The boy Barack Obama’s life in American. Being one who has been born from an African father, Obama’s life as a boy started at a lowly state, as then the blacks were still considered as people who could achieve nothing in life with their slavery background, he faced the inequity for being black as white supremacy was still at the vertex. But Obama having the advantage of being born American and obtaining the education in the university where he studied law, he had a privilege to get into power as a politician; first as an American senator and later on as the American president, and being first of his kind changing all the beliefs that say “black won’t rule America”. Inequity is when a certain group of people are more things than the opposite group of people and expect the same way; but privilege is where by a person receive favour to access certain things, while power is the right by law to give certain orders or make certain decisions for the people. In the abuse of power has given privilege to one group and deny the other, and there by create inequity in public services.

Education is meant to help to change the level of the way people think, and to improve their life, and because of this it is thought to be equally accessed by all without regard to race, sex or origin of every person. However this has not been the case, it is seen that a certain group of people has a privilege, while others are put away or hindered by a certain power that has been put in place in order to control that minor group. This power may be in a form of law or the system that has been set deliberately in the name of justice; it is justice to they who have set it as long as it serves their purpose, but to they who face that kind of power see how wrong it is, because they who set it looked only on one side of the coin when they were putting that law or system in place. “Today, public schools continue to be one of the most embattled sites… Throughout the nation, our schools continue to underserve poor and minority student populations.” (Wiggan, 2011, p 13). It is evident in history that people would work and be able to pay their school fees, and be able to obtain the education they needed and become useful to society, people like Dr David Livingstone the missionary to Africa from Scottland; but today being an immigrant in America you cannot work by law; the law that has hindered them from reaching onto higher education like it was the case of Livingstone- though most of them are poor and cannot afford to pay their fees through their savings from home. However the American students who have the privilege of getting school loan or most of them are well-being financially are allowed to work because of their being citizens of the land, but schools expect both the immigrant and the citizen to perform well in class and be paying their full fees in time. This is one way power has been abuse in consideration of what is to be done in order to achieve something because it aids inequity.

America might be big and very advanced in democracy, but she cannot be skipped when it comes into abusive power; throughout the history she has been seen setting laws that brought oppression on a certain group of people that are minority or use power wrongly on them. In the days of Rosa Parks you would hear of the bus service policy where by the black person had a particular seat to sit in the bus; it took people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr to start protesting against such policies for things to start changing in America and to see the black minority start taking part in a society. And today you would see the police service murdering or abusing black people in the street like the case of George Floyd who was choked to death in Minneapolis. Police are the ones you can trust in the street, but they became to be the ones who break the law by abusing the power entrusted to them for the sake of their belief against the minority people, especially the blacks.  “We cannot bring back George Floyd or the thousands of people who were murdered or lynched by our police…” (Fine, 2021, p 1), but this has been going on in America for decades, and how could people be silent; the land that has very long history of democracy, but it is still learning of what it means- one can say that democracy is the government of the people, to the people, for the people and chosen by the people themselves, however this meaning does complete in the land when you see how policies and made and applied to the people. Some people have the privilege while some are left behind because of belonging to minority group. Hence you will see that today the great number of people who are doing well are white because institutions also are involved in perpetuate privilege and inequity in America.

The government is supposed to be on top of control of all that happens in America, that is, it is the one that has power to correct all error that happen in the country by putting in place policies that will put the people under one umbrella and be able to share it equally regardless of race, origin or sex; but it cannot be discounted from the abuse of power and giving privilege to a certain group of people because I believe it has been swayed by politics, for politicians believe that foreigners steal the jobs of the American citizens. So in the cause of creating jobs in order to win the votes of the people of America, they make policies that will hinder the immigrants either from coming to America or from working in America. But no one think of how one would come today into America, and when they are allowed to work, tomorrow he would be working; while someone was born here and grew up here, and has all the right to work but he fails to find the job. The truth is that the jobs that the immigrant grab are the jobs that a born American would not go after; so those jobs will always be there since the American people themselves do not want them, hence the person would come today being given a chance to work, tomorrow he will be on the road going to work. In this case this person has not stolen any job, in most especially that the born American is prioritised in working places when choosing the qualified candidate for the particular vacancy.

