Keyawa 1 Keyawa Matthew English 155 class# 16074 Professor Warwick December 1, 2006 Us and Them Who are you? How am I different from you? Can I trust you? And most importantly, how much money do you make? Throughout history, we as human beings have been separating ourselves, categorizing our world through our perception, creating dividing lines. With every encounter we make, these basic questions run through our mind; however, the last one may or may not be relatively new. This question epitomizes the stereotypical guidelines that many of us have been unknowingly following by making snap judgments based on race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other artificial category that we have created during these past years of humanity’s existence. However judging a person by “money” or what I would like to refer to as “socioeconomic status”, which encompasses the monetary and social aspects of an individual, has also been put into practice but never to an extreme as it is today. No longer shall a man be judged by the color of his skin, but by how many channels he has on his plasma screen television; no longer shall a man be judge by his religion, but by the net worth of his wardrobe; no longer shall a man be judged by his culture, but by how many inches his bulging pecks protrude from his body. Our society has entered a world of socioeconomicism in which we are forming dividing lines, bonds of hatred and intolerance of other classes due to our innate human nature to group and the disappearance of race overall because of the hybrid phenomenon, resulting in a world of Us and Them.Keyawa 2 The dividing lines formed along socioeconomic standards are the result of our innate ability to efficiently cluster with similar groups; “What we are looking at here is human nature. People want to be around others who are roughly like themselves” (426). In David Brooks’ “People Like Us”, diversity is a “fashionable concept that people merely say they want; the word automatically suggests something everyone is suppose to value” (417) and yet we go against it in so many ways. Although we may be hypocrites in the eyes of Brooks, it is nothing more than human nature to find our niche in society. Those who tend to make over $90,000 a year will most likely live in an area with a similar annual income per household; those who participate in a certain culture or religion will, again, most likely become more involved with those who share the same interests. Same goes for those who participate in a similar sport, hobby, or attend the same school or college. Even in marriage people “tend to…marry other people with educational levels similar to their own, and…befriend [others] with backgrounds similar to their own” (424). “Once [we] find a town in which people share [our] values, [we] flock there, and reinforce whatever was distinctive about the town in the first place”(423); It’s comfortable, it’s easy, and it’s convenient. However, with this innate trait that we all share, comes a price: homogeneity. We become “content with cutting ourselves off from everyone unlike ourselves” and we begin to “circulate half-truths about the supposed awfulness of the other side” (428). We begin to focus more on our differences rather than our similarities; we form stereotypes and other forms of dividing lines based on the socioeconomic status and geographic location of individuals; we become “so narrow-minded” that we can’t tolerate a few people with ideas significantly different from our own” (428). What about racial discrimination or race in general? Aren’t most dividing lines surrounding this issue? Not anymore. “The racial divide that has plagued [society]…is fadingKeyawa 3 fast – made obsolete by migratory, sociological, and biotechnological developments…” (471), transforming “racial frustrations into class ones” (473). As mentioned before, people tend to group with others who are more like themselves; however, race isn’t the only determining factor that may influence the clusters that we form. In fact, race may be the least influential because of the growing number of hybrid populations. We are mixing; we are genetically modifying ourselves. Our physical appearances no longer say that I’m Jewish, Mexican, African, Pilipino, Asian, Italian, Egyptian, Guatemalan, Canadian, Lebanese, Caucasian, Irish, Indian, Ecuadorian, French, or Danish; they say how much money I make, what culture or religion I practice, what hobbies I’m interested in, what music I like, if I work out, or what clubs or organizations I am involved with. As Orlando Patterson would have put it: “for the first time in the nation’s history, young, poor, and alienated Caucasians, African Americans, and Latinos [are finding] common ground – based on [socioeconomic status]” (473). It is becoming increasingly harder to identify an individual by race, resulting in our “innate ability to group ourselves” to solely focus on monetary and social characteristics. The hybrid phenomenon has lead to what is now known as socioeconomicism: the forming of dividing lines, bonds of hatred and intolerance towards class rather than race. As I briefly mentioned before, segregation and isolation based on socioeconomic standards can bring about catastrophic repercussions, ultimately creating a world of Us and Them. As we innately cluster to those who are similar to ourselves socioeconomically, we mentally and physically further the distance between those who are different. In Richard Rodriquez’s “Gangstas”, two sides are specifically mentioned that exemplify this issue: the barrio (or inner city) and the suburbs. “In the suburbs we use TV to watch the mayhem of the inner city. But on the TV in the inner city, they watch us” (437). Because of these dividing linesKeyawa 4 that have been created in our society, two different reference frames have been formed: Us and Them. “We are people who believe in the first person singular pronoun…we don’t comprehend our lives in common” (437). All of our emotions, actions, thoughts, and feelings aim towards our own kind, our own group, ourselves. We form a physical barrier by locating ourselves in different geographical locations and we form a mental barrier by emotionally shutting ourselves off from their world. We hear and witness news coverage of a deadly gang shooting in the inner city and a common reaction would