Globalization Essay, Research Paper

For many years black people in the United States have struggled for their rights

and their piece of the American dream. Now that the world is moving toward a new

global era the African American person, worker and human has been left out of

this turn in the century and, the system is letting them hang their selves.

Globalization has made it so that anyone with the right equipment and knowledge

can chat or do business anywhere in the world with just a few clicks of a couple

of buttons. Globalization is making the gap between the races bigger every day,

and it seems that no body is slowing down to lend a helping hand. Globalization

has placed a new standard on the way we live today. Because now that we have

reached the technological revolution, you must have a computer or ready access

to one to be considered up to date with the world. There was a time when it was

unheard of not to have more than one television in your home. Or if you didn?t

have cable you must have been poor. Is being poor a new kind of crime, a crime

that says if you can?t log on you are suppose to be were you are, at the

bottom. In ?ghettos? across America I bet you can count on your fingers and

toes how many people have a computer in their house, and I am not talking about

a play-station or dream-cast. Is globalization the new apartheid in the United

States? Is this away for our land of the free to keep the hold on the poor and

lower middle class minorities? Are black people free in the coming of

globalization? In Clarence Lusane?s book: Race In The Global Era, he talks of

automation and its effect on black workers. Lusane shows us that not all blacks

are effected by globalization. For instance Michael Jordan and other ball

players that have these big shoe deals. Now these sports super stars have their

faces and name all over the product but have no say so in how, where, or who

will make the product. The funny thing about it is that some commercial ads are

to catch the eye of inner city black youth. I remember when I wanted that new

Michael Jordan shoe, but my mother could not afford it. Now the commercials are

geared for the black youths but the unemployment rate of blacks is two times

higher than white?s, working the same job. Lusane has quotes from Rifkin

notes, Sidney Wilhems, and Holly Sklar that powerfully show the effect on black

Americans in globalization. ?The story of automation?s effect on African

Americans is one of the least known yet most salient episodes in the social

history of the twentieth century.? The Rifkin notes ?Wilhems predicted that

African Americans were being made obsolete as workers by new technologies.?

?While some workers have jobs with no future, others have futures with no

jobs.? Holly Sklar Automation has played a major role in the decline of

industrial jobs for blacks. Rifkin calls automation a salient episode; it seems

that automation is like a disease or even a plague for some black workers.

Wilhelm also uses words like uselessness, and displaced Negro, to describe what

is happening to the African American worker, no future is said by Sklar. These

are strong words being used here to describe the effect on the majority of a

minority. Now Company?s can us machines to do job in factories and all other

industrial work that was done by blacks. So if they have no jobs and they are

becoming useless and displaced than where and what are the blacks to do, where

is their future? Lusane writes about a study done in Ontario over an eight-year

period of time that showed that the black imprisonment grew 204 percent, and the

white was 23 percent. Plus the whites that committed the same drug crimes were

released at twice the rate of blacks. For the middle and lower class blacks is

this the new placement and their future, jail? Since the 1970?s the

manufacturing employment in the U.S. has lost about 1.4million jobs, from

1978-1990. Some of the hardest places hit were Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and

my hometown St. Louis. These are all places that have a high crime rate in the

city and of course predominantly all black. I can remember when GM closed down

in St. Louis; it was the largest plant in the city. The plant was more than

three city blocks long and wide. Thousands of people lost their jobs and soon

after the crime rate jumped up. This was in the mid-1980s. The reason I remember

is because my grandparents house was broken two time in less than one year. That

wasn?t the only factory that shut down either. My grandfather and both of my

uncles worked in a packinghouse factory. Lusane also talks about how new

investors seem to start new manufactures out in the suburban areas where

predominantly only white people live. To add to it this is foreign and domestic

investors that are doing this. ?It?s not that they have less education,

experience, or seniority. The difference has nothing to do with job

performance?Blacks are fired more often because of their skin color?Rank

didn?t help. Black senior managers went out the door as often as black

clerks.? The Mercury News Now everything they tell you in school has nothing

to do with nothing if you are black? All the hard work that a black person might

do to move up in a company can all be taken away because of their skin color,

and from this article quote is says nothing of class. It?s just being black.

