfather was lucky enough to be educated from the top school of Japan, which, when Korea was still a colony, was considered the best from both countries; he also was able to go to college in America. Because of his success as a translator during the Korean War and later as a funded missionary, he was able to send all four of his children to school.
Soon after my father was born, President Lyndon Johnson had signed the Immigration Act of 1965, which was considered “a corrective measure to nearly a century of discrimination against immigrants on the basis of race” (The Color of Wealth 206); it changed the foundation for immigrants to apply for U.S. residency from national origin to needed professions. As a result, the immigrants who came to the U.S. were mostly middle-class professionals and people who planned to settle with their families, rather than people who came to America temporarily for jobs.
My grandfather was one of these people; because of their social standing, in April of 1969, my grandfather and grandmother were able to immigrate to America with their three sons, their daughter having been left behind because of trouble with paperwork. My father was six years old. Before he left, his neighbors were excited for him, but the kids kept telling him that “he was going to get stabbed”. This idea originated from the fact that the only Americans they knew were the American soldiers who carried knives; these soldiers were everywhere, leftover from the Korean War, and so my father’s first impression of Americans was that they all carried knives, and were therefore all violent in nature.
However, once my family came to Kansas City, Missouri, after initially being received with caution, my family was accepted into the neighborhood as its first Asian family. The neighborhood was lower working class, and all white, full of construction workers and car mechanics. There was no racism or prejudice; elderly neighbors considered my father and his brothers as their grandsons, and my father would have sleepovers with the other kids on the block. Instances that the prejudice did show was when others not from the neighborhood would come; they would immediately comment in confusion about “what the Asian was doing [there]” and make racial slurs. Even my father’s elementary school made a conscious effort to help him; during his first summer in America, a 1st grade teacher came by and taught him and his brothers English. At this point, my father’s perspective of America had changed completely; he thought that not only were the white people nice, but also that “America must be great”. However, my father did note during his interview that these positive experiences would definitely been different if my family had been of African descent.
The authors of The Color of Wealth state that “America has offered Asian Americans honorary white status” (Lui, Meizhu et. al., 224) because our skin tone is light enough to be considered the skin tone of a tan white person. A price comes with this protection; Asian Americans must not “sit at the very front of the bus…and must pay no attention to what’s happening to people on the back of the bus” (Lui, Meizhu et. al., 224). However, slowly throughout the years, Asian Americans have been creeping towards the front of the bus- excelling in American schools, getting higher degrees than other minorities, outshining even the white students- and have received the reputation of “the Model Minority”.
All of my father’s positive experiences stems from this one perception of Asian-Americans. In Barbara Jensen’s Behaving vs. Blooming, teachers unknowingly discriminated in their teaching against the black kids, who had distinctly different culture and familial values. Their values “[were] not necessarily highly valued” (Jensen 90) and “their responses indicated a different worldview and way of thinking” (Jensen 91), too different for the teachers to understand. So why did that 1st grade teacher go out of her way to teach English to my father, who was clearly an immigrant with specific cultural manners? It was because he was one of “the Model Minority”; however, it wasn’t that she automatically assumed that he was smart, but rather that the reputation of this minority greatly overpowers those of other minorities. She wanted him to succeed, and she knew he could.
My family’s acceptance into the working-class neighborhood was also mainly based on their race. My father thought that it might have been because “of socioeconomic commonality”, but there is a distinct division between the black working class and the white working class. There is no class solidarity between them because the white working class typically wanted to identify more with the white upper class than people with similar struggles. It was because of their status as “honorary whites” that they were able to live comfortably.
When my father was in middle school, in the 1970s, people started moving out of the neighborhood and into the suburbs. The suburbs were becoming a crucial part of the American Dream, with its ideas of a separate, elegant community away from “certain types of people”. They wanted to get away from not only the working class, but also the working class’s mentality; they didn’t want to be held back by the uneducated. Middle school also ushered in the pre-teen thoughts of exclusion and superiority; Asians were the smallest minority, so both whites and blacks teased and made fun of him. My father recalls that “for the first time in my life, [he] didn’t want to be Asian. [He] just wanted to fit in.”
