From Wendi Thomas’s presentation and the speeches of the two Georgetown students, Peri and Kamar, I learned that “community” is a very subjective term. For instance, for Peri, she had a strong community where all of the members came from similar backgrounds, had similar incomes, ethnicities, and family dynamics. While describing Memphis she might say, “The community was tight-knit and strong.” However, when looked as a whole, Memphis is an area that has been racially segregated for years. From the rights of black workers to the assassination of Marthin Luther King, Jr., Memphis carries a dark history of the oppression of black people for years. Wendi Thomas said that the title of her speech could be more accurate if it was “Memphis: How a City Failed to Atone for Killing King” And this idea aligns more with Kamar’s experience in Memphis, where he switched his school numerous times and was exposed to the lives of students from a variety of economic backgrounds. He did not necessarily grow up in a secluded community, rather he had the chance to see Memphis through the lens of all of the communities that it embodies.
Wendi’s speech also reminded me of the power of economic injustice. I encountered a lot of people who believe that gender and racial discrimination mostly has intangible, emotional consequences. But that is just not true. Discrimination is an urgent issue that causes injustice in the economy, households, family lives, health, and in numerous other areas of life. Sociology is the field that goes into proving the injustice that affects the lives of people. The event reminded me once again how I fervently study sociology and how proud I am to be majoring in a field that takes into account the human experience while honoring the “science” in social science by statistically proving every social pattern there is.
Wendi’s pessimism that was exposed towards the end of her speech was heartbreaking. When she mentioned the two “logistic workers” who were doing the same job for 50 years, I thought of the illusion of improvement that is created in most social movements. Politicians and even political scientists will at times manipulate the public by playing with words and coming up with new labels to make things look better than they really are. One cannot escape the thought of how ironic it is that Memphis is a place where people share a strong cultural bond yet are living in a place where they have been economically segregated for years. It reminds me of Turkey, a country that is home to people who are politically polarized but who share a cultural value that gives birth to powerful nationalism.