The same study showed that only one out of every one hundred appeal was

over-turned. So black workers are in a no win situation. Lusane goes further

about how the National American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is taking more jobs

out of the hands of black workers and placed these jobs over seas. Black women

are also losing a sexiest and raciest battle in globalization. They are paid 56

percent less than a black male doing the same job. Lusane also writes about how

in the black community of Washington D.C. were blacks are 64 percent of the

population. But they own less than10 percent of the business. It is sad that a

black high school graduate is more likely to be unemployed than a white high

school drop out. ?Some analysts have argued that African Americans and the

working population in general should prepare for the 21st century by reeducation

themselves in the areas of high technology and computer science.? Who are

these analysts, and where are they to get the reeducating from? Because most

black high school students don?t have a good education in the first place.

Young blacks need to understand who people like Dr. Martin Luther King and

Malcolm X died. Even before their time know why black slaves were beaten if they

caught reading or writing. I don?t think the inner city black youth under

stand what and why it was against the law to educate a black slave. With out

education of your past you cant under stand your present and cant see your

future. Frothier in this passage it puts numbers to what jobs will created or

more available in the 21st century. The top ten include cashiers, janitors,

retail salespersons, waiters and waitresses, registered nurses, general managers

and top executives, security guards, nurses aides, orderlies, and attendants.

Most of these jobs are low paying. Just a full time job to keep paying some

bills, the majority of these jobs will keep those workers under the poverty

line. To understand the classification of the black race we need to know how

they are put in to classes. In Exploitation and Exclusion Thomas D. Boston has

broke down the way the black race is classified. ?Historically, racial

subjugation has created a unique class stratification among; blacks; one whose

internal composition differs both quantitatively and qualitatively from that of

whites. This inferior status is constantly regenerated by economic dynamics and

the legal, cultural, the growing marginalization of the working class and the

creation of a so-called ?black underclass? are the result of declining

manufacturing employment and growing international competition, which hit blacks

hardest because institutional and employment discrimination have concentrated

them disproportionately in the most vulnerable occupations.? To brake this

quote down I have to put it in my own words. Over time racial control or

enslavement has created a special class formation or deposition among blacks.

Their internal make-up is different in amount and quality of whites. There are

reminded of their lower status legally, culturally and by being confined to a

lower outer limit of social standings of the working class, the black

underclass. This was used to explain to you in a different way the globalization

effects blacks. Thomas starts on the 3 things we must look at in the race and

class analyses. First we must look at the boundaries of the class and what

factors are placing these groups into their class. Also we have to find the

similarities to other classes. Then look at their interaction and see what the

impact is on the interaction. Then find the problems that are from the class

interaction. 2nd we must see what relationship the classes and their collective

identity have. 3rd we have to analyze the interaction among the race class and

their ranking. Plus determine the effect of economic and social arrangement on

the existing classes. In putting blacks in a class many problems can come about

in the analyzing process. One problem is putting the black capitalist class with

the black middle class. ?It is important to analyze the historical conditions

responsible for maintaining its feeble existence because the black

capitalist?s weak state could well be a major aspect of modern racial

inequality. The black capitalist is the victim of a long history of illegal

property expropriation, financial discrimination and, for many decades, a

legalized system of racial segregation.? The inequality doesn?t stop at the

front door of ghettos. It does reach the property owners and investors, which

are black. What is the black underclass? Is it a class segment, a class or a

useful term at all? Who do we consider to be a black underclass? Would it be all

the poor useless displaced in the inner city? Because if this is so than how can

you take a single parent mother and a drug dealer that live on the same block?

While she rides the bus to get to work or the grocery store the drug dealer is

driving a brand new Lexus truck just to ride the streets. So what is class?