My grandfather during this time had been running diners, and had finally made enough money to move to a bigger house; my father was in high school when they moved to the suburbs. He categorized the neighborhood as “distant”, not only in the literal sense of space between house, but also in the mentality as well. This neighborhood was for the middle-class, and there was not the friendliness that my father had experienced in the working-class neighborhood. On the contrary, the neighbors acted cold and suspicious, and sleepovers were never allowed. As soon as a black family moved in, many of the white neighbors immediately moved out. This animosity extended to high school; every year there would be fights between blacks and whites, simply because of race. The police were called whenever these fights happened, and the students were just left with one thought: “That’s the way it is. Blacks and whites don’t get along.”
The racist jokes made towards my father persisted, but there was a clear distinction in motives. The white kids would tease him because they felt superior as members of the white race whereas the black kids just teased him because he was “different”. However, he always was a little bitter towards black people because of the contradictory irony of them teasing him. He thought that they would understand the most because they were also minorities, but this was clearly not the case. Because he was Asian, the teachers also treated him very specifically; they automatically assumed that he was smart, and his scores and grades validated their assumptions, although they attributed them to his race, and not to his individuality.
In Racial Domination, Racial Progress, Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer state that “IQ testing is a mechanism through which racial hierarchies are reinforced” (Desmond and Emirbayer 12). Many people have tried to apply IQ as the reason why there is such racial inequality, but they don’t take into account the “social and historical factors” (Desmond and Emirbayer 12), such as the Jim Crow laws and centuries of slavery that severely limited black people’s educational resources and opportunities. Due to Asian work ethic, many students succeed and have high IQs; because white Americans want to hold on to this “racial hierarchy” to try and validate the inequality for black people, they are therefore forced to consider Asian Americans as people near the top of the hierarchy and treat them accordingly.
Assimilation had always been present throughout my father’s life; my grandfather made sure to speak to his children in only English, and my grandmother spoke so little Korean to them that my father ended up forgetting Korean completely. My grandfather never saw the importance of preserving culture or heritage, wanting instead to move on to surer actions, such as blending in with the majority. In addition to that, my grandmother was not even able to keep making Korean food because the preparation takes a lot of time; my father and his brothers grew up on food from the diners.
However, it especially became important for my father in college. My father went to Washington University in Missouri, and the first thing he noticed was that there were visibly more Asians, which was a natural relief. Because of the vast diversity, there was essentially no racism, but what did become prominent was class. Most of my father’s friends were not only white, but from wealthy families, and so he was looked down upon because he was the poorest among them. He tried to make up for it by assimilating into white culture; he talked, walked, dressed, and essentially acted like them. He believed himself to be white on the inside; after all, he had not only lived in all-white neighborhoods, but his friends had also been white his entire life. There were no black people in his circle of friends in college either.
The summer of his junior year, my father went to Korea to teach English as well as visit his parents, who had moved back there. There he was part of the majority, and he said that the experience was “so refreshing to be able to walk down the street and blend in”. However, he no longer knew any Korean, and because of the heavy nationalism in Korea, many people saw Korean immigrants as “traitors who fled Korea”. As soon as my father opened his mouth, it became clear that he was one of these immigrants, and he was treated very differently. After that trip to Korea, he finally admitted to himself, “I’m never going to be white.”
My father met my mother and married her the second time he went to Korea, and they moved to America soon after because my father was becoming tired of the cultural tension in Korea. He became a lawyer after attending American University, and turned out to be the first Asian prosecutor in Philadelphia. A judge introduced him to the Korean-American community and their leaders, and soon he was giving seminars to the community about different laws and what to be cautious about; because many Korean stores are in black communities, there had been some racial and cultural incidents that required attention because they were becoming a pattern. For example, in Korean culture, when giving money to customers, it is proper to place that money on the table or countertop. However, the black customers were unaware of this tradition and naturally held out their hands to receive the money. As a result, when the Korean store owners ignored their hands and placed the money on the countertop, the black customers would feel disrespected and looked down upon, not realizing that the action was purely cultural.
