A Background of the American Dream - Assignment Example

?A background of the American dream needs to be given in order to explain the different characters and their personalities. The social structure of Chicago had been changing. "A city within a city sprang up", (chp 3) creating a ghetto of street life and crime. By 1970, the economy had shifted . Blue collar jobs were no longer located in the city. This was not just in Chicago but across the nation. The effect of no longer having blue collar jobs caused massive un-employment . Inner City children would have been exposed to drugs, poverty, unemployment single parent households , crime and welfare checks by the time they would reach high school. By 1984, 3 in 5 children born out of marriage were black. Angie has three children by the time she was 21. Her husband was in prison for life and she lived in abject poverty living in Chicago. Welfare payments were different, depending on the State and the city. In Milwaukee, there was no public housing, crime and drugs were low. Rents were lower. Welfare payments were higher. With three children, Angie moved with her 'cousin' Jewell to a new life. Until the welfare system became computerized, Angie worked odd jobs off the books. She made a living to support herself and her children. Living with another mother helped in expenses. The welfare check and food stamps helped put food on the table for her four children and herself. Jewell was pregnant when she moved to Milwaukee. Her husband was in prison. She relied on the system which allowed her to stay home for the two years until she was obligated to get a job. Opal had finished high school and gone to Community College. She had a lack of self confidence and had a drug dependence on cocaine then on crack. She eventually fell completely out of the system. Welfare was the answer to ghetto poverty. Taking it away made the strong survive. When Angie had to get training under the JOBS, she became a Nursing Assistant. Angie loved working as a Nursing Assistant but it had strong repercussions on her family life. Angie's kids missed more school when she was working then when she was on welfare. Clinton said if a mother worked, it would bring pride and order back to the home. This wasn't true. Her children missed the equivalence of 2 full years of school (chp 9) She lost her job when her car was stolen. "Liking a job is not the same as needing a job". "Leaving welfare is constantly being criticized by boyfriends" as though it is a sign of security. It was a vicious circle. By 1998, she could have gotten a check but it had become a hard bureaucratic humiliating process. She refused to sit through ''the self esteem class", and do 'the community service' As a fighter she went to get another job. She had a low paying scud job cleaning bed pans. Before Jewell took responsibility and got motivated she had called the TANF office only to get recordings "Please call once a week". When she had enough of the paperwork, she got a job in a factory. It was steady and well paid. Both these women had relatively unskilled jobs. The potential for advancement and leaving poverty as single mothers was limited. Both had problems with unhappy children who resented their boyfriends. Having fathers in prison was common place but difficult to handle. Opal, the most intelligent of the three, became lost in the system. She came to Milwaukee with her problems and the TANF did not have the services or rehabs for long term drug users. A problem needs to be identified before it is helped. Welfare offices did not have the man power to change roles so quickly.. She got a job in a lab but lost it because of her drug use. She fell off the grid. TANF stated that everyone was supposed to do something in order to get a check. Her first case officer gave her money on the side. Opal wasn't capable. Her children had been sent to her mother's. The W-2 promised rehabs but Opal never showed she had a drug problem. None of the three women had health insurance. The financial difference of being on welfare or having a low entry job after taxes was not more than $2000 for people like Angie and Jewell. When private corporations got involved in the TANF program, case workers were over swamped with cases. W-2 people were employed and trained as case workers. Social workers usually take years in training. These people were under qualified. Angie was able to get Opal out of the crack House before her baby was due. To conclude, women who have had to make it their whole lives, resent the role of the case worker in their private or intimate lives. They do not want anyone else to look at their personal lives to decide on whether they deserve a check or not. How many times did Angie and Jewell give up on the system because of the bureaucracy. Would Opal's drug problem have reached such horrible levels had there been better rehab centers? Single mothers need to be with their children. Having them work full time and putting children in day care puts more of a strain on family lives and on the future of children's success in school. If the school is of good quality and not below standards, it can be proven that it would be a better solution. Look how Angie's children missed so much school when she had to leave at 5am in the morning. Mothers of special need children cannot trust others to take care of their children in day care. (the case of the cerebral palsy child) Single mothers also have special need children. Their only source of getting out of poverty is investing in their children's overall well being. Leaving welfare is a process. Some issues that need to be addressed in September are the following. Drug problems need to be identified and addressed. People should not be punished for not working they should be put into qualified rehabilitation programs. Special Classes should be taught at the Junior High level of the value of marriage and the value of waiting. Single mothers should not be penalized if they put priority over their children rather than work. It is the next generation who will benefit. 2 Developmental psychologist say that so much of success in school is determined in the first 36 months of a child's life. "Test score disparities appears as early as preschool and is depended on how a child is raised." (Farkas) Any social or racial gap because of SES will play a major factor in a child's performance later on in his schooling. "A test was done independent of race of three different economic groups. It was shown by the age of three, a child would have heard 35 million words by his rich parents, 20 million words by his middle class-working parents, and 10 million words by his poor parents." (Farkas) Poorer children have less interaction and less social behavior than the other children. The disparities for poor children happen for the majority in the first three years of life. There is a fallacy in this testing as it does not discuss the difference of a bilingual household and how this affect a child's performance in school. In addition to childhood integration comes the language differences. Children come into school with the culture, discipline and the language of their parents. More than 25 % of young age school children speak English as a second language. (Kao) Educational priorities depend on different cultures. Students from different ethnic backgrounds put education at different levels of priority. Parents' education and family income is a good indication of how a child will