Hannah Liang, Period 7, 3/14/23

 Hannah Liang, Period 7, 3/14/23

Modern Mythology 2023

Socio-political Consciousness

What are your thoughts and feelings about issues of inequity, oppression, and/or power?

There was never a solution to inequality and oppression. There is always a line that separates what type of people we are. The most common one will probably be a line separating the rich from the poor. Sure there could be some families that are in between, but they can never reach how much the rich are earning. I was told in my history class that the government would favor the rich more. The tax rates on the rich would also be lower. It has been like this for a long time with no improvement or any changes. The power of the wealthy will also affect politics such as through bribery, or financial rewards and campaigns. Wages are also a contributing factor to inequality. Immigrants coming from other countries came to the US to find better-paying jobs. However, they will mostly end up with jobs that pay the minimum wage or just low-salary jobs. It is unlikely they will get a high-paying job that requires a lot of experience.

How do you reflect critically on your own beliefs, assumptions, values, and experiences, and how these can influence your perception of self and others?

I can relate to my belief about immigrants’ wages. I grew up in a family where my parents are immigrants. My dad would be working a job that pays minimum wages. Even though we aren’t that well off, we still manage to live off fine with the salary. There would be multiple times when my dad would try to find a better-paying job to support the family better. He would quit his old jobs and search for new ones, which ended up being a failure. We moved from Queens to Brooklyn since the rent started to increase and we can’t afford to pay the rent at that price. We moved a total of 5 times throughout my life due to the rent increase. My dad would also move from one job to another. Never once did he get paid more due to his previous experience as a chef. And now, due to inflation, the prices have all gone up, making it difficult for my parents to pay for things and our rent. Although there is an inequality of wages between the citizens and immigrants, I hope that immigrants could be paid higher than the minimum wage as a chance for survival in this society, where the economy will always go up or down, causing the price to differ each time. Sure enough, I learned that inequality is something we can’t control in society, there should be more aid to the one in need or in my case, the poor.