Many of us ended up here in the United States because our ancestors were seeking religious, political, financial, and racial freedom. We're over 200 years into the democratic experiment, yet all of those struggles exist here on American soil. Even as a small child, I was confused by this inconsistency. I was taught a philosophy that said: send us your tired, your poor huddled masses. Yet I saw the reality, that people were expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
As a small-town Texas girl, I grew up going to a Southern Baptist Church and was deeply confused by religion. I knew there was a world full of other religions out there, and not everyone worshiped the same as my family. Who taught me that our God was a compassionate God, and I wondered if that were true; how other good people in the world could be sent to hell for the ways in which they worshiped, if they were different from mine-- even though I could see that they were very similar.
I remember being quite young, maybe third in grade, talking about money in my math class. I asked my teacher whose God do we trust? I could see on her face that she feared for my soul, and she asked if I believed in Jesus. Yes, I said. I wasn't able to articulate at the time, but I also believed in the goodness of human nature, and I felt that many good people were being excluded from heaven.
I am no longer Christian identified, although I am a believer in God, and God has many names. I do not feel that I fit in one single religious category. However after this week's reading, I realize that because I am white, I experience not only racial but religious privilege. My faith or religion is never questioned, because with my skin color the assumption is that I'm part of the Christian majority.
I was especially struck by Melanie Kaey/Kantrowitz’s essay, and the tangled thread of race and religion that she experienced growing up. She says that since Jews are historically known to be good with money, that their darkness is often ignored. But as the economy becomes more unstable, people with dark skin are seen as un-American and take the blame for lost jobs and a shrinking economy.
This for me again highlights our cultural inconsistency, and it reminds me of the Slate article that I posted a link to last week. There is a bullet pointed list that I'm going to share with you that highlights where things went wrong, and points out that in a democracy each citizen has to take their own share of the blame-- not only in the economic crisis, but I take that to mean in social injustices as well. Our political leaders who are voted in by less than 25% of the voting population, make decisions not only about about religious observation but wealth distribution. If you want things to change-- speak with your vote.
From SLATE Magizine: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_great_divergence/2010/09/the_united_states_of_inequality.html
We have now reviewed all possible causes of the Great Divergence—all, at least, that have thus far attracted most experts’ attention. What are their relative contributions? Here is a back-of-the envelope calculation, an admittedly crude composite of my discussions with and reading of the various economists and political scientists cited thus far :
-- Race and gender is responsible for none of it, and single parenthood is responsible for virtually
none of it.
-- Immigration is responsible for 5 percent.
-- The imagined uniqueness of computers as a transformative technology is responsible for none
of it.
-- Tax policy is responsible for 5 percent.
-- The decline of labor is responsible for 20 percent.
-- Trade is responsible for 10 percent.
-- Wall Street and corporate boards’ pampering of the Stinking Rich is responsible for 30
percent.
--Various failures in our education system are responsible for 30 percent. Most of these factors reflect at least in part things the federal government either did or failed to do. Immigration is regulated, at least in theory, by the federal government. Tax policy is determined by the federal government. The decline of labor is in large part the doing of the federal government. Trade levels are regulated by the federal government. Government rules concerning finance and executive compensation help determine the quantity of cash that the Stinking Rich take home. Education is affected by government at the local, state, and (increasingly) federal levels. In a broad sense, then, we all created the Great Divergence, because in a democracy, the government is us.
It seems obvious to me that a decades-long trend toward income inequality is destructive to any nation, and particularly to one founded on democratic ideals.
