Americans tend to believe that it is easier to fit in into this society because there is no stagnant social structure in place, having the ability to move up or down from social classes in America. However, people never truly fit in, as was the case with Hillbilly Elegy by Vance and The Fire Next Time by Baldwin, because there is always something that divides you from the next person.
The upper and middle class people aren’t aware of the struggles that lower income people have to face. Upper class isn’t aware of it because their able to provide their kids with an elite education according to Vance. For instance, in Hillbilly Elegy by Vance, the wealthy can afford to send their kids to Ivy league schools, and it enables their kids to have connections with politician,lawyers,and other people that will make it easier for them to stay being part of the elite class.Vance (2016) writes:
Another lesson is that it’s not just our own communities that reinforces the outsider attitude, it’s the places and people that upward mobility connects us with -like my professor who suggested that Yale Law School shouldn’t accept applicants from non-prestigious state schools. (p. 206)
America provides the ability for its people to advance in their social structure, but the people at the top aren’t welcoming because they want people that has the same experiences as them.The ability to attend an Ivy league school ,instead of a state school, for one’s undergraduate degree is a statement to the person wealth because a poor student would avoid attempting to attend an Ivy league school.They would avoid it because they are aware that their parent don’t have the money to send them to an Ivy league school and they aren’t aware that the college would provide them with a scholarship.
Despite being part of the same nation and years of implementing equal rights laws, racism is still a contemporary issue in America. In The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin cannot stress enough the crime being committed by the white americans. They create barriers to divide themselves from black americans. Baldwin (1963) wrote, “You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, […], that you were a worthless human being” (p.7). In other words, in this white man’s world, black people are treated less than human solely for being black; cursed from birth. If they tried to become more than what they were allowed be, the terror felt by the white man is compared to the heavens and earth shaking (Baldwin, 1963, p. 9). Regardless of their accomplishments, the black man would never be treated as equal by the white man and their innocence– the culprit of their crime.