However, even though my father was a respectable Korean prosecutor, language was a humongous barrier between him and the Korean community. He had to have a personal translator at these seminars, which only accentuated the differences; he was considered to be “not one of them”, and eventually he became less and less involved within the Korean community. In 1995, I was born, and he quit being a prosecutor because he was getting tired of not only the little intellectual challenge, but also of the aggressive prosecutor mentality. He opened a law firm with a friend in Korea Town; that firm would be the first of many.
Race has also played a large part in where my family lives today, socioeconomically and physically. My father now works at a law firm that targets mostly the Korean-American community, and having extensive years of experience has placed him at the top. My mother was an accountant, and is now a successful small business owner. In addition, my mother and I live in an all-white neighborhood; the response to our arrival was muted and very mild compared to if we had been black.
Even now, as a result of my father’s experiences and memories, he identifies more with the American culture than the Korean. However, he is still stuck in that in-between by being Asian in appearance but more American inside, and I have inherited that gap. Because he had never been taught from a young age about Korean culture, my mother has always been the connection between me and my Korean heritage. Because I was born here, I feel more American, socially and mentally; I have mostly American friends because I feel more comfortable and connected to them, and I think in a certain way that is very un-Korean. I know basic cultural manners and gestures, such as bowing and serving the elders first, but they are not inherent; I have to remind myself to do them, and even then, the movements are clumsy.
Gwynn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey state in Identities and Social Locations that “identity is fluid” and an “ongoing process” (Okazawa-Rey and Kirk, 59) that revolves around personal circumstances as well as individual perceptions. For my parents, the first identity shift occurred when they immigrated to America; they encountered situations such as cultural tension and assimilation that they never would have faced in Korea. However, these shifts added to their personality and who they are today, which in turn, directly affect how I see and interpret the world. They instilled in me certain values that they believe are innate, but in actuality were taught to them through their experiences. If they had taken a different path in life at any point, their lives would be radically different from now. Yet, in addition to these experiences, institutional policies such as the Immigration Act of 1965 and the education system greatly shaped my parents’ perspectives and opinions, although they themselves may not know it. I already find it hard to accept not only the advantages that I have as one of the “Model Minority”, but also the fact that most of my thoughts and perceptions are not originally mine; they are the products of a society governed by racist policies and realities.

Works Cited:
Kirk, Gwynn & Okazawa-Rey, Margo. (2004). Identities and social locations: Who am I? Who are my people?. In Kirk & Okazawa-Rey, (Eds). Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. (pp. 59-69). New York: McGraw Hill.
Jensen, Barbara. (2010). Behaving vs. Blooming. In Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America. (pp. 79-116). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Lui, Meizhu et. al. (2006). The Color of Wealth. New York: The New Press.
Desmond, Matthew and Emirbayer, Mustafa. (2010). Racial Domination, Racial Progress. New York: McGraw Hill.

Analysis of Ethnic Businesses
By Madie Lee (2013)

Introduction

In this paper, I attempt to not only analyze firm characteristics and patterns by race and ethnicity, but also set those findings in the proper context using additional information, including geographic and kind-of-business characteristics. My main data source is the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2007 Survey of Business Owners (SBO). The Company Summary: 2007 provides estimates of business ownership by ethnicity, race, and veteran status, as well as estimates of minority- and nonminority-owned firms; the report provides data on both the number of employer and nonemployer firms, sales and receipts, annual payroll, and employment. These data were collected as part of the 2007 Economic Census. The SBO “includes a sample of more than 2.3 million nonfarm businesses filing 2007 tax forms as individual proprietorships, partnerships, or any type of corporation, and with receipts of $1,000 or more” (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007).
Analysis of Firm Characteristics by Race and Ethnicity

In the 2007 Table “Firm Characteristics of U.S.-located Businesses by Race and Ethnicity”, white and Asian entrepreneurs are overrepresented while black or African- American and Hispanic entrepreneurs are grossly underrepresented. White entrepreneurs dominate the business market with 83% of all firms, but they only represent 78% of the U.S. population; in the same regard, Asian entrepreneurs constitute 6% of all firms when they are only 5% of the population. On the other hand, blacks or African-American and Hispanic entrepreneurs make up 7% and 8% respectively of all firms, whereas in the U.S. population, they make up an astounding 13% and 17% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). In total, minority firms only make up 21% of all firms. Even more strikingly, although the ratio from white to minority firms is around 4:1, minority firms only make a tenth of what white firms make in receipts of all firms. This is a difference of nine trillion dollars. In addition, the average pay per employee for a minority firm is around $28,000, $7,000 less than a white firm’s $35,000 per employee (Firm Characteristics of U.S.-located Businesses by Race and Ethnicity, 2007).
