ipl-logo

Social Inequalities In Honky By Dalton Conley

1306 Words6 Pages

Growing up in the projects of 1970s and 1980s New York, Dalton Conley witnessed the blatant social inequalities embedded in his environment and many others. His experiences were unique compared to his peers, especially due to the fact he was one of the only white boys in a predominantly black and Hispanic area. Conley recognized that he had privileges that many of his peers did not have and often rejected the present social inequalities. Throughout the course of Conley’s book, Honky, he also examines the social structures of class and race and how affected the trajectory of his peers and himself. Although Conley’s parents were just as poor as the rest of their minority neighbors, they received much better opportunities. His mother and father …show more content…

The author reflects that “by the time I left the Mini School, I had learned what the concept of race meant… Teachers usually did a good job of ignoring the fact that one kid was shorter than another or another was fatter, but it was they, not the other students, who made my skin color an issue,” (p. 53-54). Throughout the course of his education, Conley had to constantly go between an environment where his race defined him or it did not. Growing up in these unstable conditions detrimentally affected his development, but these unique circumstances gave him an incredible perspective on the social structures evident in urban areas of the 1970s and …show more content…

Through this experience, he was able to notice the unfair treatment that his peers were receiving, which is similar to Tim Wise’s reflection on his childhood in the documentary White Like Me. Although their experiences were slightly different, they both walked away with a sense of social consciousness that many white adolescents their age did not have. Another obvious application of this course’s lectures is our discussion of inequality in education. Bowles and Gintis’s theories on school participation in social reproduction are supported by Conley’s accounts of his educational experience. It especially applies to the separation between the academic and vocational tracks in school. Schools are purposefully deciding the futures of the students by preparing them for what they think they will do outside of high school. Instead, they should have been preparing them for the outside world without any bias or

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Ain 'T No Makin' It By Jay Macleod

    1422 Words  | 6 Pages

    The Brothers faced this challenge in their, largely, futile attempts to achieve middle class status through achieving a proper education. Macleod highlights that, historically, the “overall structure of class relations from one generation to the next” is extremely reluctant to change(4). The Brothers evince this in their inability to earn work with greater wages than their parents, forcing them to live in working class neighborhoods like they did. Although some of the Brothers did manage to obtain middle class work, they struggled to keep those jobs as they either got laid off or were pressured out believing that they just didn’t fit in the workplace environment- though this is largely in fact due to differences in cultural capital, knowledge, disposition, and skills passed on generationally, that arise from the different upbringings of the supervisors and the Brothers.

    Read More

  • Letter From James Meredith: Passage Analysis

    334 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through-out these years, the White school bus passed us each and every morning. Of course, there was no Negro school bus. I never had a teacher during grade and High school with a college degree. Sounds bad doesn’t it? Well, it is not.

    Read More

  • Papers On Honky By Dalton Conley

    1618 Words  | 7 Pages

    For Dalton Conley, who came from a impoverished middle class family, this was not his reality. For most of Dalton’s young life, the notion of race was entirely foreign to him. He thought of himself as no different than the people he saw every day. They all went to the same schools, lived in the same squalor which to Dalton meant that they must be the same. According to Dalton the signs that he was the same as everyone else was the fact that there was graffiti everywhere

    Read More

  • Tyna Steptoe's Houston Bound

    542 Words  | 3 Pages

    Tyna L. Steptoe’s book, Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City explores the significance of Wheatley High School, a public secondary school located in the heart of Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas, established in the 1930s to serve black and Creole students during the Jim Crow era. Despite being segregated, the students at Wheatley did not let this hold them down and instead made the best of the situation by getting heavily involved in their school. Wheatley High School gave their black and creole students tools for advancement and helped strengthen their cultural identity and in a historic period in which racial discrimination attempted to curtail their political and economic potential. In this Jim Crow era, the institutions of the city were divided by the racial categories of white and black, which would force everyone into one or the other category, even if they did not necessarily associate themselves with it. Accordingly, racially ambiguous people would either receive the benefits that accompanied the white label or the grim treatment that accompanied the black label.

    Read More

  • Trevor Noah Discrimination Quotes

    885 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the book, Trevor shows us this by telling us about the classes in his school. “‘Yeah, but that class is… those kids are gonna hold you back. You want to be in the smart class’” (59). This quote is Trevor’s teacher telling him that he should be in A class which is full of white kids and that the B class which is made up of black kids will hold him back. This discrimination in schools is what brings communities and individuals.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Tally's Corner

    1311 Words  | 6 Pages

    On top of this, he argues that the white middle class are unrelenting with their methods of depriving black advancement in American society. Knowledge of this incites many blacks to occupy dead-end jobs, or to settle for mediocrity in the face of adversity. A large number of black males in America find themselves forced to take jobs that offer no security, or socioeconomic growth. He also contends that many blacks are not very literate and therefore left behind in cultural revolutions like the information age. For twelve months between 1962 and 1963, Liebow and a group of researchers studied the behavior of a group of young black men who lived near and frequently hung around a street corner in a poor black neighborhood in downtown Washington, D.C. Liebow’s participant observation revealed the numerous obstacles facing black men on a day-to-day basis, including the structural and individual levels of racial discrimination propagated by whites in society.

