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L&CS 121: Culture and Civic
Responsibility
Self-Assessment
Fall 2012
Professor Deepak Sawhney
Annie Simmons
Advisor: Rashaan Meneses
Junior Year
Performing Arts Minor
Courses taken this semester:
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Spanish 4
Foundations of Theatre II
LCS 121
Legal and Administrative Issues of Sports Management
Play in Production
Advanced Yoga
Service-Learning Activities:
 Habitat for Humanity – Demolition, building, and Oakland Restore
Cultural Events Attended:
 “White Snake” by Mary Zimmerman
 “Spring Awakening” by SMC Performing Arts Program
 “Topdog Underdog” by Suzan Lori Parks
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Unicorns, fairies, and centaurs come to mind when I think of the word myth.
Myths are things that are distant from me; they are outlandish and unrealistic ways of
freeing the mind from reality. Or are they? This class has introduced me to the fact that
Americans have created many realities out of lies or injustices; it has helped me come to
terms with the fact that many things that I have simply accepted as the truth are actually
myths.
I will admit; at the beginning of this course I was naive about the true inner
workings of our country. The readings in this class, especially “The Working Poor” by
David K. Shipler opened my eyes to many blessings that I have taken for granted in the
past. Shipler found the perfect way to describe how that most vital work in our country is
really done, thorough a group of people who, when thinking of the ideals and values of
America, we typically seem to forget. He calls the workers in the fields that provide us
food, the employees building our roads and bridges, and those who ring us up at our local
Target “invisible in America”. When describing people who fall in this category, Shipler
is talking about all those people in the working class who are stuck, for various reasons,
in low paying jobs that are undesirable to many Americans but absolutely necessary to
perpetuate our capitalistic system. I have never really taken to the time to examine how
much weight these invisible people carry in our society; they are an integral part in my
everyday life yet they get treated like they hardly matter with low pay and miserly
benefits, if any.
This leads me to the first myth that I was confronted with as early as elementary
school and believed was the truth until now, the myth of the American Dream. America
for the settlers who came over from Europe was a place of hope filled with, “the promise
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of a land where the rewards of a man’s industry follow with equal steps the progress of
his labor” (Rereading America, 255). We have been told too many times: if you work
hard enough, you will gain success. In America, success equates to happiness. This, in
my opinion, is one of the biggest failures of our American cultural values. Success should
not be measured by how much green paper you have in your wallet but by how smiles
you can put on other people’s faces. The American Dream perpetuates this capitalistic
notion that goods and services are what make us happy.
The image of the American Dream is also extremely misleading. It promotes false
hopes. Many impoverished people who work extremely hard will never make it across
the poverty line no matter how hard they try. We have certain policies in place that
specifically suppress millions of poor Americans, the ones who, as a collective whole, are
the people we depend upon the most. Our education systems, our tax layouts, and the way
that our counties are drawn on our maps are keeping those who are invisible in America
as just that, invisible. As long as we keep the poor suppressed, then things will run
smoothly… Shipler describes this ugly truth by saying that, “poverty is a peculiar,
insidious thing: a cause whose effects then cause the original cause, or an effect whose
causes are caused by the effect” (“The Working Poor”, 53). Poverty is a cycle that is
almost impossible to break. There is no such thing as individual opportunity if you are
born in an impoverished family.
Escaping poverty is so difficult because our system makes it that way. Zip codes
are much more than just numbers; they determine opportunities and futures. The family
that you are born into determines the class that you fall into. This class then defines
where you are able to go to school which defines where you will get a job which plays
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directly into where you will buy a home which leads us to where you will send your kids
to school. Moving up in social classes is not as easy as it sounds; there is really no such
thing as going from rags to riches. Today, moving up the economic ladder is way more
difficult than it was in the past. The wealth gap is ever expanding, bringing more division
between the economic classes. One such example of this is our tax system. We have
recently discovered that the one percent of our country who holds the vast majority of the
wealth (about 65% of the wealth) only pays about thirty five percent of the taxes. This
disparity is still something about our capitalist system that doesn’t make sense to me.
Why would the people who are struggling to get by, the people who are worried about
paying medical bills, paying for college , or even paying for supper that night the ones
who have to support the systems that wealthy just take advantage of?
Take the American education systems for example. Once again, a lot of the
discrepancies between our school systems today come down to economics. The better
schools are the schools that are located in the more affluent neighborhoods. The schools
that can afford to have small classes and can provide proper seating for their students are
the schools that produce the most creative minds. They are also the schools that many
minorities cannot afford to attend. Once again, this discrepancy between classes comes
into play: “there is a new emboldenment among the relatively privileged to isolate their
children as completely as they can from more than token numbers of the children of
minorities” (Shame of the Nation, 135). Though Kozol doesn’t go right out and say it, he
means that richer white parents only want their kids around other wealthy white kids.
This not only teaches children that racism is acceptable but it implies a sort of hierarchy
that may affect a child’s view of a different race. Mindsets like these often negatively
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shape a person’s view on identity, both of self and of the world around them. They
promote a mindset that is all about “us” and “them”, a mindet that thrives on pointing our
differences.
Class difference, a topic that Americans apparently find taboo “affects more than
life-style and material well-being. It has a significant impact on our physical and mental
well-being as well” (Rereading America, 314). People who are living paycheck to
paycheck have to make choices. Which would you choose, to eat or to go to the dentist?
To buy the organic milk or to buy the soda that is one dollar for a liter? Which brings us
to another myth that is quite disturbing to me: the myth of America as the land of choices.
No, America is only the land of choices for those who have the means to choose. In
Lafayette, California, if I want to go grab something to make for dinner, all I need to do
is hop in my Lexus and drive to one of the three supermarkets that are within five
minutes of each other. Oakland has parts, however, that they call a food deserts, or areas
where there are no grocery stores. The only place for a hungry consumer to buy food is a
gas station or a liquor store. How so many people be denied of the very necessities of
life? Why is this allowed to go on?
Equal opportunities in America today are about as equal as the Jim Crow laws
were in the 1870s. I was shocked and appalled to hear that women make only eighty-two
cents for every dollar that a man makes in today’s modern market. What is this saying
about our culture? To me, it says that the workforce, created by patriarchal and closed
minded men still values the work of males more than the work of females. How, in this
day and age, can we still be facing these problems of sexism, racism, and classism? Why
do employers value the work that males do more than that of females?
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Though I still have a lot of questions that are unanswered about why we chose to
go on turning a blind eye to a lot of the injustices in our society, this class has inspired me
to thoroughly examine things that I have accepted as the truth. It has taught me that there
is much to be gained from questioning authority. Most importantly, however, it has
taught me that myths are real; the only truth is the truth that I discover for myself, my
personal truth.