Views on America....

-some brief ideas on America, written January 2009 for an application

 In a perfect storm, the oxy-moronic derivation comes from both the ideal characteristics associated with it’s perfect phase and the negative characteristics associated with it’s storm phase. America is a perfect storm. That is, America’s greatest accomplishment lies in its self-fulfilling promise of opportunity to millions around the world; in a time when a subconscious was forcefully created and lives were molded into the ideals and principles to that of its incumbent leader. America’s greatest failure, however, comes at the onset of this very promise.

As a third-generation American, my mother talks to me about her family’s journey immigrating to the United States from concentration camps in Warsaw, Poland. After hearing her stories of hope for the newfound land of the free, it is apparent her family’s wishful thinking reciprocated to various forms of achieved success. I witness this success everyday within the offspring of these immigrants (myself included). It ranges from the plethora of opportunities presented to my nieces and nephews, in summer programs to cooking classes to dance competitions.  As a Gates Millennium scholar, I have also been fortunate to be apart of America’s greatest accomplishment. 

Within the democratic confines of America, capitalism paved way for millions to flourish. Subsequently, with the rise of industrialization and the developed “urban city”, jobs were in abundance and the envisioned “a house, dog and a white-picket fence” became all the more attainable. President Abraham Lincoln, whose beginning’s stem from poverty, packing grocery bags at a market, fostered the idea of all things possible, eventually holding the most powerful position in the United States of America. The rise of billionaires saw the likes of Charles Schwab and Henry Ford raise the standards on the perception of success. While all of these events created what constitutes the “perfect” in America’s greatest accomplishment, human intuition dictates that nothing is perfect.

When America experienced its greatest accomplishment of creating opportunity for the multitudes, the failure came from her inability to appropriately define what multitudes meant. More specifically, as opportunity became the goal of people; race-relations, ghettos, Jim-crow, and other institutionalized social deviations developed, simultaneously and subtly suggesting that multitudes was a mere representation of a predominate group of people. Hence, this opportunity mainly exists for this properly defined group, leaving others with a disillusioned dream. 

The obvious disparity between wealth is evident in neighborhoods with mansions on one street corner and abandoned houses on the adjacent block. As a Brooklyn New York native, opportunity seemed limitless in some areas while seemingly more than possible in others. Minority and Women owned businesses are established and in two years or less are closed down. They go out of business because the owner’s are inept at financing and maintaining a business. Further exploration indicates that this inability may be the direct result of the flaws in the urban educational system and concomitantly a lack of access to a higher education. Funding for education is primarily focused on schools that are already reaching particular academic standards, leaving little room for funding for schools that in Brooklyn are dubbed “Chancellor’s watch schools”. Now more then ever, young African American and Latino men are increasingly being imprisoned more than any other race and have remained the university’s lowest demographic percentage (besides Native Americans). Hence, only a small proportion of what is defined as the multitudes, have the chance at a proper education. Proper education is directly correlated to acquiring certain skills, characteristics, knowledge and networks too effectively run a business, properly teach children and ultimately give one’s self a better chance at opportunity. Since these ideals are not resonated throughout all of America’s people, America’s greatest failure has come in the form of not fulfilling its promise to all, hence being the storm to all of the perfect ideals she once promised to offer.

Opportunities are only opportunities within the lifetime to which they exist. If a lifetime is synonymous with never existing (as is the case with some), then America is flawed in its greatest asset, accomplishment, liability and failure: a falsified promise of prosperity to all.