Alex Liu, Period 1, 1/3/21

 Alex Liu

Period 1

January 3, 2021

Modern Mythology 2022

Socio-Political Consciousness:

It’s almost the end of 2021, a year of unfortunate events that will be forever remembered in the minds of the people in my generation. But despite it being very ridiculous and full of unexpected twists and turns, it still has something in common with every other year before it- it still has problems with inequality, oppression, and power. These three terms have been woven into human nature, dating back to the establishment of the first governmental system. 

I think that even though the issues of inequality, oppression, and power exists in everyone’s lives, people don’t bring awareness to these issues enough. This is because of the way our society is structured. These issues are being normalized. The other day, I saw a group of kids, no older than 14, exclude a fat kid from their “circle” because, well, he was too big. This, although isn’t as significant as segregation, is still inequality. What’s worse, there were a lot of people there too, including other adults, and no one, myself included, helped defend that fat kid. That’s because it’s none of our business. But the phrase “none of your business” is part of the problem. Because everyone has seen or experienced the issues so often in minor instances, they feel that it is normal and it is none of their business to interfere. 

This translates to a bigger scale too. There are many people from our school that has it encoded into their minds that they have less of a chance to get into a top-class university because of their race and gender. Although this is true to a certain extent, it is not the full story. But, because those people have witnessed or even experienced inequality due to their race/ethnicity and gender, they believe it to be true as soon as the idea is presented to them. As these issues are becoming more common and not being addressed, it would start to affect the mindset of children, which may have impacts on their mental health and confidence. That is why I feel that we as a society should start to address this problem as soon as possible. 

There is this interesting article that I read over the break that really connects to what I am talking about. It is called: Inequality is polarizing the world. This article immediately caught my attention because of the powerful diction in the title. The article talks about the different examples of inequality, embedded through different scales, across the world. For example, the article talks about how in rich countries like ours, there are enough resources available that its citizens would only have to worry about COVID. In poorer countries, their citizens have COVID added onto their many other worries like food, shelter, and money. This is an example of inequality on a large scale. There are people here throwing away their food because it is not to their liking and then there are people who are scavenging for food during a pandemic. 

“Poorer people shudder most from crises, as they have fewer savings and are more exposed to risks from weather, poor health, economic fluctuations.” This is a problem because it leads to health and mental issues and crime rates. Essentially, the problem with inequality would ripple into many other problems. 

The part of the article that attracted me the most is that undocumented immigrants struggle to get access to healthcare and/or food. This strikes a bit close to home because my cousin used to be an undocumented immigrant. But because he was fortunate enough to be in a country like the US, he didn’t have to worry about inequality. When he was injured 3 years ago, he didn’t have to worry that there would be no hospital to go to. The US promises medical resources, food, and other resources to every resident regardless of immigration status. This gives insight into the political aspect of inequality. 

These issues have been on my mind for a long time. Like I talked about above, many people have witnessed or experienced that inequality or oppression due to their race/ethnicity. I am one of those people. I have witnessed many people get treated unfairly because they have different skin colors. When I was still a kid, I still remember that my “friends” would allow me to join their dodgeball team because I was too short and small. I’ve even done it myself. When I am drafting a team for the gym, I usually don’t pick the guys who look not too athletic. These Issues are so engraved into our society that our actions should inequality or oppression but we don’t even think it is wrong. It’s a part of human nature and that’s a problem that we have to fix starting with young children.