2025: Empowering the Future through Education, Diversity, and Hope
Structural Inequality: An Analysis of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”
Location
Hemmingson Ballroom
Start Date
15-4-2025 12:40 PM
End Date
15-4-2025 1:40 PM
Description
“You and I can both get jobs and finally see what it means to be living” is the ambition for many American people in poverty. Tracy Chapman’s song “Fast Car” heartbreakingly describes multiple aspects of American economic inequality that trap the main character in poverty: unemployment, homelessness, addiction, and abandonment. Chapman tells the emotional story of growing up in shelters and economically segregated neighborhoods with an absent mother and alcoholic father, working multiple low wage jobs. This project will use Chapman’s lyrics and a visually catching art collage to illustrate how the American dream is highly inaccessible to those born into poverty. A common misconception is that American citizenship undoubtedly ensures wealth, freedom, and security. However, the “Park Avenue: Money, Power and The American Dream” documentary states that affluent Americans don’t “seem to accept the possibility that if you’re poor enough and your schooling is bad enough, you don’t really have an opportunity to compete” and “a job is no longer enough to keep Americans out of poverty” (Gibney, 2013). Using a structural view of economic inequality, this analysis will ask readers to rethink assumptions about individuals’ responsibility for a life mired in poverty.
Recommended Citation
Lever, Natalie, "Structural Inequality: An Analysis of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”" (2025). Diversity & Social Justice in Education Conference. 31.
https://repository.gonzaga.edu/dsjconf/2025/general/31
Publication Date
2025
Structural Inequality: An Analysis of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”
Hemmingson Ballroom
“You and I can both get jobs and finally see what it means to be living” is the ambition for many American people in poverty. Tracy Chapman’s song “Fast Car” heartbreakingly describes multiple aspects of American economic inequality that trap the main character in poverty: unemployment, homelessness, addiction, and abandonment. Chapman tells the emotional story of growing up in shelters and economically segregated neighborhoods with an absent mother and alcoholic father, working multiple low wage jobs. This project will use Chapman’s lyrics and a visually catching art collage to illustrate how the American dream is highly inaccessible to those born into poverty. A common misconception is that American citizenship undoubtedly ensures wealth, freedom, and security. However, the “Park Avenue: Money, Power and The American Dream” documentary states that affluent Americans don’t “seem to accept the possibility that if you’re poor enough and your schooling is bad enough, you don’t really have an opportunity to compete” and “a job is no longer enough to keep Americans out of poverty” (Gibney, 2013). Using a structural view of economic inequality, this analysis will ask readers to rethink assumptions about individuals’ responsibility for a life mired in poverty.
Comments
Poster Session B