My Life Be Like…

 Redlining, is a practice that has been outlawed in order to properly allow all people to grasp their equality of oppertunity. However, the Bush administration, which has always been geared more towards catering to the wealthy, is in the works of making the redlining laws less harsh, which would be better for the wealthy and worse for the poor, causing the already gaping wealth gap to grow in size. Weakening these laws would mean that the banks would no longer be required to help poor communities, and could refuse their services.

This is a HORRIBLE idea, which would make the wealth gap even larger. I know that Bush caters to the wealthy, but as president and a part of the US government, he should be trying his hardest to promote the general welfare of all the people, not just one particular group. The redlining laws are great because they exploit equality of opertunity

Before the law, many banks engaged in discriminatory redlining practices by choosing not to make mortgage and business loans to people in poor and predominantly minority neighborhoods. After the law, banks were held accountable to a higher and tougher standard, forcing them to actively pursue lending, investment and other activities in poor areas. David W. Chen, New York Times

In order to fix the existing wealth gap, we should be strengthening these laws, not weakening them. As the article states, by strengthening the laws, it helped give funding to neighborhoods specifically where minorities lived. So taking away these laws would mean that we would regress back to the times when redlining was a prominent practice, increasing the wealth gap, and we CAN’T have that, becasue we want the gap to shrink, not grow, regardless of what Bush may want.

If we were to look at a map showing the race and net worths respectively of each family living in the United States, we would see a striking gap between the different families, especially between the different races. Why is it that non-whites, like African Americans and other minorities tend to be much less wealthy than whites?

Dalton Conley writes, in his book Being Black: Living in the Red:

If I could cite one statistic that inspired this book, it would be the following: in 1994, the median white family held assets worth more than seven times those of the median nonwhite family.

That statistic is shocking. One of the key parts that makes up the United States is the basis of equality, and equality of oppertunity. Where is this equality if there is such a striking difference in the amount of money that whites have, compared to minorities? Well… lets see.

First of all, history has a lot to do with it. Some white families who have been here since the first settlers arrived from England, still have money left over from their ancestors who arrived here. Assuming that those early settlers’ families stayed in America, it can be presumed that many of them went on to be wealthy slave owning families, and if not, they had the time while they were living in America, to accumulate money. If we compare these white Anglo-Saxon families to black families, or families of other minorities, the case is not the same. Up until and during the 19th century most of the blacks living in the United States had come over from Africa and various other places in order to become slaves. Then, when slavery was outlawed at the finish of the Civil war in 1865, and were free to go, they had to start to earn money, becasue at that time they had nothing, since they hadn’t been paid to do their labor. Then, other minorities, tended to immigrate to the United States later on, and when they came over they were given the lowest paying jobs, so it took them longer to generate money. So, this history has a lot to do with the current wealth gap because white families tended to have a longer time to generate money than their black or minority counterparts.

yet another reason which accouts for the prevelent wealth gap, is the rascism and segregation which was the norm up until the civil rights movement in the 1960’s. Up until that time, whites had been paid more and got better jobs than blacks and other minorities, which explains part of the reason why there is such a large gap. There was also the problem of steering, which was when realtors wouldn’t show blacks or minorities the nicer houses in the better neighborhoods by “steering” them away (though today i’m pretty sure that steering is illegal.) Therefore, white families would usually live in nicer neighborhoods, with better schools and low crime rates, as opposed to the minorities who would live where there was a high crime rate, bad schools, and bad areas of town.

Since the minorities often lived in the worse parts of town, the banks would ofted be predjudiced against them. Often “redlining” would occur. Red lining is when the banks would specify a “bad” part of town (sometimes by marking its boarder with a redmarker ) and refuse to give out loans to any person living with in that part of town. Today, however, this practice is completely illegal, but some banks tend to do it anyway.

Steering and redlining put blacks and other minorities in a bad position. First of all, it meant that those who had been affected by those practices would not live in good safe neighborhoods, and secondly, it was setting them up for poverty because they did not have the bank on their side, and backing them up. To me, these practices are sickening, there is no reason why people of different races should be able to live in the same communities, or belong to the same bank. It seems as though there is such a wide wealth gap because we made it this way. By steering and redlining, minorities were not given equality of oppertunity, instead they were cheated into taking only what racists believed that they deserved.

The G.I. Bill offers enlisted soldiers, inexpensive loans for education and homes, and did you know that in some instances, the military will actually PAY you to go to college? Well, its true, but only if you attend certain colleges. These colleges include the United States Military Academy (go black knights!), the Naval Academy, and the Airforce Academy. The soldiers who attend these schools are actually paid to go to school because of their salary that they get as a soldier, which means that there will be no annoying monetary debts to pay off after college, and extra spending money which is always a plus :).