    Read More

  • What Is Breaking Free From Social Classes In The Lesson By Toni Cade Bambara

    584 Words  | 3 Pages

    Social classes, a term used to describe the division of society, usually based on social or economical richness, has existed for a long time. One is usually born into a social class and is in that class for the rest of their lives. African American’s in the 70s, suffered a lot with gaps of different social classes as they were on the bottom of the social ladder. This can be illustrated in the short story, “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, with a group of kids that live in extreme poverty and depression. Toni Cade Bambara conveys the lesson of breaking free from social classes through symbolism of both the paperweight and the sailboat.

    Read More

  • Moonlight Film Analysis

    947 Words  | 4 Pages

    In both the film and the reading, the effects of unbidden bias and the lack of support in the home and school environment are explored. The reading explores the tensions faced in educational enviroment and helps us understand what the school-to-prison pipeline is and how people of color are affected. Being Bad changes the way we look at ourselves and educational system. The effects of labels and stereotypes are brought to our attention.

    Read More

  • The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian By Sherman Alexie

    731 Words  | 3 Pages

    All those “pretty, pretty, pretty white girls ignored me. ”(Alexie, 63) The white girls felt so entitled, not to acknowledge someone of Junior’s social class. This shows the difference between the people you surround yourself with because, in this all-white school, he is not respected as a person, and is not even looked at. At his old school where there was more of his social class, he never experienced this personally, the lower class, isn't as entitled as the upper

    Read More

  • To Kill A Mockingbird Social Inequality Essay

    862 Words  | 4 Pages

    Social inequality in To Kill A Mockingbird People are stereotyped all over the world today in a way that may be comparable to the 1930s the United States. At that time 93% of African Americans were racially profiled and stereotyped within their communities. This was because of the racial tension and the segregation of the people along with the laws that supported segregation. These laws are known as the Jim Crow laws, which were used to limit what African Americans could do. This was shown often in Harper Lee’s

    Read More

  • Social Inequality In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

    698 Words  | 3 Pages

    To Kill A Mockingbird Is a famous novel that is still referred to today. It was written by Harper Lee and published in 1920. Although there are many lessons you can take from this story. There is one that sticks out the most, because it was referred to many times throughout the novel. The most important lesson that can be taken from this novel is that the issue of social inequality was and still is a very big problem.

    Read More

  • How Illinois Pays For Public Schools By Becky Vevea

    1309 Words  | 6 Pages

    Historically, certain racial groups have faced systemic discrimination in education, which has resulted in unequal access to resources and opportunities. For example, Black and Hispanic students are more likely to attend underfunded schools and they also face higher rates of disciplinary actions, such as suspensions and expulsions, which can negatively impact their academic progress and mental health. For example in “Pigeons” by Eileen Pollack she states “Pablo Rodriguez, whose parents were migrant farmers and who, in sixth grade could barely read or write or the Buck Brothers, Phil and Gregory, who seemed to get punished for no other reason than being a large and male and black”(Pollack 118). This statement shows how big of a role being born into a certain race impacts the educational opportunities a child can receive in life. As Well as the discrimination a student can face by just being a different race in the text the Buck brothers were seemingly just punished because they were and had different color skin for the rest of the students and this is seen today in school systems where students are mistreated just by how they look.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Honky By Dalton Conley

    1017 Words  | 5 Pages

    The book Honky by Dalton Conley is a book about the life of a white male who grew up in a slum neighborhood. It is an autobiography that is slightly humorous in how Conley explains his life and through it how he learned about race and class. In the beginning of the book, he describes how oblivious he was to skin colors and what they meant. Then when he was older and knew about race, how he learned about class. This work of literature explains how his upbringing truly taught him to distinguish differences in race and how it relates to class.

    Read More

  • Richard Bourdieu Sociology

    2059 Words  | 9 Pages

    Through interviews with Boston based blue-collar workers, the authors documented how the workers frequently expressed anger, pain and humiliation. These feelings, contended Sennett and Cobb, stemmed from the belief that they were powerless in improving their place in society. The workers spoke of pain and resentment at being treated in their work as mere 'cogs in the machine,' or just 'Rita the janitor.' The insight here, is that despite efforts by made by working class individuals to move on in life, classed experiences can have a detrimental impact on a person's social identity and their sense of place within hierarchies of respectability. One of the most significant observations noted by the authors, was that working class people often assume personal responsibility for their social position.

    Read More

  • To Kill A Mockingbird Social Inequality Essay

    530 Words  | 3 Pages

    The most important theme in this novel that is apparent throughout the entire book is social inequality. This sets the tone for the book and most events are based around this common theme. Throughout the book, the characters learn about the real world through the racism and unbalance of social power that takes place during this time period. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee represents the struggles for social equality in the 1930's through two young characters that grow up around people that are pushing racism and segregation. For example, it was known throughout the whole town that Atticus “won’t win, he can’t win” (Lee 246) in his trial defending a black man.

    Read More

More about Social Inequalities In Honky By Dalton Conley

Open Document