“Those to whom nothing which I am about to say will be new may therefore, I hope, excuse me if on the subject which for now three centuries has been so often discussessed I venture on one discussion more.” – John Stuart Mill (On Liberty 14)
Social justice is important to the Cabrini College curriculum but throughout this course I felt that my views and the class actually helped with a social justice issue instead of just learning about it. Through the hands on experience with the Mt. Pleasant residents and community I felt as if a difference was made through our openness and willingness to create better community. Learning about such a diverse community in a not so diverse area impacted my views of justice by learning about the community’s history and the issues they face now. The fact that racism impacted and created a great community despite the economic inequality in a single town really inspires me to fight for justice. In this reflection I will illustrate how inequalities that African Americans faced in our countries history effect future generation’s educational and economical outcomes such as educational inequality, Parents’ educational level impacting success for the child, the relation of poverty and low socioeconomic status to educational attainment and achievement, using references to Data collected from multiple scholarly articles as well as my Experience with and of Mt. Pleasant. The Mt. Pleasant community was originally the small area within the town of Wayne where the African American domestic servants lived. Men. Opportunity for wealth advancement seemed very few. In the Mt. Pleasant community the Carr School was built in 1832 and provided the community with a closer school for their children. This single room schoolhouse was at first a desirable one due to its size and the newness of the interior. But soon it just became inferior, in comparison, to the charter schools in the area since it was for the immigrants and African Americans. In 1879 the great migration took place and though the Jim Crow laws did not apply to many northern states they still were implemented by actions, which had segregated schools until 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education case.
“black men who come around the oil fields once in a while, searching for work as hired hands; black women taking in white folks’ laundry or helping clean white homes. Blacks are there but not there… -shadowy silent presences that elicit neither passion nor fear.”(Obama 35)
The Community of Mt. Pleasant was established first because of segregation and Jim Crow laws. Wealthy established white families populated the rest of the town of Wayne. After the abolition of the Jim Crow laws there was still a silent understanding of what was expected of you based on the color of your skin like what jobs you would have and what school you were lore likely to attend. The jobs of the men that occupied Mt. Pleasant were mostly, laborers and coal and ice delivery the women taking in laundry and doing house work for the Main Line families. This work was all most of them could get due to lack of education and in turn kept them in the lower end of poverty and opportunity for socio-economical advancement. Not only are they generally not getting jobs that are well paying but also if they did have the funds to move out of the area and buy better the housing was separated.
The fair housing act is not passed until 1968 keeping African Americans from buying homes in affluent areas. This kept the housing market bad for blacks and also hindered their ways of accruing wealth. If they aren’t given opportunities to buy homes in good neighbor hoods they have to buy in not so good ones and the resale is often one with little to no profit. In the cities the African American population became denser due to housing being inexpensive and the low-income housing projects being centered in cities. The history of African Americans not being able to accrue wealth keeps them from