Although minority firms only make up one fifth of all firms, minority entrepreneurs, many of them immigrants, still make enormous contributions to the U.S. economy. Immigrants constitute 12.2% of the entire U.S. workforce, and immigrant business owners make up 12.5% of all business owner in the U.S. These firms are responsible for contributing roughly 5% of all new business owners, and generate $67 billion, 11.6% of all U.S. business income. This contribution can also be seen clearly through immigrant business ownership in certain industries. Over one-fifth of all businesses in the arts, entertainment, and recreation industry are owned by immigrants (Fairlie: 15). Information from the SBO also provide evidence for contribution from immigrant business owners to the U.S. economy. Almost a third of all U.S. businesses in the wholesale trade and retail trade industries are also owned by immigrants; both of these industries accounted for close to 40% of receipts earned by the nation’s minority-owned businesses (Fairlie: Table 5; Summary of Findings, Company Summary).
These minority firms also contribute to business ownership and economic development in certain states. California has the largest number of immigrant business owners at 427,580; nearly 30% of all California business owners are immigrants. In 2007, minority firms generated $283.7 billion, or 27.7 percent of California’s total business receipts, in receipts. In addition, other states that are highly affected by the formation of immigrant or minority-owned businesses are New York, New Jersey, and Hawaii. In New York, immigrant business owners constitute almost a quarter of all the state’s business owners; those owners make up 7% of all business owners in the U.S. In addition, New York houses 12.2% of all immigrant business owners. Both Hawaii and New Jersey’s business owners count for over one-fifth of each state’s business owners, but combined only make up around 3% of all business owners of the U.S. However, Hawaii has the largest proportion of minority-owned businesses in the state, with 56.9 percent, and these businesses generated $20.6 billion in receipts in 2007 (Fairlie: Table 6; Summary of Findings, Company Summary). These statistics show that even though minority firms only constitute around one-fifth of all firms in the U.S., they still have tremendous impact on the U.S. economy in both the state and national levels.
Comparison of Groups: Hispanic, Black or African- American, and Asian
In this section, I will be comparing Hispanic, black or African-American, and Asian firms. Out of the three groups, Asian entrepreneurs were overrepresented while Hispanic and black or African-American entrepreneurs were severely underrepresented. This statistic demonstrated discrepancies between the three groups. Asian, black or African-American, and Hispanic firms all have around the same amount of firms at 6%, 7%, and 8%, respectively. However, although this may be the case, Asian firms have almost five times the amount of receipts of all firms compared to black or African American firms, and close to one and a half times the amount of receipts of all firms of Hispanic firms. This may not seem like a lot, but in terms of dollars, the differences become $370 billion and $150 billion. This same pattern is almost identical concerning employer firms and their receipts; Asian entrepreneurs had more employer firms, and ratio between Asian firms and the firms of the other two groups grew larger at receipts for employer firms. Interestingly enough, both black or African-American and Hispanic entrepreneurs owned more nonemployer firms; however, Asian firms still had more receipts for nonemployer firms compared to black or African-American firms. In addition, black or African-American firms had the least average pay per employee of the three groups with $26,000; the other two groups each had around $28,000 per employee (Firm Characteristics of U.S.-located Businesses by Race and Ethnicity, 2007).
