Myth Of Individual Opportunity Essay

The Myth of Individual Opportunity in America

“Our workforce and our entire economy are strongest when we embrace diversity to its fullest, and that means opening doors of opportunity to everyone and recognizing that the American Dream excludes no one” Thomas Perez, the United States Secretary of Labor, once stated. Although that may be true, that’s not what it is like in America. “Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country” (New York Times). Everyone has experienced some sort of inadequate opportunity in their lives, whether it is something as small as not winning concert tickets over the radio, to something as big as not getting a job because of the color of your skin, your gender, or your overall appearance.

In America, we are known for our freedoms, our rights, our democracy, but what about our equality? Stated by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of equality is “The quality or state of being equal; the quality or state of having the same rights, social status, etc.” We take pride in our country as a whole, but we should not take pride in how different races, genders, and nationalities, and social statuses are treated. Individual opportunity does not exist because of color/race discrimination, racial profiling, gender inequality, and economically based

social status as well as scholarships.
According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “Race and color discrimination is anything that involves treating someone unfavorably because he/she is of a certain race or because of personal characteristics associated with race” (1). Color and race discrimination is usually associated within the work place, but can be found outside as well.
“Even though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits all types of discrimination, the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) reported that it had 35,890 charges filed and resolved race-based discrimination cases in 2010” (Mesriani Law Group, 1). One of their cases was a young lady who was fired from her job for raising the issue of racial based comments she was receiving and how unfairly she was being treated because she was black. The company thought since she was from Britain she would white, but when she arrived the company was shocked to find that was not the case. This lady was just one of the many thousands of people who get discriminated against every day. Many speak up, but many do not. It is our responsibility as citizens of this country to avoid discrimination.
Gender inequality plays another part in individual opportunity. Women’s rights have been increasingly popular as the years have gone by, but still women are looked down at by men who think women are inferior. Women have gone above and beyond to prove to men that they are on an equal playing field. They have surpassed men in academics, and more women are actually going to college than men. So then why are woman still getting paid less than men? A study shown in the Huffington Post stated “By the time a college-educated woman turns 59, she will have lost almost $800,000 throughout her life due to the gender wage gap” (1). With that being said, The White House published a statistic, “full-time working women earn just 78 cents for every dollar a man earns” (1). Even though our government passed the Paycheck Fairness Act in 1963, which made it illegal to pay men and woman different wages, companies are still getting away with this.
Gender inequality isn’t just about men and women; it goes further than that. “The State of Florida spends more than a half million dollars each year as the result of employment discrimination against transgender residents” (Williams Institute). Just of recently a group of businesses in Massachusetts are supporting a bill in order to protect transgender people against discrimination in parks, shops, restaurants, subways, and other public places, The Obama Administration had made health insurance companies and medical providers aware they will now be prohibited from discriminating against anyone because of their gender identity, but is that enough?
Gender also can side with Race. A study done by the Bureau Labor Statistics states white women make more than African American woman and African American women make more than Hispanic. The same facts go for men. White males are the highest paid race. However, the employment rates among adult men were different. Hispanics had the highest employment rate, followed by Asians, and then whites. There isn’t an equal opportunity to obtain a job in America.
“Racial Profiling" refers to the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin” (American Civil Liberties Union).

Racial profiling has been going on since the dawn of time. The Attack on Pearl Harbor caused America to panic. Many feared that the Japanese living in America were associated with the attack. The only evidence was their ancestral history. Many were Japanese born Americans who never even visited Japan, but that didn’t stop the government. They were, in turn, rounded up and taken to internment

