1. I know that everyone in the United States, regardless of race, culture or background, has an equal opportunity to succeed. In the past, those factors often served as barriers to education, employment and other opportunities, but it is not true today. Regardless of one’s background, everyone can find a place in which they fit.
Education used to be unequal for different races and religions. Students in religious schools often received a better education than those in public schools; schools in the inner cities were plagued by violence, uninterested teachers and a lack of materials. Today, this is not the case. Schools in low-income areas are the recipients of many grants in order to bring up their test scores. For example, many schools in California are entitled to Title One funding, which ensures that they get what they need to instruct a variety of students. Public schools are required to meet set standards, and these standards ensure that students can read and write when they graduate from high school. Teachers are entitled to receive an APLE grant if they are willing to work in a low-income area for three years; this grant will take up to $11,000 off of their student loan debt. In addition, they receive assistance in purchasing a home if they are willing to work in these areas. Everyone, from the very rich to the very poor, has an equal chance of succeeding in school.
Race, culture and one’s background is no longer a barrier to employment, though one’s education level will determine the type of jobs for which one will qualify. Employers are not permitted to discriminate based on race, sex, or religion; in fact, they can easily be sued if they choose to do so. A friend of mine worked for a sheriff’s department for years and was denied promotion based on her race (she was white). She sued the department and after a long battle, she won and was compensated both financially and with the promotion she had earned.
It is not always easy to succeed in school or in business, but those who choose to work for what they want will find that the only barrier is one’s willingness to earn the things they want.
2. I have never had an experience in which I felt discriminated against. This is probably because I would not put up with such discrimination, and I know that I have rights to which I am entitled. However, I do have a friend who was discriminated against in her place of employment. A white, middle-school math teacher, she was often treated unfairly.
She worked at a school in a low-income area, where the teachers were the only white faces on campus. She had great difficulty in controlling her classroom due to the many disruptive students. Unable to speak Spanish, she found that she required assistance to call parents and let them know that their children were misbehaving. Regardless of race, the fact that this is a low-income area often meant that the students’ home phones were disconnected and that many families stayed with relatives, which meant that letters did not reach their intended recipient.
Unwilling to put up with the disruptive students, she eventually found that they needed to go to the office. The principal would call her in and yell at her for sending students into the office too often. The administrators at this school were all African-American or Hispanic and found it easier to relate to the students than my white friend. I felt for her, knowing that she faced a hostile group of students every day who were rarely punished adequately for their antics. In a private meeting with the principal, she was told that “you just don’t belong in an urban environment”. Rather than assisting her with the classroom management problems, the principal wrote her off as a lost cause. The last straw came during a staff meeting when the principal asked for suggestions on improving the overall discipline at the school (it seems most teachers were sending far too many misbehaving students to the office. When my friend made a suggestion about having a discipline assembly, he repeated his assertion that she simply didn’t belong at an urban school – however, this time he said it in front of a staff of over 30 teachers. Humiliated, she tried to get through the rest of the year quietly, then took a pay cut in order to teach at a school with a better reputation for discipline. She still feels like a failure for being unable to get along at the urban school.
3. The most important issue regarding healthcare is the uninsured status of the underemployed. The underemployed are those individuals who are working in jobs that do not give them enough hours and therefore do not supply them with health insurance. The individuals who do not have health insurance end up in emergency rooms, unable to pay their bills and costing the taxpayers a great deal of money. As costs rise, hospitals become short-staffed and the aforementioned uninsured receive an even lower standard of care.
This problem affects all races equally. Many people believe that the problem of not having health insurance only affects minorities; however, there are many programs that assist minorities (especially those with children) in receiving health care. In my city, there is a program called MISP, which provides low-cost health care for the uninsured or, “medically indigent”. Strangely, it is not the minorities that use this service most often; when I attended an orientation, there were mostly single, white, childless adults who did not have medical insurance and who could not afford care on their own.
Those who do not speak English might have a more difficult time with healthcare than anyone else. They will be less likely to seek out programs to assist them, and they might assume that there is no help available to them. English-speaking individuals who were born in this country are more likely to know how to pursue the special programs that will provide them with assistance. After all, people born and educated in this country know that for every problem a person might experience, there is probably a county department or program that offers assistance.