International graduates of U.S. colleges and universities have few visa opportunities to stay in the United States unless an employer sponsors them for a work visa, which is a costly and uncertain process due to the binding visa cap. Difficulties in obtaining permission to work in the United States may encourage talented students to return to their countries of origin or accept job offers from firms in other countries, and the loss of this talent might threaten U.S. leadership in STEM fields. (Demirci, M., 2019, para 3)

But if you look throughout the history of America, you will see that she has benefited a lot from the people who immigrated to her; so the policy of stopping the immigrant from working is not democratic and just, but it just widens the gap of inequality by the abuse of power in order to achieve self-seek in politics, hence promote privilege.

When power is being abuse by they who are intrusted with it there is one nature of a person who has all that is thought to be minority, and is greatly affected with injustice, for her being in the state intersectionality; the overlapping identities (e.g., race, gender, class, sexuality) affect her experience negatively in cause of power, privilege and inequity. For instant assume that the person is an immigrant from Africa and is a female, she might go to a company where a black person can be employed but cannot take a smart job- they prefer to employ men in such jobs that are hard because of their strength- but though there is both the job of a secretary which they would give to women but not a black person and the hard job which they would give to men including a black person but not a woman; she is denied of employment because of her being both black and a woman. In this case the woman has been affect because of both her skin colour and sex, for if she were white she could have been given the secretary job, or if she were a man she could have been advised to take the job that is given to black males; but since she was neither man nor white she has been sent away. And there is some circumstances where the women employees are abused in the working place, and another woman can face such case in a double portion, one for being black and the other for being woman itself; being taken as though she is incompetent of her job even when she does the best.

Sometimes, even when black females are carefully professional and competent, white colleagues claim they see the black behaviour their minds envision because they so want to see it, even when there is little evidence of it. (Muh, Gutierrez, et al, 2012)

In the society throughout the history of mankind there has not been something as hard as being a woman, who has been facing all kind of segregations as for being weak, female and also having dark colour; for during slavery being a black woman was equal to an animal, for she had no privacy even of her most private body part, but being the white woman it was another thing where as she was not allowed to uncover any of her body part, she had to dress fully cover. To have a close look of these two cases, you will see that both women had no full right of their life but the former was most less privileged than the later because of her dark colour and her being female.

Freedom of the most people today has not been complete because there are so many gaps in the policies that we make in trying to put in control somethings or to win the favour of the people in order meet certain goals, especially political goals because when people in power are trying to make those policies, they only look on one side of the coin that is more beneficial to them without considering the other side of it for it looks not beneficial to them. And because of their action the land of America loses the talent that the people she has trained have for they have not been born American. The individuals surfer while on the other hand the institutions and government system fail their job to close the gaps of inequity and privilege because they misuse the power given to them for the sake of self-gain or personal belief. To achieve equity and inclusive the power given to lead the people has to be used wisely and with sober mind.

Reference

Fine, M. (2021). George Floyd (October 14, 1973-May 25, 2020): Make Future Public Health Better Than the Past. American Journal of Public Health (1971), 111(5), 758–758. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306239

Wiggan, G. (2011, Aug. 26) Power, Privilege, and Education : Pedagogy, Curriculum, and Student Outcomes, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/lwtclearningcommons-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3017789.
Created from lwtclearningcommons-ebooks on 2024-08-14 20:32:53.

Demirci, M. (2019). TRANSITION OF INTERNATIONAL SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, AND MATHEMATICS STUDENTS TO THE U.S. LABOR MARKET: THE ROLE OF VISA POLICY. Economic Inquiry, 57(3), 1367–1391. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.12795

Muhs, Y., Gabriella Gutiérrez, et al. (2012), Presumed Incompetent : The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, University Press of Colorado. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/lwtclearningcommons-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3442895.