Cultural Inequality: Politicizing Personal Experiences

I was born from a farmer family in a rural area of South Sulawesi in Indonesia. When I was at the senior high school, I would love to join a trip to Java in a program called study tour. I was trying to find financial supports from several persons or organizations, including governmental offices as most of my friends did and succeeded. I wanted to make other successful stories like them because I was so naive that I was equal to them, while it was not actually. They had economic, social and cultural capital that I did not have.
My school gave all students a complete proposal for this purpose. I was so optimistic that I would obtain enough amount of money from people to fund my trip as many of those friends had told me their successful stories. At this time, I always defined 'success' around the spirit of working hard. So, I believed that as long as I worked hard, I would make it like them. I moved from one place to other places to show them my proposal for financial supports. I was struck that every one I saw and showed my proposal to him or her asked me the same question, "Who were your parents?" When I told them that I was a son of a poor farmer from a country side. They showed me unwelcome faces and tried to find 'rational' reasons to reject my proposal. They thought that I could not identify their 'bad' and unwelcoming feeling about me.But, I understood that they treated me in that way only because I was a son of a poor farmer. I knew that if I were a son of a rich person or a person who had a good position in a government office, they would have treated me differently and special. As a result, they would provide more than what I wanted. Unfortunately, I am a son of a poor and illiterate man. I knew that they would not give hands to anybody without condition. I knew now that equality in education is false and had led many people to have a false recognition of their position in the society wherein they live. Actually, they always wanted reward from what they had given. When they say 'yes', actually they want something rewarding from you. However, they will not say 'yes' to a poor person like me. From this moment, I felt how difficult it is to be a poor person. The structure of my society built a very thick fence to go thorough for a poor person economically and socially like me. For Indonesian society, I think, this is a very serious problem, especially in education system. We are predetermined to be poor and working-class through educational system. The government always work hard to make the capitalist happy. When the capitalist say, 'we need more workers,' the government without any hesitation say to them 'yes', we will build more vacation schools (SMK) to meet your needs. The capitalist, the noble, and the government work together to make Indonesian people to be slaves and servants using people's taxes. On the other hands, these people are naive and think that to be servants for them are a privilege and prestige. So, what do you think?

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