It's Not Just Rich, White Men...

Hello friends,

I read an article just now that made me shake my head and think about how common corruption has become.  I've attached the link in case you'd like to read it for yourself.  For those that want the condensed version, half a dozen local government officials in a community just outside Los Angeles, CA, have pocketed enormous salaries at tax payer expense while lying daily to their neighbors about the town's coffers.  Eight arrests have been made, the officials are pariahs, and the citizenry is properly riled. (Note: I obtained the number of arrests from a different article on the situation.)

After reading this article, I thought about how miserable it is that we see this corruption at every level.  I was then moved to depression at thinking of how many levels of government we have, but that is neither here nor there.  The third thing to hit me is that this scandal primarily involved minorities, with at least two women included.  This isn't surprising; many of the scandals involve minorities and women, and increasingly so as the ratios of minorities and women in government continues to move toward the numbers we see in society.  Basically, as they are given the opportunity to fail, they seem to do so just as much as the rich, white men our society so loves to hate.

I'll be clear  up front that I detest the terms "reverse racism" and "reverse sexism".  Racism is racism, and sexism is sexism; the direction doesn't matter.  If your opinion of someone is based on their gender or the color of their skin, your thoughts are prejudicial.  I'm not saying that the sexes and the races are all the same; there are too many statistics showing otherwise.  Rather, each individual is different, so I try to approach people as people instead of as representations of a demographic.

So why do we seem to hate rich, white men?  Is this cultural resentment for the sins of their fathers?  If so, we should probably question the soundness of making one generation pay for the crimes of another.  After all, a later generation may not realize it is retribution and strike back, leading to a spiraling decline of civilization as we know it and, ultimately, nuclear war.

Okay, perhaps that is a bit melodramatic.  It's far more likely that we do this because, frankly, there are more of them at the top for us to see fail and for us to blame for our own failings.  Over 200 years of rich, white, male presidents sort of jades a person.  This isn't the sort of streak that causes people to say, "Ooooh, nifty!"  We'd say that if someone flipped a penny 20 times and kept getting heads.  By the 43rd time it showed heads, we would want to take a good look at that penny to make sure there's no funny business.  We just need to be careful not to accuse the flipper of using a two-headed coin unless we're sure.

I'm quite certain that we'll strike a balance between the genders and races on a macro level, and at the individual level things are better than ever.  In the few years I have under my belt, I've seen strides in race relations at the micro level.  We laugh with each other about race instead of letting it stand as a barrier between friends.  One of my favorite examples of this was an outing in Fort Worth, TX, that two of my girl friends and I took.  We had one white girl (me), one Asian girl, and one black girl.  We joked that we were a European and a Latina away from being a mini-UN.  Of course, we completely overlooked the fact that we were all Americans and far from being a global representation.  Still, we were three well-traveled ladies who knew better than to take offense at every remark made about race.

That, to me, is the key difference between then and now.  At one point in time, any reference to race was considered hate speech, regardless of intent.  We were so sensitive to the issue in combating it that we probably did a little harm to the cause in the process.  So be it.  We're here now.

Where is here?  Here is a place where government officials are arrested for corruption, regardless of race or gender.  Here is a place where the Speaker of the House is a woman, and of all the things many Americans dislike about her, gender is not among them.  Here is a place where the people are so fed up with their government that we've actually made it past apathy and started speaking out for change.  Here is a place where a "temporary" income tax is never considered for repeal, but our Congress ends their session without resolving whether or not to renew tax cuts for the citizens during the worst economic times since the Great Depression.

Welcome to Here.  Now where do we go?

Until next time,
MK