perform in school but it cannot be the only one. (Kao 432) Our social and cultural capital is very different depending on the ethnic background. Family resources are very different. Giving students a common social capital at a community level is an important factor in the success of the Harlem Zone Project. Parents having to participate in their child's schooling is an excellent method of integration. Child of immigrants will not feel as isolated if they have an opportunity to share their cultures. Farkas emphasized the necessity that preschool reading and math skills be mastered before entering first grade. Preschool must be mandatory for all children. Low income parent should have the opportunity to bring their children into day care to give them the stimulation that they need to develop or may be lacking at home. The Harlem Children Zone concentrates on getting the children" on grade level" and working with them to get through school so they go to college and "become tax payers". There are social workers, health services, and dietary services. The integrated Program also involves cultural activities and sports. A question was asked as to why the Harlem Children Zone was not as successful academically. The Director contributed it to Farkas's principle that the children are not on grade level fast enough. They lack in expression, behavior, and vocabulary by the time they come to preschool. He said that the parents who participate are harsh, negative and limit their use of language. If the Harlem Children Zone can get to a child at birth, they can contribute to those vital three years and get the child on grade level so he can be at his peers' academic level when he enters pre-school. 3 He explains that incarcerate rates have more than doubled because of societal shift to a more totalitarian approach to crime than from a rehabilitation approach. Only small percentage of crime has been affected by those imprisoned under the "three strikes" law. The work done on the fight against drugs and the use of law enforcement has helped reduce crime. In 1984 the US government passed a law making a standardized system of sentencing. The mandatory sentencing gave no room for any variation for mitigating circumstances. Those arrested were automatically sentenced. Sentencing became longer. A felony was described by a compilation of numbers and statistics. Western study of inequalities states that poor young black men who have dropped out of high-school and have menial jobs with no prospects of a future or more likely to commit a crime than their white counter part. The moment they enter the prison system, it is a vicious circle. Does imprisonment create unemployment or does unemployment or low-employment lead to committing crimes and eventual imprisonment? Black men suffer in both situations. When they come out of prison, they find themselves even less employable then before they went into prison. A white convict with the fewer qualifications will be employed before the black convict who went to prison with a lesser crime. Western argues that in the late 70's, money was spent to rehabilitate released inmates. The prison population has more than doubled but the same amount of money has been given to an increased prison population but nothing was added to the budget for education, rehabilitation, counseling and parole upon release of the incarcerated. These men leave even more empty handed then when they entered the system. The stigma of having gone to prison is detrimental to getting a job. It is never forgiven nor forgotten. There are many social consequences. Whether one man or a group of men are sent to prison it is a lost to a community , to a family, and to a social structure. This lost commodity causes an imbalance which is often replaced by others. A high percentage of these men are married. When they go to prison, their family structures fall apart. Men and women are commodities. In prison, this commodity is destroyed. The community looses economically, emotionally, and socially. When these men are freed, there will be the consequences of these men having to re-integrate the social network of their communities. There will have been so much change. They have not kept up with the technological changes, education or vocational training. They have incomplete resumes. Their communities have so many people going through that they are not able to keep up with the constant change of people not settling down. If a black convict cannot get a job, get health insurance, go to school or integrate a family, the whole process starts again. The "three strike" law is quickly achieved. 4. The middle class blacks have been forced to leave San Francisco because of the changing face of the economy; the structure of the city; and the change from a manufacturing to a business center. This has been over a thirty year period. One of the leading cultural centers, Filmore was destroyed in view of installing public housing. This was one of the leading motivators for the blacks to start leaving the city. Today, the schools are substandard, housing is expensive and there is not adequate employment. Crime rate is high in some of the "surviving black neighborhoods ". The Black have had no say in politics and the efforts make no difference to the social economic level of San Francisco. San Francisco also has a demographic problem of becoming a child free zone and upper middle class. For those who have remained, they represent the 6.1% of those blacks in the city or approximately 40 000. They are lower middle class to poor. They are low paid or un-employed. They are people who cannot possibly integrate into an elitist society. The American Dream is of crime, drugs, poverty and no possibility of improvement. A society that has subgroups constructs inner city ghettos (Massey). With a lack of hope and no infrastructure to help those who remain, people turn to crime. In one article read, the churches on Sunday are empty. The White churches do not integrate with the Black churches. Having studied the different stages of education and the importance of the first three years of a child's life, living a life of poverty with no way out is horrendous. Each question answered in this exam has gone through the different stages of how the 6% are affected. As a black middle class moved out to the suburbs, they brought the crossroads of the black ghetto with them. Neighborhoods which were homogenous would become 90% black within a couple of years. (Deparle) The Blacks who have migrated out of the city would have either moved to Ethnoburb where it became a conclave of Blacks to Suburbia. The other solution would have been to settle into a white community or "integrated". They have settled behind the picket fence of Suburbian America. For those who have left public housing to go into suburbia, it has been shown that the ethnoburb becomes conclaves similar to public housing. (Rubinowitz) The social classes that are being left behind in the large urban centers across the country will be to the detriment of the Black middle class. Who takes care of whom? If there is no one left to take care of these people, will they finally get out of the city? Where will they go? How will they integrate into a different social structure ? The questions not being answered, one can only assume the worst. There is the TANF. There will be problems as the people running the program will not be part of the community and be simple bureaucrats. Read More