Myth Of Individual Opportunity Essay

The Myth of Individual Opportunity in America “Our workforce and our entire economy are strongest when we embrace diversity to its fullest, and that means opening doors of opportunity to everyone and recognizing that the American Dream excludes no one” Thomas Perez, the United States Secretary of Labor, once stated. Although that may be true, that’s not what it is like in America. “Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country” (New York Times). Everyone has experienced some sort of inadequate opportunity in their lives, whether it is something as small as not winning concert tickets over the radio, to something as big as not getting a job because of the color of your skin, your gender, or your overall appearance.

In America, we are known for our freedoms, our rights, our democracy, but what about our equality? Stated by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of equality is “The quality or state of being equal; the quality or state of having the same rights, social status, etc.” We take pride in our country as a whole, but we should not take pride in how different races, genders, and nationalities, and social statuses are treated. Individual opportunity does not exist because of color/race discrimination, racial profiling, gender inequality, and economically based

Racial profiling has been going on since the dawn of time. The Attack on Pearl Harbor caused America to panic. Many feared that the Japanese living in America were associated with the attack. The only evidence was their ancestral history. Many were Japanese born Americans who never even visited Japan, but that didn’t stop the government. They were, in turn, rounded up and taken to internment