Pryor defines class as: ?the designation of a group into which persons are

placed by either objective criteria, subjective criteria, self-identification,

or mixed criteria. Depending upon the theory of social stratification that is

proposed, ?class? can be defined in terms of ?objective? criteria (for

example income, wealth, position), ?subjective? criteria (solidarity in

terms of social or economic interests; or self-identification with some group)

or mixed criteria (for example, evaluation by others in society in terms of

esteem or some other scale of value). Depending upon the theory of social

structure that is proposed, ?class? can be defined in terms of a group that

is struggling together to change the structure; or statistically in terms of the

position or power of the group concerning the operations of the societal

causation that is proposed, ?class? can embrace a difference defined terms

of a single criterion or of some combination of set of criteria.? Class deals

with political economy relations external and internal in the black society. The

criteria of self-identification and wealth, income social structure, and their

roles in the economy, and the class ranking of the group or what political party

one group might stand behind. We can see in this definition how the black race

is singled out. Anything that deals with income, wealth and positioning blacks

know that they set at the bottom of all these categories. Then if we look at

what the middle and lower classes have evolved in it would poverty, crime, drug

abuse, illegitament children, and a continuing failure in education. Blacks seem

to one of the only groups who can?t get it together. Because immigrants from

Asia and India seem to do exceptionally well in academics and economically. It

seems that white America has open arms of hostility for these other groups and

the underclass black is left to fin for them selves. In the definition of class

boundaries are never brought up. But in ?America? there is not suppose to be

boundaries. Anyone can move up and down the ladder of success. Although,

different classes have over lapping characteristics for example consumer goods,

political views, religion, and goals and dreams, plus there is variety with in a

class. The book uses the example of a core surrounded by fringes, which are

attached to a core. In this definition I ask can the fringes leave this and

attach to another core? Than can a fringe becomes a core? Better yet can a black

homeless man or woman start a new computer monopoly and buy out Microsoft one

day? I think that this is a bit to far fetch for anyone to do. But growing up

you were told that you can be anything that you want to be, should your parents

have said but only if you are not black? Now that we know how to class black

people, we can move forward and show deeper into the prescription for the

falling poor black race. For my third prospective I use the text from Race and

Class U.S. the Black poor and the politics of expendability. This book was

published in 1996 and the words are hitting home more than ever. Barbara Ramsby

the writer of this chapter, says that there was two major US political parties

that combined for a ?campaign of terror against poor and working class people,

especially poor Black and brown people.? For more than two generations the

welfare state as we know it is being eradicated. Unemployment and

underemployment rate has shot right off the charts. The aid from the government

is being cut so rapidly and on such a large scale that more poor and middle

class working people will be out on the streets. ?Thirty per cent of the

manufacturing jobs eliminated by downsizing in 1990 and 1991 were held by

blacks. This economic trend, which has persisted for more than a decade with

little abatement, means that there now exists a class of permanently unemployed

men and women are essentially surplus labuorers in an increasingly

?streamlined? economy. These are the men and women whom social scientists

condescendingly refer to as the ?Black underclass?. There have been bills

past that are to effect the poor blacks the most the Welfare Bill and the Crime

Bill. The welfare bill places a new degree of terrorism on single black mothers.

You can only receive welfare for five years in your entire lifetime. Mothers are

penalized if they have another child while on welfare. Colleges and Universities

are closing their doors to exclude the poor. Funding has been cut for job

training to the poor, in a shrinking job market already. Analysts estimate that

2.6 million people, including 1.1 million children will be under the poverty

line by the year 2000, just 39 more days away. The Crime Bill has a three

strikes rule for provision for violent offender?s treats a high-level drug

offense like a foul ball and this puts you away for life. The new death penalty

can be applied to large-scale drug importers, sellers, manufacturers or

cultivators even if no one is killed. This is basically for young black dope

dealers. The system makes it seem as if poverty is the fault of the person and

not poverty itself. The attempt to reduce births out of wedlock and to get

people off welfare puts a higher standard of moral on the poor than the people

and persons whom enforce and made this system. While the rich stay rich and set

back and call the lower classes lazy, the poor work even harder to keep food on

their tables. ?In the past, when new technologies have replaced workers in a

given sector, new sectors have always emerged to absorb the displaced laborers.

