Isms Are Still Alive and Thriving in America

Supposedly, we are the land of the free, where everyone is created equal. While our forefathers didn't follow their own laws, they did give us an ideal to aim for. Unfortunately, we're still far from that ideal.

Racism reared its ugly head in New Jersey last week when someone got on WalMart's store intercom and asked all black customers to leave the store. An arrest has been made and it appears it was a customer of the store and not an employee. But my guess is that there are a lot of people who would echo the sentiments expressed by the unnamed speaker. Including perhaps Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer (SC) whose comments that those on public assistance are like strays who breed when given a steady food supply. According to the State of South Carolina's website statistics on per capita income by race, averaging all of the states 46 counties, blacks make almost half as much as whites. In every county, they make less than whites— sometimes almost three times less. Which means they're more likely to at least be eligible for public assistance. And Bauer said he regretted making the statement NOT because it was racist and classist, but because it was taken the wrong way and was causing him problems in his attempt to get elected as the governor of the state.

Women still haven't gained equality in the business world either. The good news is that there are no laws on the books that discriminate against women when it comes to wages, jobs they can get, etc. But not having laws on the books doesn't guarantee economic parity. WalMart is the defendent in a class action lawsuit that claims that women are paid less than men, given less promotions and the higher up the ladder you go, the more male dominated it becomes. In 1979, the UN adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and guess which country did not to adopt that convention? Yep. You guessed it. The good ol' US of A. Even in the field of research women are making less than men. And of course there's the new law in Utah that singles out women to be prosecuted for murder if the woman has a miscarriage. Men can't have miscarriages, so of course they don't have to worry about this law.

And of course there's still the blatant discrimination against gays. Gay marriage is now legal in seven countries: Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain and Sweden. It is now legal for gays to marry in Mexico City as well. And while marriages can't be performed elsewhere in the country, marriages performed in Mexico City must legally be recognized all over Mexico. Still in the US, it is not only legal to deny gays the right to marry in most states (kudos to Massachusetts, Iowa, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut and New Hampshire for being true to the US Constitution), but it's perfectly legal in the vast majority of the country to fire gays from jobs, refuse them housing and even in some cases to refuse them medical care because orientation is often not covered by anti-discrimination laws.

And another kind of classism can be found in how we deal with convicts who have been released from jail. Our penal system needs a major overhaul and a new memoir by Piper Kerman shows why. There's no attempt to "rehabilitate" those in our prisons. They're warehoused, treated like animals and then we wonder why they often reoffend when released. There's no accountability for the past racism that led to the over-representation among minorities in those living in poverty. And poverty leads to higher crime rates. There's no attempt to help those incarcerated make a better life for themselves or their families.

And that's not even touching on the privileges enjoyed by Christians over the last 234 years....