An Equal Society: Are We There Yet?

Today’s society is supposed to be a somewhat fair and equal one, not one that discriminates on the basis of religion, handicap, race, or gender. As good as this sounds, it is not always the case. Here at Bolsa, it seems that the old saying “Birds of a feather flock together” holds true.

Walking around campus at lunch, you see groups of all Vietnamese students, all Hispanic students, and a small number of other ethnic groups Even the birds are segregated. Pigeons and seagulls separate themselves from one another.

The ethnic groups tend to be further divided by gender. In this scenario, the school is segregated but equal. For the most part, the meals are equal, eating space is equal, and annoyances by the birds equal.

Once the bell rings and you enter the classroom, things start to change. However, according to the Office of Communications at Mount Holyoke College, “traditional teacher training has focused on teaching to boys’ interests and behaviors. This strategy is thought to help keep order in classrooms.

“Boys predominately express their frustrations by acting out, disrupting the classroom in a variety of ways. Girls, however, predominately express their frustrations by acting in, becoming silent, withdrawn, and non-participative.

“One way to control boys was to be sure that they were contributing, therefore, teachers have traditionally called on boys more often than girls.”

In an elementary school, this may be true, but it certainly doesn’t seem to apply here. When going over homework questions in his Physics classes, Mr. Nellis uses his class roster and a computer program to pick a random number.

As Mrs. Allen sometimes says, “I’m an equal opportunity mean person.” Of course, we all know Mrs. Allen is a nice person.

However, among students, things are somewhat different. Some male students feel they are better than the female students are and say that they can’t do something “because they’re girls.” In a PE class, a group of boys is seen trying to kick a group of girls off of a basketball court the girls were on before the boys arrived. “Your kind belongs over there,” says one of the boys, presumably jokingly, but his expression seems like he’s not kidding. Later, they played a basketball game, boys against girls. The girls won, bruising the boys’ sensitive over-inflated egos.

During our own International Week and Miss International pageant, there are signs of racial tensions. Some students choose not to respect others, their race, nor their culture. These students choose to display the flag of the entrant they are supporting throughout the event, regardless of which entrant is performing.

When you leave high school, things don’t change much, or they change for the worse. There are still those who feel that they are superior, those who hate people who are different. Although there is less of this now, there are still cases of police officers being unfair to minorities (à la Rodney King). People are still made fun of because they are of a different race or religion, and there are fights between rival Vietnamese and Mexican gangs.

Additionally, there still hasn’t been a minority United States president much less a female one. This sort of an attitude is even reflected on television. It took the third incarnation of Star Trek (Deep Space

According to recent studies, the average woman is paid 75¢ for every dollar men make. Some of this can be attributed to sexual discrimination on the part of today’s employers, but a lot of it is due to the differences between the men and women in the workforce. Indeed, there have been cases where there were job applicants with equal qualifications and the female applicant was given lower pay than her male counterpart.

This is illegal and the employer can be sued for it. However, according to Brian Carnell (“The Wage Gap Explained”), “Education level is a primary predictor of income for both men and women. Yet many of the women in the work force today came of age at a time when women were discouraged and even prevented from obtaining college degrees.” Today, this is not the case, and the wage gap should decrease over time and eventually be eliminated.

Will sexism and racism ever end? In the Star Trek series, it took World War III before racism (between humans at least) was eliminated, when humans realized that there were others loving outside of our beautiful blue-green planet in the Alpha Quadrant. A planet that must be shared equally by all who inhabit it. Only time will tell.