Today all three of the traditional sectors of the economy agriculture,

manufacturing, and service are experiencing technological displacement. The only

new sector emerging is the knowledge sector. Made up of a small elite of

entrepreneurs, scientists, technicians, computer programmers, educators and

consultants.? The black underclass and displaced Negro are the words that come

to mind when I read this. This is permanent unemployment for blacks. Even jobs

in fast food and other service sector jobs are becoming harder to come by. The

Reagan administration in the 1980?s began to make unions a thing of the past.

This was another place were black could get a good paying job with benefits.

While money for reform programs are being cut the prison budget have grown at

unbelievable rates. In Michigan led cuts for services for the poor it has a $200

million dollar building project. In Missouri $94 million spent and just $50

million in Maryland on new prison projects. This is supposed to be the answer

for the prison being over crowded. Its like the Doritos commercial you keep

eating we will make more. You blacks keep going to jail we will build more. In

all three books we can see that there is a serious problem in the way the system

is set up, aspecially for working class black people. There was a time when the

systems depended of the poor and lower middle class to do all the things that

the upper class didn?t want to do. The poor and lower class also depended on

the system so that the unfortunate could have something to fall back on. With

the wide spread of the web and other technologies the black worker has be come

useless and increasingly more or under the poverty line. For this gap to at the

least slow down and let some catch up a lot of reforms need to take place. First

in the way blacks think, they must learn and know this system doesn?t owe them

anything. Also they must stop being so dependent on the government system. For

this to happen there has to be a change in the education of young inner city

black youth, school reform is greatly needed. More teachers with the right

training and education need to teach these kids. The schools should have the

right to paddle kids for doing wrong in or around the schools, and do it in

front of his or her pears. Parents should be called if a student misses class or

homework, so the parent has more inter action and knowledge of what is going on

with their child. This should go on until the student is in college or some sort

of technical training. Education should not stop just with the black youth; the

black men and women also need the schooling and training. We must set examples

for the children, so we must educate the mothers and fathers and the neighbors

of these children. Next issue would the lack of fathers in the household. We are

in need of a better system to find died beat dads. All of the little holes and

gaps that they can escape threw need to be closed. Fathers should have to spend

time with their child. Next the prison system is losing and forgetting about a

large number of black males and females. The system that is in place now is not

working, it just helps make the gap between the races larger. We don?t need

more prison or better prisons we need more reform and better reform. Make it

mandatory for en-mates to spend time in the library, and to take up some kind of

trade or skill on the inside. Make en-mates work out in a field or some other

hard labor job, even if it is just digging a 6 foot hole everyday and filling

back up. Let prisoners do some of the jobs that are being sent over seas like

the making of clothes and shoes. This way the working class is not paying as

much for the prisoners to live in a 6 by 6. This also gives them less time to do

drugs or to kill educating that is reform. Make jail the last place you want go.

Make it so bad that when a person does get out that he or she thinks before they

do anything and say I am not going back and I mean that. Next our government

system needs to look at. Funding for programs that give inner city youth more

places to go for free instead of the street corners. More places that parents

can take their children that don?t cost an arm and a leg. More events that a

geared toward getting the attention of young black people. More block parties,

neighborhood gardens, and have local DJ and rap contests. The pro-athletes need

to get out in streets of the ghettos. At public schools let there be give always

for grades and attendance tickets to football, basketball and baseball games. At

the halftime show let these kids be announced and get on the court or field.

Make them fill like they have really done some thing special. Then at the end of

the school year the pick two students in different categories to get to set in

one of the box sets or set on the bench. These are just a few things to help the

growing problem in the United States.