These discrepancies can perhaps be better understood through deeper knowledge of each group’s business characteristics. The SBO shows that all three groups had high percentages of businesses in the repair, maintenance, personal, and laundry services industry: 44.7% of Asian-owned U.S. firms, 30% of Hispanic-owned U.S. firms, and 37.6% of black or African-American-owned U.S. firms. These statistics are even more significant when put in the context that 30.0% of the nation’s minority-owned businesses operate in the repair, maintenance, personal, and laundry services industry. In addition, Asian firms was the only group that had a high percentage of businesses in the professional, scientific, and technical services industry; for the other two groups, the most common industry for all ethnicities was repair, maintenance, personal, and laundry services. On the other hand, half of the Asian ethnicities listed had between 30-50% of businesses in the professional, scientific, and technical services industry. These are considerably high percentages when juxtaposed with the fact that only 13.9 percent of the nation’s equally minority and nonminority-owned businesses operate in the professional, scientific, and technical services industry. (Summary of Findings, Company Summary; Summary of Findings, Asian; Summary of Findings, Black; Summary of Findings, Hispanic)
All three groups also had most of their businesses housed in either California or New York. In 2007, Los Angeles County, California, had the largest number of minority-owned businesses, which is 8.1 percent of the nation’s minority-owned businesses. California had the largest number of Hispanic and Asian-owned firms. Almost one-third of all Asian-owned firms are in California, with receipts of $181.9 billion, which is 35.8 percent of all Asian-owned firm receipts. California also houses a quarter of all Hispanic-owned U.S. firms, which have receipts of $81.1 billion, or 23.5 percent of all Hispanic-owned U.S. firm receipts. On the other hand, New York, which has 7% of the nation’s minority-owned businesses, had the largest number of black-owned firms in 2007 at 10.6 percent of all black-owned firms, with receipts of $12.8 billion, which totals 9.3 percent of all black-owned firm receipts. 7.4% of Asian-owned firms are also in New York, their receipts adding up to $40.2 billion, or 7.9% of all Asian-owned firm receipts. (Summary of Findings, Company Summary; Summary of Findings, Black; Summary of Findings, Asian; Summary of Findings, Hispanic) The information above shows a comparison of Hispanic, black or African-American, and Asian firms regarding firm characteristics, which include industry breakdown and geographic density according to each group.
Patterns of Hispanic and Asian Entrepreneurs
When comparing many groups in each of the Hispanic and Asian categories, there are discrepancies that arise between groups that hint at a larger institutional or cultural reason behind them. In the following two sections, I compare at least four different groups within each of the Hispanic and Asian categories.

Asian-owned Firms

Asian Indian and Chinese firms make up close to half of all Asian-owned firms, Asian Indian entrepreneurs owning 20% and Chinese entrepreneurs owning 27%; together, both ethnicities combined constitute almost 60% of receipts of all firms for Asian-owned firms. However, although Chinese entrepreneurs own significantly more firms, Asian Indian firms had significantly higher receipts of all firms at $150 billion compared to the $140 billion that the Chinese firms made in receipts. In addition, even though both ethnicities had on average the same number of employer firms as well as the same amount of employees, Asian Indian firms had around $13 billion more in receipts for employer firms. The average pay per employee for Chinese firms was also around $27,000; compared to the Asian Indian firms’ average pay per employee, which was close to $32,000, this is around $5,000 less per employee.
Here we start to see a distinct pattern of Asian Indian firms having significantly more net income or economic capital, and this is also true in the comparison of Asian Indian firms and Vietnamese firms. Although the number of Vietnamese firms is three-fourths the number of Asian Indian firms, the receipts of all firms for Vietnamese entrepreneurs is one-fifth of those for Asian Indian entrepreneurs; in currency this is around $30 billion compared to $150 billion in receipts. Furthermore, both of these ethnicities have the same amount of non-employer firms, at 17% each for all Asian-owned non-employer firms; however, the receipts for Asian Indian entrepreneurs is significantly higher, earning one and a half times the amount of receipts for Vietnamese entrepreneurs. Average pay per employee for Vietnamese firms is the lowest of any ethnicity under the Asian race at $23,000; this is $5,000 less than the average for all Asian ethnicities, and $9,000 less than the average pay per employee for Asian Indian entrepreneurs.