camps.
Japanese isn’t the only ethnicity to be profiled. “In South Dakota, widespread reports of racial profiling led to hearings before the state legislature, where Indians testified about their being stopped and searched not only based on race but also on religious articles hanging from rearview mirrors, and regional license plates that identified them as living on reservations” (ACLU). Indians and Japanese are still not the only ethnicities to be racially profiled. There are reports on African being racially profiled every day in many different states. Some states have been Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Washington, South Dakota, California, Michigan, Maryland, Texas, Arkansas, Iowa, Florida, and even in Kansas at the Oak Park Mall. “Pauline Hampton and her niece, both African-Americans, were shopping in Overland Park, Kansas. After making several purchases, a white security guard accused Hampton of shoplifting, took her shopping bag, and, without consent, searched it” (ACLU).
Chinese have been noted to be racially profiled as well. According to the US census “4 percent of the Asian population has been racially profiled”. A man by the name of Wen Ho Lee was targeted and suspected by espionage on the basis of his race and a group of Asian youths were interrogated by the police for jaywalking. (ACLU)
As for the Hispanics, in 2013 two university professors were hired by the U.S. Department of Justice to analyze traffic stops by the Alamance County Sheriff's Office. They concluded that Latinos are 20 percent more likely to have their cars searched for contraband and Latinos stopped by were 2.5 times more likely than divers of other races to be issued a ticket and 1.5 times more likely to be arrested. (Fox News)
Economically based social status defies who we are as a person. We are all labeled as either poor or rich, upper, middle, or lower class. Each class has its own disadvantages as well as its own advantages. The rich people are considered to be upper class. They are able to afford everything and many more opportunities are given to the rich, but a down side to being rich is you get handed stuff; you never have to work hard for it. Unlike the poor, who are considered the lower class, they have to work for their opportunities.
However, the saying “the rich stay rich, and the poor stay poor” doesn’t always have to be true. Growing up in poverty doesn’t mean you have to stay in poverty. If there was individual opportunity in this country, it wouldn’t have to be that way. We would all have an equal opportunity to become someone, to achieve our goals, to have goals. With all that being said, there are a few people who have exceeded the odds of achieving their goals. For example, Horatio Alger’s fictional story Ragged Dick. Dick was a poor man trying to get by with the little amount of money he had, when he was put into a situation at the right place, right time, and was given an opportunity to advance greatly in life. But what are the chances of becoming a famous football player, or a famous actor, or music artist? “Only 58 percent of Americans born into the bottom fifth of income earners move out of that category, and just 6 percent born into the bottom fifth move into the top” (New York Times).
“Economically disadvantaged children enter school with less developed cognitive skills than their peers and then make lower grades and test scores, take lower level course work, and ultimately obtain fewer degrees” (Crosnoe, Cooper). Minority children in the United States experience less academic achievement compared to the majority (Raver, Aber, and Gershoff). With that fact in mind, you are clearly able to see how economics and education go hand in hand. There are inequalities based on race, social status, and ethnicity in the school system was well as in the work force.
Scholarships are a way to help students who cannot afford college, but they are not always fair. “Caucasian students receive more than three-quarters (76%) of all institutional merit-based scholarship and grant funding, even though they represent less than two-thirds (62%) of the student population. Caucasian students are 40% more likely to win private scholarships than minority students” (Kantrowitz). Not only are Whites given more in scholarships, but there is more money in academic scholarships than in athletic scholarships. Most people have it the other way around, but according to The Wall Street Journal, “Colleges and universities hand out more than nine times more money in academic merit scholarships than in athletic scholarship—$9.5 billion, compared with $1 billion for athletic scholarships”. This statistic is not fair to the individuals who were gifted with athletic ability but lack in academics, and it doesn’t hurt the people who are academically gifted who may or may not be athletically gifted as well.
America is based on freedom, rights, and democracy, but does everyone really have the same freedoms and rights as their neighbor? Sure, there are those few occasions when people defy all the odds and tackle all the hurdles, but for others it is difficult to advance. There is so much negativity going on in the world that correlates to a lack there of, of individual opportunity. There is not enough equality in the United States for every one to be considered equals. We have to recognize, however, America has come a long way from where it once was, from when it first began. Money, social status, race, and gender all play a part in individual opportunity but in order for individual opportunity to not be a myth everyone race, class, and sex has to have the same rights, freedoms, advantages, and disadvantages as the next person. America is struggling with this concept. Just like Thomas Perez said, “Our workforce and our entire economy are strongest when we embrace diversity to its fullest, and that means opening doors of opportunity to everyone and recognizing that the American Dream excludes no one”. That is what America needs to strive for.