When i was young, i was bombarded with the cliche that "you can do and be whatever you want", and being the boundless, and in retrospect, innocently naive child that i was, i believed it. I believed it because, in part it was and is still true...depending on what your life's aspirations are, and where your values lie. Growing up, i imagined myself becoming everything from a gynecologist, to a marine biologist, to a pilot...and granted those are great professions, and more than attainable, but as i matured, i realized that there are things that i valued slightly more than high paying and socially glamorized occupations. I've always heard people reference the infamous "glass ceiling" put on particular ethnic and economic groups, and up until now i haven't really been able to get a full and complete grasp on the derivative of such a social obstacle. For people who dont know, The "glass ceiling" refers to the idea that as you ascend up the ladder of "success", there is a translucent barriers that prevents you/us from getting to "the top", if thats what you so aspire to do. And i put words like 'success' and 'the top' in quotations because these are terms perpetuated by general society to have a ubiquitous, definative meaning as opposed to a objective and relative definition that is individual particular. For me, that widely spread hinderance may or may not affect my career aspirations, but one thing that it does definately affect, is something that i cannot put a value or a salary on and that is my
ABSOLUTE freedom. The freedom to navigate through this world free of inequality, the freedom to have unlimited options, and the freedom to choose. The country we live in advertises itself as the land of the free, however, so many of us are dependant upon various crutches ingrained in the fabric of our communities, and in that sense, we are free, but only free to move within the fences of predetermined inevitability and false hopes. Once in awhile we get somebody who may look like us, may come from the places we come from and may say the things we want to hear to passify us, but for the most part they are just puppeteered figureheads, at no fault of their own, but sometimes to thier own ignorance, with no real power to directly affect what we endure and have been enduring for over four centuries. We have an abundance of laws and legislation put in place to establish a level playing field and the equal conditions for a fair pursuit of our inalienable rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", however, it seems as if these establishments dont apply to the occupants of higher tax brackets. I can't fathom how less than 1% of the people on this planet control over 90% of the world's wealth. Which amounts to less than 10% of the remaining wealth available to 99% of the worlds population! The U.S's roughly 300million people make up 5% of the worlds 6billion inhabitants. Therefore, there are 5,994,000,000 people sharing less then 10% of the worlds remaining wealth! Its hard to see the equality in that, especially when the same coorporations and families that monopolized all mojor markets are the same people who run our governments and public offices. There is no reason why a country as powerful, prosperous and technologically advanced as the United States of America's educational system should be 21st in the world, slightly about Tonga, and far below Kazakhstan, nor why healthcare and medical expenses should be the number one cause of homelessness, or why even the countries that manufacture the drugs or have softer drug laws dont have a substance abuse problem as bad as the united states does. This is a game not designed for us to even have the slightest chance of winning, and the powers that be profit from the desparation of the hopeless. we are filtered the drugs and guns to keep us high and to kill ourselves, and the tools, or lack there of, like poor schools, and minimal recreation to dig our own graves just to be filled by, prisons and recruiting stations. This is why so many of our people see no way out, because even if we survive the drugs, and violence, the poor schooling doesnt give us the resources needed to succeed in the workforce, so we are forced to take minimum wage jobs, that barely pay us enough to survive, and not enough at all to save up and get out of these communities or send our children to better schools, so the cycle continues until the levee breaks and Katrina comes along and flushes us out. At this point theres is very little that we can do, because even with just officials, it seems as if nowadays everyone has a price. So what I call for is a revolution of epic purportions, we need to revamp, reinvent, renew and rennovate the american mindset, and attitude, and reaffirm ourselves with what this country was built around. Also, prioritize in accordance with the needs of the plenty not the few. we need federally regulated education, living wages, and healthcare, we need to not allow big business and big money to manipulate our leaders, crack down on coorporate monopolization, and stop giving tax breaks to the wealthy, and thats just a start...we need to learn to invest in ourselves, people in Japan save 20cents for every dollar that they earn, while Americans spend $1.10 for every dollar that we earn, and i attribute that directly to our reliance on the Credit System, high interest rates, high medical expences, and the fact that by the time the average american graduates from college, they are over $15,000 in debt, due to loans and other expensive educational costs. I dont have all the answers but i know we need a change, and i need the rest of my people to realize it as well. Peace