The students do, however, have one debt that they must pay off, which is that in return for their free education, they must serve four years in the armed services following their graduation from school. According to the United States Military Acadamy:

You must serve at least five years of active duty and three years in a Reserve Component, a total of eight years, after you graduate. The active duty obligation is the nation’s return on a West Point graduate’s fully-funded, four-year college education that is valued in excess of $225,000

Two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars thats a lot of money! I never realized just how much money college tuitions cost. The US, however, doesn’t give this money out to just anyone, applicants to these schools go through a rigorous examination to make sure that they are right for the school. Some of the physical and educationial requirements to be accepted to USMA include but are not limited to:

• Participate in vigorous competitive team sports.
• Participate in individual sports that require sustained physical effort.
• Perform distance running regularly; two miles are recommended.
• Perform strenuous conditioning exercises - push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups.
• The best way to prepare is by starting off slowly and building on your physical accomplishments. Start with a two-mile run, alternating between running, walking, and gradually increase the amount of running. If you start early, you will be prepared to deal with the physical aspects of the West Point challenge.
• Four years of English, with a strong emphasis on composition, grammar, literature, and speech.
• Four years of math: algebra, plane geometry, intermediate algebra, and trigonometry.
• Two years of a foreign language.
• Two years of a laboratory science such as chemistry, biology or physics.
• One year of U.S. history, courses in geography, government, and economics will be helpful as well. If your school includes a course in precalculus and calculus in its curriculum, along with a basic computing course, we suggest you consider taking those courses because they will be helpful during your first year at West Point. - Usma.edu

These requirements put a lot of pressure upon the applicants to do their best to get into these schools, it must be hard, but imagine getting a free ride through college (well almost a free ride) when you otherwise would be paying upwards of two hundred thousand dollars in tuition fees. I would enlist and apply, what would you do?

NEW YORK (Oct. 11) - Cory Lidle, a pitcher for the New York Yankees, was killed today when his small private plane crashed into a residential high-rise building on New York City’s Upper East Side, igniting several apartments before pieces of the aircraft crashed to the ground, a high-ranking city official confirmed late this afternoon. - AOL News

I know that this has absolutely NOTHING to do with civics, but it shocked me, so i’m putting it in here anyway.

I know when the Yankees lost their last game, putting them out of the running for the World Series, all us Yankee fans were secretly cursing them under our breath, but never in anyone’s wildest dreams did we see this coming. Hearing this news was shocking, along with the fact that the building that the plane crashed into was the right next to the building that my parents lived in before I was born and they moved here. This is truly a tragedy.

R.I.P. Cory Lidle

What we see on television today is no where near the same as what was shown on the tube fifty years ago. Just compare “Leave it to Beaver” to some of the raunchier shows that are on television today like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Desperate Housewives” where sex is a prominent theme. Which do you like better? The conservative shows of the fifties that were made to fit the standards of least objectionable programming or the shows on television that seem to have no boundaries regarding what they show us?

Julia says: 

I believe that television today is far preferable to that of the 1950s.  Today real issues are shown on tv.  There are entire shows dedicated to gay people, Will and Grace, and sexually promiscuous women, Sex and the City, and this is much more realistic than the suburban lives of the Nelsons or Cleavers.  By showing diverse content on television more people are able to relate and feel as if they are a “normal” and accepted part of society. - Julia More

I agree one hundred percent with what Julia has said here. Television today tells it like it is. There are hundreds of shows on television many of which deal with real issues that we face in life each and everyday. Yes, there are some things on television that are not suitable for everyone to watch, like bloody war movies like “Saving Private Ryan” (which I personally love) and shows with graphic sexual content like “Sex and the City” as Julia said, but that is why there are television ratings and new programs which prevent children from watching things that are not suitable for them to see. These new shows are the bridges that connect television and reality together. By portraying real issues and conflicts, these shows are closer to accurately portraying the way that people live at home.

 I mean, just look at the different channels that are on the television today and the shows that are broadcasted on them. There is Telemundo, a spanish speaking station, that caters to the Latino population in America. Fifty years ago, they weren’t any latinos on the television, but now there are channels devoted to what they like to watch on T.V. There are also shows with primarily African American casts, like “Everybody Hates Chris” and “Girlfriends” on UPN (or whatever its called now, CW11 I think), which would have never existed with least objectionable programing still around. Having these shows on television helps to minimize rascism in the real world, or atleast I think it does. People tend to believe what they see on television, and follow the examples of shows that they watch, so by making the television world more diverse, its helping to make the realworld more accepting.

