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Gregory Rodriguez |
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It's a dog-eat-dog world. It's sink or swim. Every man for himself. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Barack Obama loves reconciliation, but it isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sometimes it isn't even possible, and let's be honest, it isn't always the point.
If Americans are such huge fans of big dreams and high rolling, self-made tycoons and upward mobility, why then do we insist on seeing our national political elites -- who are also generally our economic and educational elites -- throw back a shot of whiskey or lace up bowling shoes?
If I didn't already prefer Ketel One vodka in my martinis, I might very well call for my own boycott against Absolut.
Last February, I found myself in the difficult position of explaining American insecurity to a group of Mexican undergraduates at a college in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of the border at Brownsville, Texas. I was taking questions after delivering a lecture on the long-term prospects of Mexican immigrants being accepted into U.S. society. A neatly dressed young man in the back stood up to ask a pointed question. "How," he said politely in Spanish, "could such a rich and powerful country be so self-centered as to build a wall on its border to keep people out?"
If Americans have such a low opinion of politicians -- and they do -- why then do they invest so many hopes and expectations in one of them every four years?
In some ways, Barack Obama's speech on race last week was as brilliant as it was nuanced. But for all its rhetorical beauty, it was also an enormous step backward and, in the end, a rather self-serving call for more discussion about racial grievance in a country that has already done way too much talking.
For decades, critics of affirmative action on both sides of the aisle have argued that the policy calls into question the talents and qualifications of the minorities who benefit from it. They insisted that it generates a cloud of suspicion around the successful black or Latino student or professional. It makes whites wonder whether their minority colleagues really "earned" their positions.
All right, I admit it. I sold out. Last Wednesday night, I went on “The Colbert Report,” and I can't quite shake the feeling that I made a pact with the devil.
If Barack Obama really wants to rise above the "old politics of division," he might want to start by putting that American flag pin back on his lapel and retracting his all too earnest explanation as to why he took it off in the first place.