Today, and everyday, is an important time to address the issues of historical oppression through classism and racism. American capitalism has created major disparities between the rich and the poor; the haves and the have-nots; the people of color and the people of privilege—arguably, capitalism has created classism, and classism has helped create the structure of racism. We are living in a time of class/racial disparities. It is time, not just to call-out these disparities but to thoroughly examine them, to understand them, to challenge them, and to come together to dismantle them.
Equity, fairness, and justice are the demands for the people of today.
Unfortunately, American capitalism would have people believe that we all live in a just society, that our income/education/treatment is based solely on merit…that if we just try hard enough and pull up ourselves by our boot-straps, we will become wealthy, educated and apart of the higher social class. This is a lie meant to keep the lower classes docile citizens of a corrupt system that is thriving in the US today—a system working for the higher strata of society. This is a lie as evidenced by the fact that in poor communities adult education is low, schools are underfunded in poor communities, housing is sub-par at best in communities of color, health disparities have plagued whole families who exist in poverty, and there is little to no opportunities for families of color, families of low socio-economic status, to mobilize upwards.
The system of American capitalism will ensure that economic capital and educational capital will stay in the hands of the wealthy, the elite, the 1% and the upper middle-middle class. This results in the working class not having access to resources of politics, education, legislation and even healthcare. This is the time, as has always been the time, to begin conversations, to take action, and to build communities that will no longer be victims of this unjust system, but empowered peoples of mobilization for justice and equitable treatment.
The idea should not be to focus on what we as members of our communities don’t have, but what we do have.
We have hopes for our peoples futures, we have goals, we have the ability to band together and raise our voices as a unified voice, and in that we have power. We can mobilize by fighting for the best education of our youth, by creating unions that demand labor equality, by empowering our communities of color…revolutions start through even simple means, even by coming home and enjoying time with your family, even by having a conversation about how to best support your community, even by educating yourself about historical injustice.
For people of color, people of marginalized classes, there is power in knowledge and power in numbers. Equity, fairness, and justice is on the horizon when we begin to collectively mobilize for change.
The Library for the nationalbrownberets.org is currently under construction.
For facts that support this message refer to:
https://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/2014/08/27/long-view-suggests-kids-end-where-they-start
“Social Justice, Multicultural Counseling, and Practice: Beyond a Conventional Approach ed.2” by Heesoon Jun. Published 2018 by Springer International Publishing AG.