An Invisible Caste System
Prior to this fieldwork, we both had no experience with anthropological studies and we both came from different social backgrounds. Flora is a industrial design major at SCAD who has originally came from a military family in South Korea and went to high school at a private Catholic school in Georgia. For her last two years in high school, she lived with a White Anglo-Saxon Catholic family. Lexi is a painting major at SCAD and is from a biracial family in New Jersey. Her mom, a teacher, is Mexican and her dad, a financial analyst, is African-American, and they live in a predominately white neighborhood. Different cultural perspctives were brought to this assignment, and these differences sparked an interest in discovering what type of social and economic structure is present in Savannah.
For our fieldwork, we asked twenty elementary and middle school aged children open ended questions about East Broad street, a socially divided street where well maintained communities are located blocks away from government aided housing. We also focused on what the children’s perspective of the various aesthetics of East Broad street by asking them to create an image or map of the street. The amount of insight we received from these children was much more than we had expected and proved to be an important experience in our lives. Based on our fieldwork with the children of East Broad Street we have discovered an inevitable social divide, structured in a way that makes it almost impossible to advance in the social hierarchy, both socially and economically; an invisible caste system.
On September 28th, on a Sunday morning, we decided to drive throughout the entire East Broad street to find our field site. We weren’t exactly sure what area we wanted focus on or where we would find informants, the children, to interview. In advance, we did some research of the area and printed out a map of East Broad street to visually mark the social structure presented throughout the street. Prior to making the map, we expected a coherent social structure, but by conducting research on each part of East broad we soon came to realize that we were mistaken. The map helped us tremendously because it initially gave us a visualization of how the extreme social classes of the upper middle class and the poor were closely located, yet there still remained a social divide.
We started our drive from the south side of East Broad Street, located on Victory Drive, and then traveled north until ended up at the end of East Broad, which is located on East Bay Street. The entire distance of the street is approximately about 2.3 miles, so we decided to take our time to really observe the environment and to get an idea of how each perspective area of East Broad would benefit our fieldwork.
When we started near Victory Drive, we saw an idyllic large white house with a quaint garden in front. As we continued down the street we saw beautiful pastel colored houses that were aligned along the street. As we passed E 40th St, immediately, there was an abrupt change in scenery.
The street was filled with two-story apartment like houses with rustic wire fences protecting the small porch area; the houses were unmaintained and had damaged wood and chipped paint. On the sidewalk, garbage bags were propped up against the fenced areas.
We kept on seeing houses like these until we reached the E 37th Street. This pattern of extremely different social classes coexisting within the same area continued until we reached the Saint Benedict The Moor Catholic Church.
As soon as we saw the church, Flora suggested that we go into the church to see if we could somehow interview the children who attended Sunday school. We immediately took advantage of this opportunity and went into the church.
When we went inside, we discovered that it was a Black Catholic Church. Lexi immediately noted that it’s extremely rare in the black community to be a Catholic, at least from her perspective from up north.
While we both were analyzing the inside of where mass would be held, we were approached by the priest, Father Ezeugwu . We explained our purpose of being in the church and asked if we could schedule a time to interview the children. Father Ezeugwu was extremely kind and genuinely interested in helping us. He guided us to the Sunday school building, where we met the Sunday school coordinator Sharon Carson. We proceeded to talk to her and we exchanged emails so that we could send her the details about the project. Due to conflicting schedules, we weren’t able to interview the children until November 16th. We were not willing to wait this long, because we needed to start interviewing kids immediately. We ended up keeping the November 16th date, but we decided to find an additional site to interview children. That is when we decided to contact the East Broad Street School, right across the street from the church.
East Broad Street School educates children from kindergarten to eighth grade. We contacted the after school programs, asking if they would let us interview some of their students and they agreed. The after school coordinator, Linda Johnson, gave us to interview the Twenty-First Century and Twilight after school groups. The Twenty-First Century group includes grades kindergarten to eighth graders, but we only interviewed third graders. The Twilight group includes over-aged students, so all of the children we interviewed in this group have been previously held back a year sometime during their academic career.
