They prepare our food in the Union, serve us our coffee in the library, clean our classrooms and bathrooms and do many other indispensable jobs for our university.
Yet the low-wage workers who make this campus function every day get very little time in our thoughts and considerations.
The line at the Starbucks provides a good example. We generally just stand there staring down at our phones, slowly marching toward our doses of caffeine, trying to turn our wait into the least painful and most entertaining time possible by keeping up with the happy lives of our Instagram friends.
On the other side of the line, behind the counter, hardworking low-wage workers respond mechanically and diligently to our coffee orders. For many of them, a job is not just a resume-building experience to take up their free time during college. Their low-paying jobs can be the only way to access higher education or a necessary source of income.
This is not to say that everyone getting food or coffee on campus is a privileged aristocrat or that everyone serving those same goods is a Dickensian pauper. But it is undeniable that there are some social and racial inequalities at play that we very often overlook.
After all, low-wage workers on our campus are much more diverse — significantly more black or brown — than the customers or beneficiaries of their labor. And it is somewhat shocking that we so often take those differences for granted. Surely, we must know better than thinking low-wage jobs are the rightful position for minorities.
You might wonder what difference it can make to simply be more “mindful.” Aren’t we being generally respectful to these workers already? Are we really going to make them earn more money by being more mindful of them? By casually recognizing our own privilege, are we really going to destroy the long-lasting institutional inequalities holding back minority low-wage workers?
Of course, being more mindful or considerate to the indispensable workers of our campus is not going to bring immediate change. It is, however, a great first step.
If we learn to recognize inequalities at the individual level, it will become much easier to understand the bigger picture of the economic and social realities of minorities. In turn, that will make us more conscious, engaged and, hopefully, more responsive with the kind of leaders we support.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, the most necessary and one of the most brilliant writers in the U.S. right now, offers an incredible insight on these inequalities.
He argues that white pundits on the left have disproportionately sympathized with the discontent of the white working class, which they view as the main force supporting Trump. Coates considers this escapism: a majority of all genders, ages and levels of income and education of self-described whites voted for Trump.
There are some critiques to Coates’ views, but his argument is strong and eye-opening. It makes it clear that we tend to view economic insecurity as an unjust position for whites, while we see it as a more normal status for minorities.
No politician called working-class minorities a “basket of deplorables” because he or she simply didn’t need to. That view is already implied in the way we unconsciously think of minorities doing some of the low-paying, highly insecure jobs we require every day. Yet when Clinton said it — wrongly — about a group of whites, outrage followed.
Realizing these inequalities at the level of our campus and our town is a crucial first step toward repairing our social structure.
Francisco Hernandez is a senior international studies major from Valencia, Spain.
