Past and present American literature has ultimately reflected the life and culture of America today. The history of that literature suggests that America is not an equitable nation. According to the Oxford Pocket English Dictionary, equity is, in its most basic form, the quality of being fair and impartial. Historically, America has not demonstrated qualities of being fair nor being impartial; the inequity of this nation is depicted in its past and present literature.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck demonstrates inequity in the time period and setting of the story. Of Mice and Men takes place during the 1930s, also known as the Great Depression. The journey of George and Lennie, two migrant workers, is an example of the dilemmas of the homeless and unemployed men living in America during the Great Depression. The inequitable circumstances of the Great Depression expose a darker side of human nature. To survive, a person’s first priority had to be themselves.
America attempts to be equitable by offering people with a lower income benefits such as food stamps, or unemployment (if unemployed). The issue with these benefits being considered equitable comes when two people, one with a fifteen-thousand dollar a month income and one with a twenty-one-thousand dollar a month income, receive the same benefits despite having different needs to sustain a comfortable and healthy life.
Another issue of inequity presented in American literature is racism. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s work, “Why We Can’t Wait”, exposes the colonial roots of racism in America. The following quote from Dr. King explains the foundations of the race issues that our nation was built on. “Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. […]. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.” These fundamentally racist ideals have grown into segregation during the mid nineteenth century and racism in America today.
These early manifestations of racism described by Dr. King can be seen contextually in the poem “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Lawrence Dunbar. The following quote from the fourth line explains, “That African Americans were not allowed to verbalize their ideas. With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, and mouth myriad subtleties” (Dunbar 3-4). He tried to call to the lord for help, but African Americans continued to be discriminated against and had to put on a “mask” and smile through their pain. The tone of this text is a combination of anger, sorrow, and despair due to the tragic things that African Americans, both then and now, went through. Repetition is used once every stanza in the poem and “We Wear the Mask” is also the title of the work used to reaffirm the message of the poem; African Americans have to wear a mask over their feelings because they were, and to an extent still are, treated so poorly.
Race is not the only factor in discrimination, gender is also a pertinent issue when discussing inequity in America. During the second World War, women were pushed to be patriotic by filling in for the jobs of men who had been called to serve in the military. Women worked to ensure that factories continued to produce materials that were needed for the war and home. In 1943, over 310,000 women were given jobs in the aircraft industry, making up sixty-five percent of its employment. “Rosie the Riveter” was a campaign that urged women to do the munitions work previously managed by men. Inequitably, their pay for the same work was likely less than fifty percent of what the men earned. The concern was not that that there was a large wage gap, but that the men’s original wages would now be lowered to the women’s level when they returned to their jobs. According to male versus female employment statistics, there was no need to worry. One may say women have come a long way since Rosie’s day, which is true however, the wage gap between men and women still exists today. In 2016, women earned eighty-two percent of men’s earnings; men’s median weekly salaries were nine-hundred and fifteen dollars to women’s seven-hundred and forty-nine dollars
During the Victorian period men and women’s roles became more sharply defined than at any other time in history, this helped in part to lead to the gender inequality seen today. In earlier time periods it it was normal for women to work alongside their husbands or brothers in the family business. Living ‘over the shop’ as it were, made it easy for women to help out either by serving customers or keeping the accounts while also attending to their domestic duties. As the nineteenth century progressed men would more often commute to their workplace – a factory, shop or office. Wives, daughters and sisters were now left at home all day to oversee their domestic duties that were now more increasingly being carried out by servants. These ideals of a ‘housewife’ san be seen in the literature written in this time period.
2019-1-14-1547456231