When comparing other ethnicities within the Asian race, other discrepancies appear. Although Korean entrepreneurs own three times the number of employer firms that Japanese entrepreneurs have, they only have twice the amount of receipts of employer firms as the latter. Japanese firms have the highest average pay per employee at $34,000, which is $6,000 more than the average for all Asian firms, while Korean firms have the second lowest average pay per employee within all Asian-owned firms at $24,000. Filipino firms have the second highest average pay per employee with $32,000, but their data is very different in comparison to Japanese firms. Indeed, even though Filipino and Japanese firms have a similar amount for employer firms, at 5% and 6% respectively, Japanese firms had close to three times the amount of receipts of employer firms than Filipino firms, a whole $20 billion more in receipts. In addition, although Korean and Filipino firms have almost the same percent of all Asian-owned firms, Korean firms had four times the amount of receipts of all firms than Filipino firms (Firm Characteristics of U.S.-located Businesses by Race and Ethnicity, 2007).
Hispanic-owned Firms

When looking at Hispanic-owned firms, the immediate observation is the disproportionately large amount of white Hispanic firms, which made up 91% of all Hispanic-owned firms and owned 95% of receipts of all firms. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2010, 53% of Hispanics self-reported as white (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). Because this data is based off of self-reporting Hispanic volunteers, this may hint at a solid belief of a cultural or social benefit to self-reporting as white. Their average pay per employee is $29,000, which is the average of the same category for all Hispanic-owned firms, but $6,000 less than the average pay per employee for a member of a white non-Hispanic firm.
Black or African-American Hispanic and Asian Hispanic firms are overrepresented in Hispanic-owned firms. Black or African-American Hispanics only make up around 2.5% of the Hispanic population while Asian Hispanics make up .4% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010); however concerning business firm characteristics, both races make up 7% and 2% respectively of all Hispanic-owned firms. They make up 10% of all Hispanic-owned firms, but only gain 5% of receipts of all firms. Although black or African-American Hispanic firms have over three times the amount of Asian Hispanic firms, both ethnic firms have almost the same amount of receipts, at 3% and 2% respectively. In addition, although black or African-American Hispanic entrepreneurs own more firms and more employees, they pay out a similar average pay per employee compare to Asian Hispanic entrepreneurs.
In comparing black or African-American Hispanic and Mexican or Chicano Hispanic firms, although Mexican or Chicano Hispanic entrepreneurs have six times the amount of firms or black or African-American Hispanic entrepreneurs, they have almost fifteen times the amount of receipts of all firms; this is comparing $12 billion to $155 billion in receipts. Furthermore, even though Mexican or Chicano Hispanic entrepreneurs had six times the amount of non-employer firms of black or African-American Hispanic entrepreneurs, they still had ten times the amount of receipts of non-employer firms. Yet, both ethnicities had similar average pays per employee; black or African Hispanic firms had around $26,000 per employee while Mexican or Chicano Hispanic firms had around $25,000 per employee.
Other ethnic firms that I think should be mentioned are the Puerto-Rican and Cuban firms. Although Cuban employer firms only have twice the amount of Puerto-Rican employer firms, they have close to five times the amount of receipts of employer firms than the latter. In addition, Cuban firms have the highest average pay per employee, at $36,000 per employee, which is $8,000 more than the average for all Hispanic-firms (Firm Characteristics of U.S.-located Businesses by Race and Ethnicity).
References
1. United States Census Bureau. ” Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010.” census.gov. March. 2011. Web. 27 Sept. 2013
2. United States Census Bureau. ” State & County QuickFacts.” census.gov. 27 June. 2013. Web. 27 Sept. 2013
3. United States Census Bureau. ” Survey of Business Owners – Company Summary: 2007.” census.gov. 16 Nov. 2012. Web. 28 Sept. 2013
4. United States Census Bureau. ” Survey of Business Owners – Asian-Owned Firms: 2007.” census.gov. 16 Nov. 2012. Web. 29 Sept. 2013
5. United States Census Bureau. ” Survey of Business Owners – Hispanic-Owned Firms: 2007.” census.gov. 16 Nov. 2012. Web. 29 Sept. 2013
6. United States Census Bureau. ” Survey of Business Owners – Black-Owned Firms: 2007.” census.gov. 16 Nov. 2012. Web. 29 Sept. 2013
7. Nopper, Tamara K. 2011. “Firm Characteristics of U.S.-located Businesses by Race and Ethnicity, 2007”
8. Fairlie, Robert W. “Estimating the contribution of immigrant business owners to the U.S. economy.” Nov. 2008. Web. Sept. 2013.