From the time we were in elementary school, we were indoctrinated to believe America’s greatness lay in its equality of opportunity.
“You can do anything,” our teachers told us. “Everyone gets free education; everyone gets taken care of; everyone has as much of a chance at his or her dreams as everyone else. After all, this is America.”
Obviously, these teachers hadn’t spent much time in inner-city Milwaukee.
If they had, they would have seen that equality of opportunity is the most widely believed lie in America today.
I fell victim to the myth as much as anyone. Growing up in a small town where big yards, friendly neighbors and small two-parent families were the norm, it was easy to believe the United States was a land of limitless opportunity. Schools were strong and safe, business was thriving from the ’90s boom, and the biggest problems for the police (unfortunately for me) involved teens getting together for a few beers on a Friday or Saturday night.
But after spending Sunday afternoon in Milwaukee’s south side with state legislator Pedro Colón, going door-to-door to ask people about community problems, I soon realized I grew up in a fantasyland. Houses there were small, run-down duplexes, often looking as if they were barely standing, with heavy blankets taped up over the windows. Several people refused to answer their doors out of fear, even on a Sunday afternoon. Many did not speak English. Most looked exasperated, with several children making noise in the background.
They do not live this way by choice. Well-paying jobs left the area during the economic boom, moving to the suburbs with all the workers who could afford to leave. Service jobs and a few manufacturing plants are all that remain. The Milwaukee public schools are sub-par at best, with much of their tax base leaving for the suburbs. Most new residents are Latino immigrants, whose strong Roman Catholic faith discourages birth control. Many wish they could leave to find a better job; few can afford to do so.
The easiest way to make money there is dealing drugs, and this business suffers no shortage of entrepreneurs. When asked about problems in the neighborhoods, the residents who responded generally pointed out a drug house or a prostitution ring.
Police don’t have the resources to stop these crimes; they’re usually occupied in dealing with violence. Four zip codes (roughly one-half of one percent of the state’s population) account for more than 50 percent of firearm homicides in the state of Wisconsin. All are located in inner-city Milwaukee.
Some equal opportunity. Our leaders preach about the oppressive Taliban or Iraqi regimes, where victimized people live in poverty and persistent threats of violence. Milwaukee lies in the heartland of America, and its problems go largely ignored.
I don’t want to equate starving Afghan tent-dwellers with hungry immigrants in low-income housing, but the principle stands. Our leaders promote this country as one of the freedom of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness while those in the forgotten inner city live in fear for their lives and are effectively enslaved in an unhappy poverty.
The situation may not be completely hopeless for kids in the inner city; there are ways out. But running away from any kind of slavery — physical or economic — isn’t easy, and it takes luck, extreme initiative to learn in spite of failing schools and a willingness to ignore the examples of some of the community’s wealthiest people, the drug dealers, to escape.
But the escape of its most extraordinary people does not help those still left in the inner city, and the hardships these people must endure to get out doesn’t exactly represent an equality of opportunity.
Breaking the cycle will not be easy. It will require a national education system that levels the playing field, giving children in urban areas the same resources and quality teachers as the suburbs. It will require a shift in culture. But most of all, it will require our leaders (generally wealthy individuals themselves) to stop accepting a nation where extreme wealth coexists with extreme poverty.
Until they do, true equality of opportunity in America will continue to be limited to the only place it currently exists: the mouths of elementary school teachers.
Matt Lynch ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science.