Fifty years ago you would never have known that homosexuality existed, because it was never shown, infact it was never mentioned or even alluded to. Or even sex at all, I wouldn’t be suprised if people still thought that the stork dropped babies on doorsteps.  In present times, with shows like “Will and Grace” and “The L Word,” homosexuality is a key part which makes the plots of those shows, and I think that by having shows like this on television, it makes the world outside of the telelvision a little more accepting of people who are different from them.    

        The United States military has changed a great deal from the way it used to be around the time of World War II. In addition to the different equipment and different way of running things, the people who comprise this organization are in no way the same as they were sixty years ago. Read any literature from that time period, look at pictures, even watch a movie about World War II and you will see that the average soldier going off to fight the war was white. He was going off to defend his country because it was the right thing to do, and it would make his family proud. Back then, the army was segregated, so looking back it was rare to see any pictures or hear about any black soliders or soldiers of other various minorities. Its amazing how much the army has evolved and changed since then, and all of this change can be attributed to one thing, the G.I. Bill. 

        The G.I. Bill offers inexpensive loans for education and homes to soldiers. It is a great way for people who are not financially equiped to pay for an education, to be able to get one in return for their services in the armed forces, which are often a good experience where the soldiers will learn valuable information that will help them later on in life. My father was in the army, and to this day he still talks about his experiences during that time and how he learned some of the most important life lessons there.

Mr. Olmstead asks: 

          Is it fair that the military attracts primarily America’s poor and working class because of economic incentives?  

        I don’t really think that the G.I. Bill is something that can be seen as fair or unfair for a certain race. It offers the same benefits to all soldiers, no matter what race they are. If it can offer those who otherwise couldn’t get an education, a chance to go out and get one than that is great. it is not reasonable to say that it is unfair that it attracts mainly minorities, because I know that if I was put in a position where the only way I could get an education was to go into one of the branches of the armed forces, than i would be in my fatigues the next day.

As I said before, I think that the programs shown in the 1950’s did not accurately portray the real American family. They showed no diversity in the world, which led to the heightened feelings of rascism during that time period. There was, however, one show that did accurately portray an American family, becuase the actors were actually a family, and that show was “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” staring none other than Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, along with their two teenage sons, Ricky and David. The conflicts on the show were to be expected, problems with the house and problems that the boys had at school with work and girls as well. I find this show very amusing becuase it shadowed the lives of the Nelsons in every way possible; every new person that came into the lives of one of the cast members would have a part written into the show for them

When the real David and Rick got married, to June Blair and Kristin Harmon respectively, their wives joined the cast of Ozzie and Harriet on television as well as in real life. - Tinky “Dakota” Weisblat from the article “U.S. Domestic Comedy”

Talk about an altered perception of reality! Could you imagine being on a television show with your entire family? I  couldn’t, i would think that I would confuse the plot of one show with what was actually going on at home. If the least objectionable programing had a negative effect upon the public becuase it created rascism etc, just think about what it would do to the actors actually living the lives they portrayed on television

Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, and The Andy Griffith Show are all examples of the typical American family; the nuclear family. There is a working father, a mother whose only job is to cook, clean, and take care of her family, and of course the two perfect children. Tie that all together, throw them into the suburbs in a colonial with two cars, and there you have it, the epitome of the American dream, right? While these T.V. shows are fun to watch and entertaining, they are FAR from accurately portrayting the American family in the fifties. “Least Objectionable Programing” prevented T.V. shows from showing the general public anything that was too bold or objectionable. While this was all fine and dandy at the time, it prevented the Shows from accurately portraying life like they do today. Think about it; have you ever seen a hispanic or black person on one of these shows? No. The only example is shown here

 Real life was not so white as it sas on television. Television, comments historian Ella Taylor, ‘increasingly ignored cultural diversity, adopting the motto ‘least objectionable programing’ which gave rise to those least objectionable families, the Cleavers, the Nelsons, and the Andersons.’ Such families were so completely white and Anglo-Saxon that even the Hispanic gardener in ‘Father Knows Best’ went by the name of Frank Smith - Stephanie Coontz from her book, The Way We Never Were 

 I think that these shows were ridiculous. Taking a Hispanic gardener, and making him seem as white as possible, by changing his name is crazy. Tricking the youth of America into thinking that everyone is the same race, white Anglo Saxon is insane. When we look back to the years when racism in America was at its height, during the fifties, and we question why racism was so prevalent, here is the answer to that question. People believe what they see on T.V. and follow the examples that they see. By using “least objectionable programming” to decide what was shown on the Television, it changed the general public’s perception of reality, making them think that real life should be exactly how it is shown on the tube, but it only ended up creating problems in the real world, proving the saying “don’t believe everything you see on T.V.”