America, considered by the world as the "land of the free and home of the brave". But does this saying come with some sort of social guarantee? If you come to America from another country, are you "guaranteed" the ability to have what the rest of America gets to enjoy? As I look deeper into racism's ongoing livelihood in our country, it becomes apparent that America feels "entitled" to have what they feel belongs to them. Whether it's the best job, the highest pay, the nicest car, or the front of the bus, does America have an obsession with always getting what we feel we deserve? Does our capitalist society have a sort of "social superiority complex", that both motivates people to come to our country, while also driving other countries to dislike us?
You hear about it all the time, in the news, on the internet, in blogs and in magazine articles. Some person or some group is always complaining about how they are "entitled" to get something in America. Perhaps you've even heard the phrase "only in America", eluding to the idea that in this country, you can have or become anything you want if you work at it.
But what about the dark side of this ideology? Remember slavery, when America felt compelled to bring in Africans to work their farms and fields? Later, these slaves would be bought, sold, and even fought over as part of the Civil War. No doubt the underlying reasoning was that land owners, who had worked long and hard for their farms and fields, were "entitled" to have slaves, since it was key to their businesses.
The connection between the superiority complex and racism seems to be this idea of entitlement. We often hear the phrase "someone owes me something" or "I'm owed this or that because it's mine and I worked hard for it". Capitalism 101 teaches us that "in the process of buying and selling, an exchange of some sort occurs between parties". But what if the exchange is "a slave, in exchange for money"? Or what if the exchange is "a person's million dollar pension, in exchange for funds that could provide heath care for a poor elderly person"? Or what about the exchange of "more profit for a business by going overseas, in exchange for some lost American jobs"? In some ways, this capitalist notion has a classist undertone to it.
At what point do we look ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves "Do I really need it just because it's owed to me, and is it right for society?". Some would argue that that question is a moot point, because in America "Whats mine is mine, because I'm entitled to it".
Capitalists would say "nothing personal, its only business". But how long can we keep saying this, before humanity gets replaced by profits?
Look around, and you'll find that its already happening...