Promoting Success with Access

The senior class took hold of the steering wheel for the second half of our Economics course. The focus of the course was on the book “Doughnut Economics” by Kate Raworth. In her book, she visits the idea of old economic theory and renovates it in a more modern way of thinking. My class of 14 students was divided into groups of two. Each group focused on a chapter in “Doughnut Economics” and had to teach a lesson based on the chapter. My friend JN and I’s chapter, “Create to Regenerate”, was about the difference between a circular economy and linear economy. JN and I wanted to make our lesson interactive (aka not showing a wordy slideshow) so we had the class participate in a simulation. The simulation went as planned, with some minor discrepancies. Once the class and the teacher reflected on what they learned from our simulation, JN and I felt very accomplished of our successful lesson! It was very cool to hear other student’s presentations and views on the other chapters of “Doughnut Economics”. After studying Raworth’s book, the senior class went downtown to WeWork to visit a company named Rheaply. Instead of creating new, why not create a community of companies willing to reduce the amount of garbage at landfills? Rheaply aims to create a circular economy with creating an accessible, sustainable market for companies to sell and buy old resources. Rheaply was started by a young, black man, which is really inspiring to see a person of color as the CEO of a company. I gained a lot of valuable knowledge from this Field Experience.
To wrap the end of this term, I have created a mock chapter for “Doughnut Economics”. In this project, I will introduce another way to think like a 21st century economist.

Promoting Success with Access

JMP, Promoting Success with Access, (2019)

As I conduct a tour throughout the halls of the Art Institute of Chicago with my black and brown friends, unwelcoming stares from white tourist families burn. Black security guards stand at their post with blank faces, ignored by visitors left and right. When I leave late from work, I see older hispanic women cleaning up after fancy events held for the rich. 7 in 10 senior executives in the Fortune 500 are white men. Seeing a person of color be a senior executive in a large company is unusual. This system is still around because it is harder for minorities, first generation, women, and low-income people to earn high education and have their voice heard. It is a major problem in our current world that people of color (POC) are not represented right in our economy. Imagine what the future COULD look like. If it wasn’t unusual to see a black woman as CEO of a company, younger black kids would look up to her and be inspired by simply seeing someone that looks like them in power. If the economy provided a space for Latino sellers in desert neighborhoods, neighbors would come out and create stronger community. This sort of global perspective benefits both parties through cultural capital. Cultural capital would give power to people of color in the market and become successful and rise up the social ladder without necessarily having financial capital. Every market should exist once the economic world is more accessible for minorities.

Raworth says in “Doughnut Economics”,“Economics is not a matter of discovering laws: it is essentially a question of design.” We must fight the status quo right now and bring more representation in businesses for younger generations of people of color. Markets are not the most accessible right now, but young POC are working on it. Personally, I am fighting my own battle in the market world. I am a Latina, first generation, low-income queer woman that has started a jewelry business this past summer. I sell clay earrings based off of Mexican sweet treats. Since there are no spaces in the Southeast side of Chicago to sell my art to my intended audience (Hispanic/Latinx people), I travel two hours to the northside of Chicago to sell my jewelry at pop up shops. Since majority of buyers in the northside are not familiar with Mexican culture, I often have to teach about my heritage while trying to sell items. Trying to validate and educate my culture to anglo people as a Mexican teen is tough, so I usually do not get very far. The result? Traveling back two hours to the Southeast side with a backpack still full of jewelry. The market is not accessible to me or Latinx buyers. We both don’t benefit from this situation. I don’t sell jewelry to Latinx people, and the Latinx people are not able to buy my art at a location by them. According to Fortune, seventy-three percent of the senior executives, men and women, are white. The rest are 21% Asian, 3% Latino/a, 2% black, 0.6% two or more races, 0.2% Native American and 0.1% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Since this is the case, I was very surprised to see a black man as the CEO of the company we visited for our Field Experience. Gary Cooper, CEO of Rheaply, said ,“Starting a company is really really hard. Starting a company in tech, as a first time founder, is three more times as hard. Not a lot of founders are minorities, less than 1%. So there’s a lot of things that are hard to navigate. I think the hardest thing is taking the leap. To just say, hey, I believe in this, I think it could work.” I think Gary understands the struggle as much as I do, but we still both took the leap to start our business with great confidence. Once the market world is more accessible to minorities, people like Gary and I could thrive and sell more to our intended audiences, and benefit those who are looking for our services

Citations
Jones, Stacy. “Fortune 500: 7 in 10 Senior Executives Are White Men.” Fortune, Fortune, 10 June 2017, fortune.com/2017/06/09/white-men-senior-executives-fortune-500-companies-diversity-data/.

Raworth, Kate. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think like a 21st-Century Economist. Random House Business Books, 2018.