Sunday, May 12, 2013

Latinos fill the role of blacks?

Yesterday night, I caught a 10:10 showing of The Great Gatsby movie. I thought it was a solid film, not excellent. One component of the movie that stuck out to me was the contrast between the rich white class and the poor blacks. It definitely sought out to explicitly show the disparity between whites and blacks in the 1920s America.

Tonight, on Mother's Day, I had dinner at my country club, the Glen View Club. I could not help but notice the overwhelming amount of employees who were Latinos. It made me think about the increasing amount of Mexicans and hispanics immigrating (legally or illegally) to America.

Just as blacks came to America during the ages of Slavery, granted unwillingly, this generation of working class Americans seems to be composed largely of Latinos. An article from the Center for American Progress shows how "only about one in six employed Latinos above the age of 25 holds a college degree, which is less than half the portion of employed whites."  Latinos seem to be stuck in a position inferior to whites as shown by the lack of higher education. This is similar to blacks in the 1920s, many of whom served for the rich white like in The Great Gatsby.

This ties back to implicit racism that might still exist in America. I think a slave owner-slave dynamic between whites and blacks exists in professional sports such as the NBA, which I wrote a large paper on in my American Studies class in high school. There could also be this dynamic with whites and latinos in country clubs and other situations where white America enjoys the service of working class America.

Why does "White America" stay exclusive and continue to suppress minorities? What does it say about America?

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