Unfair democracy - Essay Example

?Juliana Guzman Pahl June 26th, Unfair Democracy The US stands out, as one of the most democratic nations in the universe, which encompasses human rights, diversity, equality, and good governance. The world commonly refers to the United States as the land of the free. This is subject to its democratic practices, respect for human rights, and equality. However, there have been many recorded and unrecorded controversies relating to US racial inequality and unfairness in many aspects. Disappointedly, stereotypes, religious restrictions or teachings and other things, men and women, no matter if they are the same race, will always find problems when it comes to equality. Actually, there has been trusted statistics that detail aspects of discrimination, unfairness, and inequality on basis of race, ethnic group, and gender. The term race or racial group refers to the categorization of humans into populations, perhaps, ancestral groups because of various sets of heritable characteristics. Racial and ethnic identities are socially controversial and manifest in very conscious ways. Two conflicting social and cultural influences link this manifestation. On the other hand, an ethnic identification is a group whose members identify with each other, through a common cultural characteristic involving religion and language. This shared heritage base on ancestry, history, nationality, physical appearance, and even shared territory. The discrimination mostly happens on the less privilege and minorities. Minority often means less than half of the population though it does not necessary associate to numerical strength. Indeed, some minority groups in the US have a large population than the dominant group. For example, the black Americans refer to the majority in America, though they are economically, and politically inferior to the whites. Some of the minority groups in the US include the Hispanic Americans and Latinos. Against the common, believe that there is absolute fairness in America, there is unfairness including in the education system and in the run for political leadership. In addition, despite the common knowledge that discrimination manifests in many organizations in the US nobody qualifies its existence in the US education system. Indeed, it is arguably true that there is rampant discrimination in the education sector based on race and ethnicity and more specifically to the Hispanic community. In fact, in many cases Hispanic American citizens receive fewer privileges compared to their White counterparts. It is common knowledge that this is the first term in American history that a black president rules America. This is despite the fact that other black presidential aspirants vied and did not succeed in becoming the US president. On the other hand, this does not qualify as discrimination since the Hispanic is fewer in number to gain the majority vote leading to political leadership. Had it been a case of lacking a female president in US, then the argument would do because there are enough women in US to vote in a female despite the common notion that US embraces democracy and equality. On the same breath, with the high esteem that US hold in the word domain, one would always assume that US always conducts the fairest presidential elections in the world. Actually, the US is always an observer in other countries elections. However, this fairness is not present in US elections. Take for example the recent presidential elections where unfairness and cases of fraud dominated the aftermath of the elections. For example, in the case of Al Gore and George W Bush questions of fairness manifest. In the popularity vote, Gore got 50,996,064 votes on November 7 while George W got 50,456,167. Nevertheless, despite Gore having a majority of 539,897 votes Bush won the elections. How fair was it to win the popular vote with a margin exactly the size of Austin, Texas (Kettle Web) and fail to win the presidential elections? Additionally, in 2004, the private companies counting more than 80% of the votes refused to open their software for inspection or to submit to audit procedures hence raising questions of fairness in US presidential elections. In that year, the court convicted Ohio elections officials of tampering with 2004 presidential recount. This is a good signal of unfairness in the US presidential elections. Additionally, there is no federal agency that regulating or overseeing voting machine industry. This subjects the entire voting process to unfairness and errors. More so, unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail bears the mandate to carryout 30% of all U.S. votes. In a case of nepotism, the governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, was a brother to President George Bush raising queries on the fairness of the US voting system. Most significantly, the chairperson and owner of the US voting machine, Senator Chuck Hagel was actually in the list of George W. Bush’s vice-presidential candidates in the run up to the presidential elections. Indeed, we even have issues of American media supporting various candidates against the norms. At the same time, News media report premature election results and exit polls, which discourage some voters who opt not to vote (Green Web). These cases are not strange in other developing countries but they raise serious questions of fairness in a democratic country like the United States of America. As such, however much we would