Multicultural Quiz – Response
http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/quiz/quiz1.htm
My first feelings were frustration at being asked to differentiate between statistics as absolute numbers and not as relative values. But then I began to focus on the questions, rather than the answers, realizing that the answers were not so much the point.
Rather, the point is that the perception of the condition of our nation very much differs from the reality, and that our culture maintains and even furthers a wide disparity between class, race, wealth,and orientation.
It makes me sick, frankly. I am recalling a conversation with a friend who works with lawyers and is helping a judge run for election, and we were discussing why it is that so few judges are ever contested in their elections. The fact is that most lawyers don’t want to give up their high salaries to serve as judges, because they would trade wealth for power.
I am deeply saddened by the statistics that this quiz uncovers. And I believe it’s time to become more assertive, more of an advocate for the disenfranchised and underserved, and more vocal about speaking out against the horrible bias in wealth distribution as well as the inequities in law enforcement that are indicative of a sick, perverted culture that advocates luxuriant wealth and self-interest over the well-being of the “huddled masses” that our statue of Liberty requests come to this place.