The Collective American Psyche Cannot Understand “Equal” Rights

For the past few months I have been making cultural comments. At this time, I would like to shift focus to American life and how it nurtures and perpetuates bullying. Almost every week we see a young person who has committed suicide because of bullying. I feel that collectively, we are all responsible for those precious lives that were lost. In many ways, the American way of life is liberating. We live in a competitive, supposedly meritocratic society where anybody with dreams, gumption, smarts, and a will to succeed can –well – succeed. That is the dream that America sells its own people as well as the millions who come here every year. In reality, America is driven by a race/sex-based economic system that thrives on exploitation of others at some level. To paraphrase Ishmael Reed, if the motto for Britain is the “sun never sets on the British empire,” in America that motto should be “there’s a sucker born every minute.” Historically, America was built by rebel forces and simultaneous exploitation. The Founding Fathers decried the tyranny of British colonialism while holding Black slaves at home. As Washington crossed the Delaware, some slave prepared for a long day in the fields building the country with manual labor. Following slavery, almost 100 years of Jim Crowism, exclusionary immigration policies, and heavy-handed militaristic tactics with Native Americans, America’s economic system remained meritocratic for some –mainly white men –and oppressive for others –everybody who wasn’t a white man. To date, this unevenness in our wealth distribution as well as our very skewed notion of who should participate equally in our government and economy block any deeper understanding we should have of Civil Rights and equality. In Thomas Jefferson’s Notes, he was very afraid that one day the tides would change and God would punish white people by one day making them the slaves and Africans the masters. I can safely say that during the presidential election, that fear still lingers and was made manifest by the proliferation of disrespectful and violent rhetoric aimed toward this president. I have never in my life witnessed so much disrespect towards the office of the presidency. The white supremacists have come out of the woodwork, and they are armed and dangerous. But I could feel this brewing ever since the 1990s with the arguments over affirmative action. In Americans’ haste to label, fight, and exploit, we boiled affirmative action down to a struggle of hierarchy, and the media stoked that fire. Some media personalities outright said that affirmative action would give minorities –especially Black people –unfair advantages over qualified white people. And when Obama got elected, personalities like Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh all but stated that Thomas Jefferson’s worst nightmare had come true! They accused civil rights activists of being reverse racists, and declared that President Obama would seek vengeance for the slaves using the office of the presidency. I have often wondered why Americans simply do not understand the notion of civil rights and equality –especially in a land that boasts of itself as a land of opportunity for all. It is because we cannot think outside of competitiveness and exploitation. The notion that one group simply wants to be on equal footing with the other and not on top does not register in our collective psyche. For instance, most feminists have never requested that women rule the country or that women be in charge of every job. Feminists simply say that if a woman lifts 50 pounds and a man lifts 50 pounds, the woman should be paid the same amount of money and given the same opportunities for advancement. After all, 50 pounds of cotton and 50 pounds of lead weigh the same. However, most conservative men have looked upon this demand for equal pay for equal work as an infringement upon male authority. Here’s another example: African Americans who fought for Civil Rights have never asked that African Americans be given a free pass for committing crime. We’ve only asked that the punishment be meted out equally. Why are Black men frequently given harsher sentences than their white counterparts for the very same crime? African Americans have also never asked that underqualified students be given college admittance and scholarships for subpar work. We’ve asked that qualified students’ application should be reviewed and not immediately thrown in the paper shredder because of the color of their skin.

When it is written out, the notion of equality doesn’t seem too difficult. It almost seems absurd that people have marched, died, and protested for the right to be treated fairly in the land of opportunity. But until Americans understand that not everything in life can be about competitiveness and exploitation, we’ll continue going around and around in a never-ending psychological boxing match for something as decent, simple and grand as equal opportunity.