When we interviewed the kids, we asked five questions: “What is this street like?”, “What is your favorite part about East Broad Street?”, “Do you see tourists around here/what do you think about them?”, “What is the prettiest part about East Broad Street”, and “What would you change about East Broad Street?”.
There were three different types of answers we received from the children. There were kids that either said “nothing” for each question, there aesthetic-based answers, and there were kids who gave a more personal response. The most interesting, and most useful, responses were the aesthetic-based responses and the informative responses that revealed more about the neighborhood and the child.
The aesthetic-based responses were helpful because it made us aware that these kids most likely identified the East Broad Street by objects and locations such as cars and the East Broad Street School. The majority of the children who gave these responses were the younger kids. At such a young age, their attention to their surroundings hasn’t fully developed yet, and but we could tell that the majority of their observations were experienced based. Some children would describe the street as busy, most likely because when they are on this street it is in route to going to or leaving school. When asked about what they would change about the street commented that they wished that the street was prettier and this sparked an interest of ours; what defines pretty? When we would ask what they meant by pretty, they explained that they wished the houses were nicer, more colorful, and bigger.
A handful of children also commented that they wished that the sidewalks weren’t so “bumpy”. When we would mention the downtown area, their faces would light up and they would respond “Yeah like that” or “ Yeah, that’s my favorite part”. We found this extremely interesting and wondered if they have yet found the connection between social classes and the unequal distribution government money spent on the maintenance of public spaces; how this relationship is the reason why their area of East Broad Street isn’t “pretty”.
The informative responses were extremely helpful because these answers didn’t just give us more information about the street but we also got to know more about the children themselves.
The majority of the children who gave these responses were the older children. Once we would ask the questions, the kids would give us more detailed answers that would give us a better idea of how the street and the community really is.
When Lexi interviewed 7th grader Diamond, she immediately described East Broad Street as unsafe. She explained that there were a lot of teens that weren’t in school, that they were either pregnant or locked up. When Lexi asked the specific question “Do you ever see tourists on this street?”, Diamond quickly shook her head and made an almost disgusted expression on her face. We were confused, because from our perspective we so no reason why tourists wouldn’t be on this street. But we could clearly see that, in Diamond’s opinion, there wasn’t anything on East Broad Street to see; only crime.
This experience, as a whole, has had a huge effect on our academic careers and personal lives. We decided to conclude with separate reflections because we felt as if this would be the best way for us to summarize our personal struggles during the fieldwork and lessons learned from this experience:
Flora’s Reflection
“The fieldwork provided a valuable opportunity for me to see how culture shapes our vision and controls the society. Throughout the process of finding our field site, I was able to acknowledge how cultural background had influenced my perspective. My cultural knowledge was tacit but became explicit through the conversations I had with Lexi. This realization opened my eyes to fully understand how necessary it is to approach another culture with sensitivity, and to change the self-centered mode of our minds for the better. As I interviewed young kids, I was struck to see how innocent their minds were from social stratifications. I’ve learned vulnerability is to gain the ability to change your mind throughout the interview. Unlike me, kids were open to admit their mistakes or to simply say “I don’t know.” This honesty allowed me to realize what constantly blocks us from admitting our mistakes and therefore changing our minds. Furthermore, those young informants are the hope for the future, deconstructing the invisible social stratification that creates a wide rift between the poor and the rich. Overall, I became aware of my own cultural view and was able to see the multiple layers of cultural stratifications that exist in our society.”
Lexi’s Reflection
“Initially, prior to this fieldwork, I did not think that I would bring my background or my own culture to the field site. But I ultimately saw East Broad Street through my own cultural lens and therefore constructed preservations on how I thought the children’s backgrounds would be. This experience has helped me in ways that I will never forget. I gained awareness of not only of myself as a person, but I also gained awareness of our society and the impact social structures have on all societies. I can honestly say that the study of anthropology has sparked an interest of mine. I am certain that I will apply what I have learned in this class to my career as an art therapist and to my artwork; this has been a tremendous experience.”
Anthropology Final Assignment
18th November 2014
Dr. Susan Falls
Lexi Stevenson and Flora Kang
