“I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.”
Who remembers that?I sure do, I grew up in my elementary school days repeating this every morning while admiring my country’s flag. I didn’t truly understand what the words meant till many, many, many years later. I still question them, but now with a more open mind and more education I can form an educated opinion on them. I am even subjected to my dad’s many stories of how he and many other children also recited the National Anthem. I don’t even remember most of the words to it, and I can almost guarantee that most students now don’t even know one or two words.
Now you might be asking yourself why I brought this up. Well, here recently the United States has become divided, well a little more than normal that is, with the media coverage of Arizona’s new illegal immigration law. It also seems that liberty and justice has become skewed. However, I would like to add that these problems and issues have been around for many years and nothing really has been done about it. This time however the media has taken this story by the reigns and have accelerated the divide. The real issue isn’t with the law, the law is fine. The Arizona law emulates Federal Law and many other State laws, almost to the letter.
So what’s the big issue then? People say it promotes racial profiling against those of Hispanic origin, and that it is discriminatory. Well in order for you to understand where I am going here I’m going to define a few terms for you as per Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary.
1. Discrimination
a. 1 a : the act of discriminating b : the process by which two stimuli differing in some aspect are responded to differently
2 : the quality or power of finely distinguishing
3 a : the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually b : prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment
2. Reverse Discrimination
a. discrimination against whites or males (as in employment or education)
i. I’d like to add that I do not exactly agree with this definition.
3. Minority
a. 1 a : the period before attainment of majority b : the state of being a legal minor
2 : the smaller in number of two groups constituting a whole; specifically : a group having less than the number of votes necessary for control
3 a : a part of a population differing from others in some characteristics and often subjected to differential treatment b : a member of a minority group minorities> 4. Illegal
a. Not according to or authorized by law.
The reason I wanted to give these definitions is to provide a little more background on what is taking place here in the United States when it comes to the battle with illegal immigration and why what is truly wrong here isn’t the law.
We see that the word Discrimination is basically an action against two different things and how that action is interpreted. Though Merriam Webster obviously has a rather unique way of looking at the term of reverse discrimination I’ll still use it as an example. Back to the basics, reverse discrimination is nothing more than when roles of an original discrimination have been reversed. We can see this by using colors of peoples as well as races of peoples. That leads us to the term Minority and to the seed of the true issue here. Minority, in basic terms, is a smaller part of a whole group, though Webster’s added in the relation to peoples by using the term population.
So we can see that discrimination can swing both ways, but in reality a minority cannot and be able to stay a minority. However, the preferential treatment that a minority receives in order to balance fairness and justice within the group whole continues. That is where reverse discrimination begins. Now there are some out there that will state that Minorities are still in need of said help, and to a point I’ll agree, but not when it comes to a person’s skin color. Because in reality, a minority isn’t a skin, it’s a class and by class I mean those sharing the same social status. Many people of varying colors share classes so how can a minority be labeled onto a person simply by the color of their skin?
I could go on with my view points on discrimination and minorities for a long time, but that’s not the point of this blog, which leads me to the last definition I provided; Illegal. Since we are the United States of America, our laws apply to anyone, and I stress anyone, inside our national borders. So when someone from another country enters in to this country without permission, regardless of their skin color or original national citizenship, they have broken our laws, and if they do not proceed to attempt to immigrate legally, they are by definition, illegal immigrants.
Now we tie in the other terms to illegal immigrants. They are a minority, because of their class; they are usually low income and as such live in the same area as other peoples that have low income. Yet, because they are a minority, our Nation provides preferential treatment for them. They are protected by laws that are supposed to stop discrimination. Problem is that when people speak out against illegal immigration then they themselves become discriminated against, and the laws aren’t very good at stopping this reversal.
So why did I start this with the “Pledge of Allegiance” then? Well, America is my home. I was born here, and I take a lot of pride in being an American citizen, and I also take pride in knowing that others also want to share in that pride. I know that America has its problems and some can be quite enormous. Our history is also stained by many terrifying things; slavery, civil war, atrocities against American Indians, segregation, and discrimination. However, we are also a place where many wonderful things can take place; Independence, Freedom, desegregation, and many more.
It is sad, but Liberty and Justice, and even Freedom come at a cost. That cost in this case comes at the price of enforced borders. While America will always welcome those who wish to immigrate here legally, we cannot continue to condone illegal immigration. It is a slow, but strong wave, that will erode the very values that this country was founded on; Liberty, Justice, and Freedom. When Americans fight with each other over how one state acts to protect its borders, justice and liberty loses out. When rights that are reserved for citizens of America are given to those who have no interest in becoming citizens then what will happen to America? It will die a quick and quiet death and people will wonder what happened.
I could go on with other points that aggravate me about how some American citizens are behaving over this matter, but I will not. I will simply leave you with a question.
“What is it about America that you take pride in and how would you protect it?”
