The Eighties Disillusionment

We all had dreams in college. We wanted to graduate, get a good job, work, and play. When I was in college in the late 70s that was the expectation of every student. With a BA I thought that I could at least get a job as a Federal Employee, which included a 40 hour week with weekends off, vacation pay, sick pay, and a pension I would receive after 20 years of working there.

I could dedicate myself and climb the ladder there, or just work and be satisfied, have enough to live and buy a condo or a house, and squeeze in all my life adventures around my job. If I didn’t want to go that route I could get a job as a trainee anywhere. It would pay a little less, but it would be enough to rent an apartment and build a life as I advanced, if I stayed there long enough. The problem was how the economy deteriorated so fast from the time I started college to the time I finished in the early 80s. It was a different world.

Minimum wages had been frozen. The new president, Ronald Reagan, canceled all opportunities for federal jobs and even fired some people who had been working at those jobs for the first year. He began to bust unions, which affected the overall pay rate of many jobs and attacked affirmative action and equal opportunity programs. For the first time in my life, in my neighborhood, I saw people standing around the corner waiting to get blocks of surplus cheese and English muffins.

Soup lines opened, which was something I had only seen on television in movies about the depression. Public housing began to shut down. People with mental disabilities were thrown out on the street. My little 1970s idea that things were just going to get better had disappeared so I began to travel the country looking for jobs. I went to two places in York PA where they told me the jobs were already filled. Later I walked past them and saw white people picking up and filling out applications at those very spots, which amazed me because I was naïve enough to think that type of thing was over.

I went to Cleveland Ohio trying to get a job in a rubber plant. As soon as I came in they gave me a strange look. They told me I had to be familiar with their job before I could get it, which I found interesting, and didn’t want to provide any type of training whatsoever. It was a job with decent pay, which was all I wanted.

I figured I could work anywhere with decent pay. I was diligent and a hard worker and would work my way up the ladder. I didn't have the chance. One reason was because I had the wrong skin color. Another reason was because everyone was being disenfranchised at the time.

Minimum wage increases were slowed down to the point of minimum wage being useless as the price of everything was rising. No one could work one job at minimum wage and live even back then. Businesses were also fleeing the country because most were forced to pay a living wage by most of the unions. Everyone was being forced into poverty. I began to travel farther. I don’t think I got a good job until I had taken a trip all the way to Oakland CA where I got a job as a security guard. They were unionized, so I got decent wages.

I decided to go to bartending school while I was in Oakland. I took the course and was given a list of places looking for bartenders. At one of the places I went to I heard the patrons laughing and joking while I was leaving, telling the owner they wouldn’t come if I was hired using racial slurs. When I reported what had happened at the school I had attended they solved the problem by not giving me anymore places to apply..

When I went back home I used that for a reference and got a security guard job that didn’t pay enough to live off of without working substantial overtime. I slowly rose to the level of being a roving supervisor. I would have been satisfied with that job. At least it offered one the possibility to purchase health insurance, and it had paid sick days, holidays, and paid vacation that increased as you stayed.

The wages also increased by a quarter an hour every three months, but it still wasn’t enough. I couldn’t live off of it. I had to keep searching. I only write this story to help people see the world in which we live through my eyes.

Much of my life and opportunities were thwarted not because of my own actions. I did everything I was told in order to make it. At the major turning points after I worked hard and did everything I was supposed to, I was thwarted because of my race and only because of that. I am not unique in this case. It happens all the time. It is invisible.

Most people don’t see it. This type of behavior is carried out in secret so the majority of people think that it’s not real. I am just happy I wasn’t so destroyed by the disillusionment that comes from receiving such abuse that it didn’t damage me enough to make me give up, or take drugs like many do to escape.

Fortunately, after many many years, I found some opportunities after going to school, getting more of an education, and ultimately leaving my home and community forever. It would have been much easier though, had I only been given a chance. That is the issue. We aren’t often given a chance. That is always the issue.

No one sees it. Decent people don't usually know it or can't believe it. Only the perpetrators who hide in the shadows and subvert the American Dream day after day for large swaths of the population, are fully aware of what they are doing.

The End

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