Inequality

The greatest inequality in our American society is economic inequality. Those who are born into minorities live lives of quality and length determined more by their socioeconomic status than by their skin color, ethnicity or sexual orientation. Retrofitting our society by focusing on the externally obvious, leaves the dark secret of American poverty in the shadows, where it can be exploited by the greedy and powerful.

Pfc. J. Villanueva, 19, killed in Afghanistan.

Two stunning examples exist in our urban environments. Communities of color still have staggering drop-out and virtual illiteracy rates, leading to unemployment, imprisonment and drug addiction. Poor children of all colors turn to the military to get advanced education, even if they have equal intellectual capacity and merit to the children of the more affluent. Many of them return damaged and incapable of collecting on the promise of a better life.

The gross inequality in public education is linked to the militarism-education relationship. Generationally poor individuals are coerced economically into military service as the employment for those with inadequate education dries up in the private sector. This serves many purposes for the wealthier Americans who consciously or unconsciously support this system politically. Taxes are kept lower by not supporting universal high-quality public education. A surplus supply of unskilled labor is available to keep service costs lower. The children of the more affluent have the edge with less competition from thir peers who lose two or more years to military sevrice at great risk. A "volunteer" military is maintained which saves the children of those with resources from being endangered by a universal and equitable military draft.

Entrepreneurs, especially the new wave of "social entrepreneurs" who utilize non-profits to gain personal fame and fortune, profit from social inequality by engaging in remedial services for the poor who are seriously impaired by poverty and/or military service. These services are subsidized through tax breaks and government subsidies. These tax breaks and government subsidies take money away from providing universal preventative human services, like a high-quality public education for all citizens.

Educational insitutions, where most academics will preach against the horrors of war and violence, are perhaps the most complicit cannibals in this system. By their push toward greater elitism and high-cost amenities on campus like vanity sports facilities and teams, they have made higher education unreachable for the great majority of the poor. Think-tanks and institutes pull millions from government education coffers each year with no discernible positive effect of public education. On-line degree mills have raped the public subsidies and loan programs. Educational institutions then profit from military-veteran tuition programs, accessed by the poor who survive their enlistment in the military to escape poverty.

As humanist, who grew up in one of the poorest and most congested small cities in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s, I have seen the effects of war on the lives of men who were economically coerced into battle to fight the wars of the wealthy and ideologically corrupt. I escaped that fate myself, but felt as early as my teen years that I must continue to speak out against the abuse of the poor by a government, any government, which is unduly influenced by militarism. The U.S. government has become such a government once again. So, as some jump up and down over the death of one violent lunatic, I continue to look at the greater cause of suffering: The use of violence at the expense of the poor in a futile attempt to achieve peace.