How do we keep each other down?

In society there always seems to be competition and segregation of the social classes with various differences that we compare with one another that leaves a group of individuals being mistreated and looked down upon by people who are seen as the superior elite. For example,this is seemed most commonly in the uneducated and poverty stricken communities that have been the victims of abuse from major corporations that dump their product waste in their water and environment. The poor neighborhoods cannot possibly be able to fight lawsuits with the major companies as opposed to cities where the financial capable citizens reside in. Thus such residents are forced to coup with the harsh and destructive pollution and toxicity being a part of their daily lives. These obscurities also include their communities being poorly funded due to lack of assistance and neglect from the exploitations these helpless individuals that are forced to receive.  It is by this way that the richer individuals can continue to exploit such individuals who do not have the power to fight back. Thus these obstructions lead to the exploited individuals to lose hope and gradually come to accept the conditions around them and be forever trapped in the continuous   lifestyle they have inhabited since they were born. By doing so, it allows the people with more power over the less fortunate to accomplish what would benefit them by continuation to deprive their fellow citizens of their equal rights as a human being.  They then instill into the public eye that these bad neighborhoods are a direct result of the resident’s laziness and reluctant to want a more beneficiary life for themselves. By pushing all the blame and the fault onto the poverty stricken individuals they avoid having the public blame such major corporations and lawsuits so they can continue their harmful profit making ways. It is only when society becomes a active group that fights back against the destructive activities being done to their fellow citizens, can they assure there will be equal treatment of everyone's rights. It is such a hard concept and task to complete due to the obstacles in the way such as the government and the corrupt companies of the wealthy class who use their money to influence the government into their favor; that such a task is difficult to be successful. 

What is our obligation to other people's children?

Most of our time is focused on us and our families, very few occurrences do we part take in other people’s problems.  We make it known to ourselves that it is best to just take care of our own problems and not to meddle with other people’s problems. Thus, we are structured to make sure we do not involve ourselves in situations that don’t include us. But is this is correct way of acting? In a community there are interconnected neighbors that have families of their own with their own needs. Yet when we face the needy or the less fortunate that ourselves we don’t ignore so easily, most of the time we think about if we should intervene or try to help them but the majority of passer byers just tend to walk past with no courage to stand up for someone else or help them. Education is a fundamental part of each of us; we all have learned and have been taught by someone to then teach those lessons to another person. America is widely known where freedom is, where equality is given to everyone in the nation. However, that is not the case due to the difference of financial income and living stability each family has. So there will be a disadvantage to the families who have no choice but to send their children to an institution that is known to have poor quality education, versus better off families who can afford to send their children to a school of higher quality. Education in America is slowly declining for decades to the point that revising or trying to fix the problem is now extremely difficult to accomplish. Instead, we as a nation should take it upon ourselves to provide a universal education system that will bring high quality education to every student regardless of income, social status, race, gender, etc. It is such a disservice we are doing to the children of our country by allowing them to be deprived of the proper education they should receive just because of monetary issues. 

Savage Inequalities ch 2 &3

I can really relate to how individuals react towards sending their children to schools based on their reputations of their success with their students and the quality of their teachers. After I had finished the sixth grade in elementary, I was supposed to  move on to the middle school in my school district; however, my mother felt that the middle school and high school in my area were not adequate enough based on the reputation it was given from the media and parents who have sent their children there. So my mother had to fill out paperwork for every school year I had gone at a neighboring school district in order for me to avoid attending the schools in my neighborhood. Even through the hassle of the documents every year, the longer car commutes, and money they had to spend for me to attend school in a different district my parents decided it was worth the troubles and did this process for both me and my brother’s school years from seventh to twelfth grade.  Looking back I do feel that their actions of putting me into a more diverse and reputable school was worth the inconveniences because the schools that I attended gave me such a variety of opportunities in courses and academic curriculum. I do not know what my life would have been like had I went to the school set by my school district, but I do feel like it would not have been such a positive influence in my growth as a student. My parents had the ability to go through this process of getting me and my brother into schools that were known to be better than the schools in my district, but not everyone is as fortunate to have the capability to do such a thing. The children in St. Louis are not blessed with such extravagance such as the option to attend a higher quality academic establishment. They are forced to go through the endless and never-ending process of transferring into drop out establishments were school are filled with failed teachers that will not provide their students with the necessities to succeed in the next grade level. So as a result, a good percentage of a high school’s population will drop out in the beginning years due to the lack of quality in instructors and instruction. It is a great disservice we as a nation are doing to such children of these schools that cannot allow them to receive the finer education others are being allowed to experience. However, this is known as a huge problem but there are such difficulties in how we can fix or approach the situation based on teacher contracts and how we can provide quality teachers to the students. 

Why do allow children to be exposed to the toxicity?

Children are the future of our nation and they are responsible for what our nation will become. Yet with such large corporations pumping their toxic waste from their products into neighborhoods and environments where children live is such a mistreatment to their rights as human beings.  Such pollution and destruction being added into to their environments places them at an enormous risk of birth defects and crucial child development. However, all these issues are not seen to be more important than a company’s profit or wealth. Most of such pollutions are placed in rural cities where there is a majority of the population is in poverty, because without the money to hire expensive lawyers to fight the toxic waste being dumped in their neighborhoods companies can get away with such activities and continue to earn money. Although the news of such toxic is being thrown away in some individual's backyards, most people in America are in denial or in ignorance of such events. When they cant see such disturbing things about their fellow citizens, they live on with their lives without any guilt or responsibility. It is an absolute dishonest act of equality that companies are doing to the young generation by disregarding the consequences of their actions and choose to continue on with their money making ways. 

The Underdog by The Coup

After watching the video i picture a single mother in a poverty stricken community with no means to pay the bills or feed her children because of financial difficulties. The underdog is represented by the lower class citizens having to live in dangerous and disastrous neighbors hoods because that is all the housing they could afford to live in. The circumstances and consequences that come with poverty make the families who are poor really hard for them to break free from their situation. Poverty gets carried on generation by generation, it is because the same cycle repeats itself. Education is not placed as a high priority when the hunger drives individuals crazy when they stay awake at night because their stomachs are growling for food. Parents are constantly stressed with making ends meet to try and provide for their children while not showing their emotions so they seem strong to others. The they in the lyrics are the individuals who are free from such poverty problems but choose to ignore helping the lower class citizens with their struggles because they believe that the poor are poor because they are useless. The upper class assume that the poor can easily get out of poverty by getting a job but instead their just a bunch of lazy pot heads that just sit in their homes collecting welfare checks. However, they can’t see the single mother with two children, struggling to pay rent because she didn’t get a degree that would allow her a job with the enough income to support her family. They choose to ignore and not understand the stories of difficulties and struggle that their fellow citizens are facing, so they treat them as someone bellow them so they don’t have to associate with them. What is significant to me and touches me is that there are hungry and poverty stricken people so close to us yet we don’t take the effort to lend a helping hand. We need to put ourselves in their shoes because if one day I end up in poverty I would want someone to come and assist me instead of ignoring me like a plastic bag on the side walk that gets walked passed.