Higher Education as a Path of Financial Relief

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Higher education has become an ideal method to create a better financial stability in the United States. As a Mexican descent born in the United States, my parents urged my sibling and I to attend college after high school to have an “American dream”. Education was made a priority in my household, to insure my availability for a financial secure future and have more material object that my parents did not have when they were growing up. As my parents are immigrants, they did not have clear knowledge of the inequalities of education that was occurring in my hometown. Being raised in San Jacinto, a small rural town part of Riverside County in California, I faced limited opportunities in my early education career. When I was in kindergarten I remember being in a classroom filled with light pale skin individuals and my English was not very understandable, since Spanish was my first language. Teachers would be selective on which type of students would be line leaders, student of the months and who were rewarded sweet for mastering the class goal reading levels, these special treatment were toward white student, allowing me to see the white privilege that whites had thought out my early education. Why didn't I get a reward when I was a responsible student just like the whites students, so I too could have feel I was doing great in my education.  As a young student in Kindergarten, I was not very fluent in English and had to be kept during recess to get extra help to improve my English, while student that spoke English perfectly played outside. I always question why my peers got to go play outside while I was I felt that I was being forced to speak English in school,  I remember if my teacher would hear a spanish word spoken, she would scold all her latino descent students. She said "this is America, not Mexico". I now recognized that my elementary staff enforced racial institution by not allowing any other language beside English to be accepted to the U.S. culture. San Jacinto was highly populated by whites in the early 2000s with 69.3 percent, all educational institution had resources that benefit the population, and meanwhile, it was visual to see that one school had much recourse than the other schools from the location of the schools.

Today, we see that the Hispanic population has grown 53.4 percent, while 56.4 percent of white still persist; public resources have seem to become more scarce, developing disparities in educational outcome based on the inequalities on racial segregation in which wealthy whites have access to better quality school near their costly housing, in which public education rely on local property taxes. Schools are segregated by poverty, in which 88 percent of school and majority-poor schools contain 90 percent of non-white students, also over 50 percent of students are below the poverty line in 2001, and today these numbers continue to grow. In Race and Racism: A Critical Approach, Dr. Tanya Golash- Boza discusses disparities in educational inequalities and how socioeconomics inequalities coexist with education inequalities in college completion rates for youth. Golash- Boza indicated “children from working class background tend to fare less in school than children from middle-class or wealthy families”, also oppositional culture affected the color children to reject the successful route of education by the culture ideas and action on both white and their own communities.

Racism continues to happen today, each school in the United States has budget to serve their students population however, continue to prioritize white students. As education a only exit from financial deprivation, working class families are not educated in how their children face inequalities in education institutions. The location of the school plays a huge impact on students based on the resources they offer college prep classes, workshop based on higher education opportunities, etc. I have seen this in my town, a high school near new and wealthy suburbs has more tutoring on SAT and programs like AP and other types classes that guide students for a college bound path, while the school I attended did not even have SAT tutoring or the resources were there but were not mention,  exclude student of color, like myself to have equal resources. However, I was fortunate that my mother got involved in my education, as it was valuable in my household. While my school was racially constructed to limitation of opportunities, there was few staffs that guide me a college bound path and with my parents push to receive a higher education, it allowed me to attend University California, Merced.
 The long history of educational inequalities continues to affect the present, each student of color have barriers to seek a higher education to better their financial situation, while wealthy whites have unlimited resources to generate more wealth. Being conscious and informed about these inequalities can help to look for other ways to go around to break the limitation for students of color. The access of education is a human right, and we should have the same education opportunities like wealthy rich because education is the only exit to survive in a capitalist, while whites hold the dominance society.