like to qualify US as a free land full of democracy, cases of unfairness prove us wrong. Strings of discrimination, inequality, and now unfairness negate US to be the land of the free. In matters relating to education, the federal government is so supportive of education that it allowed the formation of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund that is the nation's leading organization supporting Hispanic higher education in US. This fund offers scholarships to Hispanic American students enabling them to access and advance college education among Hispanic Americans. As a result, many Hispanic American students earn college and university degrees in America (U.S. Scholarship Guide Web). However, this equally, interprets the existence of unfairness in that the government should include the Hispanics in the national education fund instead of creating one for a minority group. In addition, in US and most European nations, recently arrived immigrants and minority groups as the Hispanics attend inferior schools and classes and face discrimination in accessing diverse education opportunities that are conveniently available to the majority American citizens. Actually, the levels of discrimination upon the less privileged minority like the Hispanics on matters relating to education are on the increase where about 64 % confirmed this in 2012 against 38% in 2002 (Pew Research Center Web). Ideally, about 54 % of Hispanic population views this form of discrimination as a major problem that is preventing the Latinos from succeeding in America. Indeed, about 16% of the Hispanic population believes that they face discrimination in US subject to their income and education levels. Most assuredly, racial and ethnic discrimination against the Hispanics in the education sector is an undoing to the children who would henceforth fail to make the cut for many opportunities ion the economy. This prevents the Hispanics from exerting significant contribution to the US economy (Open Society Foundation Web). As such, against the common assumption that US offer universal education to all, then it is quite clear that most minority communities are yet to enjoy this privilege. As seen herein, the Hispanic attends inferior school and cannot access diverse education opportunities in US. Indeed, the rise of human rights groups, activists, and lawyers to fight discrimination proves there are unfairness in the democratic US. Events in history have influenced certain mixes amongst different groups or ethnicities throughout the world, thus creating a more diverse humanity than just islander does, black, or white. In addition, classifying humans based on physical traits, it is difficult for the coexistence of races through invasion, migration, and others. Genetically, a race defines a group with gene frequencies differing from those of the other groups of the human species. Nevertheless, by limiting the criteria to such traits as skin pigmentation, color and form of hair, shape of head, stature, and form of nose. There are laws that regulate the rights of each individual but still the conflict is present. People lack the freedom of equality, therefore it is very familiar to react protective in racial cases. Often people feel harassed due to their appearances. As minority, I feel related. Countless times, I reflect deeply on what people meant by saying something as I seek to find a deep significance in a sentence. On the other hand, I always reflect on my judgment because at the end I am just a foreigner living in someone else land. Normally, changes that a new country brings to you occasionally frighten people. Personally, my opinion and beliefs are significant to me. Events throughout my life had brought me facing several perspectives and thoughts on the racial matter topic. In fact, I have felt out of place in many cases and it was extremely complicated to become accustomed into a new society, in this case I found United States as a rich and diverse racial country. Drawing from my personal origin and constructs, traditions and ideas overwhelmed my point of view on how to interpret others. Racial matters are like an internal human being conflict that no one dares to talk about. Those gaps keep us from communicating and helping each other. A misused gift from God that is complex to manage and control, the human being needs to acknowledge fairness and equilibrium, we are all one, and we are a unit. We play the same role in this planet and we shall put a finale to this endless fight of domination. Works Cited Green, Roedy. The Fairness of American Presidential Elections. Canadian mind products, 2012. < http://mindprod.com/politics/election.html> Kettle, Martin. The most unfair US election ever. The Guardian, 2000. Web 26, June 2012. < http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/dec/22/worlddispatch.martinkettle> Open Society Foundation. Racial Discrimination in Education—Comparative Experience in the U.S. and Europe. Web 26, June 2012. < http://www.soros.org/events/racial-discrimination-education-comparative-experience-us-and-europe> Pew Research Center. 2007 National Survey of Latinos: As Illegal Immigration Issue Heats Up, Hispanics Feel a Chill. Web 26, June 2012. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2007/12/13/iv-perceptions-of-discrimination/ U.S. Scholarship Guide. Scholarships for Hispanic Americans. Web 26, June 2012. < http://www.usscholarshipguide.org/scholarship/minority/hispanic.html> Read More