Gatsby-esqueIgnorant Americans scare me.
Some of the things certain Americans are saying about Obama in this election scare and incense me.
This morning in the Wall Street Journal I read of a woman in Indiana (aka fly-over-country, middle America, etc.) who said "I feel like a white female or a white male has fewer opportunities than the black man or the black woman because of all the special treatment and special programs they have gotten. If Obama is elected, what's going to happen?"
What do they think is going to happen? The White House will suddenly be called the Black House and be overrun by gangstas? Ignorant statements like these raise my blood pressure.
Is this woman aware of how fortunate she is to be white? Does she know that the mere color of her skin comes with a host of unspoken benefits? Being Caucasian in the United States opens countless doors of opportunities and relationships that people of color have no access to. For example, bosses, politicians and other people in positions of power look the same as they do. That means they automatically have this in-road to power because people tend to favor others who are familiar to them, people that they can relate to. This can lead to faster promotions, and just a whole network of people that you can turn to for help.
Minorities generally lack this type of support network. Sometimes their parents don't even speak English and yet their kids are expected to navigate through society and compete with others. Minorities generally don't have an uncle who's a VP of Marketing who can help them find an internship for instance, or a father who was CFO of a company. That means they have to work much harder than Caucasians to "make" it.
In this day and age, people should know better than to make statements like the one quoted in the Wall Street Journal. They need to be educated.
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