Phillip Peterson
The inequalities that have persisted in America over the last few centuries are still present today, and because of this some people are at legal educational disadvantages because of their social and economic situations. These inequalities stem from race, gender, class, and above all, the monetary capabilities an individual or family has. People born in this country and people seeking opportunities in this country should all have the same possibilities for their work of choice as well as education, instead of being forced into a niche that does not allow for one to pursue anything other than labor.
In this country of ours we boast freedom and equality and the persuit of the American dream for all of our citizens, and we also boast one of the most diverse nations in the world. But some of the people that make it diverse live under conditions that are third world, and earn less money than many other Americans make in a month. They are at a social disadvantage on many different levels. Not only are they immediately put on the lowest rung of the American social hierarchy as immigrants, they are subject to much stricter laws than we as affluent college students are. If one of us is caught with marijuana, we will be fined. If an immigrant is found with marijuana (depending on the circumstance), he or she might be deported.
There are absolutely no programs that offer college scholarships to the children of illegal immigrants, and immigrants comprise only about five percent of all students in the United States yet they comprise over three-forths of the work force with less than a ninth grade education.
Over the last two decades new waves of immigrants have come into out country to form the backbone of of our labor economy, and they work to feed families and children here or back in their native countries. Their children born in this country, while they might be fortunate enough to a good education, are usually already restricted to whatever work role their parents filled. It is more likely that an immigrant will work in a field as his or her parents taught and did than go to even a state university, which is unfortunate because it sets the current work and labor force to teach their children to be the next work and labor force.
I essentially want to educate an audience on the circumstances of labor that are going on right here in our own country, and the only problem I have in that is making it personal. I feel strongly about this topic but I have no experience in hard labor for extended amounts of years, so I have nothing to base my paper on other than facts and statistics. To make it personal I tried to tie in my mother and the way she used to work around our house, but I am beginning to feel at this point that that might be irrelevant to my topic.
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4 comments:
As I was reading this, I was wondering the same thing that the last paragraph discusses--how to make an essay personal if its subject is not directly personal. In the past I have avoided writing about some subjects because I didn't know how to connect myself to the subject in a way that my audience would be able to understand. Yet I think that if the author really cares about what they are writing about (whether it involves them or not) then that should qualify the subject as a personal one. Since it's an issue that he has strong opinions on, I don't think Phillip has to be an illegal immigrant or have vast personal knowledge of hard manual labor in order to make the essay personal and be part of the bigger picture. Maybe he could explore how the issue relates to him as an affluent college student and how he deals with knowing that the system is based on inequality. Does he accept it? Want to change it? Have an idea on how to change it? (I think his opinion on the issue makes it personal).
The last paragraph also struck me. Right before I got to that paragraph I realized that you had not been mentioned within essay up to that point. This seemed strange, due to the essay showing a considerable amount of concern and empathy for people in the lower class and especially people in the lower class that are immigrants. This concern was not personal though, but came through the facts that were told in the essay. The last paragraph makes the point that you are not sure how to tie yourself in with this topic, this brought up the immediate question in my mind, why are you writing about it if you have no personal ties to it? Not necessarily ties like having experienced it, but things like having witnessed it, what made you interested in it?
I think this is a really interesting topic and you seem to be very knowlegable and passionate on immigration. In the last paragraph you said that you have nothing to base your paper on rather than facts and statistics. I think there’s a way you could bring a more human element into this story, though—just interview an immigrant. I know there are many immigrants that live in Galesburg and Monmouth—last term I was really interested in immigration in my journalism class—so I wrote some feature stories on different families. It might help for you to go to their establishment and just interview them and sit there for a while and observe. For example, I interviewed a Mexican woman in Monmouth—and I just sat in her Grocery and Restaurant for a while to pick up on the atmosphere and sensory details.
The third paragraph has some really good statistics—but I would like to see where you got them from. You also might want to look at the sentence structures in the fourth paragraph—some of them were really long and confusing—they could be tightened a little.
My question would be to argue that while it is unfair or unequal to have this labor problem happen, what is th alternative? If people are able to escape the world of working labor, who will do it? We live in a world that requires people working in jobs that do not require a lot of education, and somebody has to do them. If the answer is to have an increase in pay, my question would be where is the money coming from. I only ask to make another side seen, this is not exactly how I feel, but I think both sides need to be looked at in some aspect of your argument.
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