Commentary on local issues, viewpoints of residents and community leaders, and letters. : We Hold the Key to Opportunity : Forget “Luck”--Minorities Must Use Their Own Muscle

. . . And place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining to struggle against it.

--Thucydides (471?-400? BC)

“Opportunity, better education, higher wages, better jobs. . . . “ These are but few of the things minorities claim others have and not they.

Allow me to define opportunity : It is a temporary intangible that knocks on every door. It is likely to knock a number of times, until it gets tired of being ignored, and then moves on. When it becomes tangible, it takes any form that our dreams, desires or goals give it. Opportunity comes along when we are spiritually, mentally and physically prepared to receive it. It is not a “lucky break”; it is not a “handout.”

It is definitely not a result of what someone else did for me.

I get a sour aftertaste whenever I hear all the “lacks of . . . “ that we minorities are burdened with. We need to stop pounding on an absence of opportunity, on racism, on prejudice, on everything that everyone else gets, and we don’t.

Success and opportunity are completely blind to self-serving excuses. They see no color, no race, no gender, no creed, no age, no “negative past.” They do not conduct research to determine demographics, geographics, psychographics.

Role models abound. Can anyone, with any sincerity, claim that Cubans in Miami are a “minority?” Of what ethnicity are a good number of Miami’s business people and politicians?

Let’s turn to San Antonio--I guess former Mayor Henry Cisneros must not be a minority because he’s “got a break.” Is Dr. Cisneros not a successful and respected individual under any circumstances?

And, what about Mayor Bradley of Los Angeles?

And what about Gen. Colin Powell?

Or Jaime Escalante? Gloria Molina? Edward James Olmos? Ricardo Montalban? Kirk Douglas?

Martin Sheen and the Estevez clan? David Lizarraga? Eduardo Caballero?

Gus Machado? Guillermo (Willie) Frixione? Bill Davila? John M. Johnson? C. Z. Wilson? Arturo Villar? Jose Lozano? Raul Alarcon?

Michael Jackson? Diana Ross? Carlos Santana? Jerry Garcia?

And certainly not least Ramon Echeveste and Juan Mendoza, “doctors” in auto mechanics who keep my cars on the road, two boys from the barrio who wanted to make it, and did.

Under what piece of heaven were these people standing when it opened up and showered them with good fortune? Has heaven suddenly closed to a majority of common folk? Perhaps heaven’s research analysis showed that no good luck was to be wasted on minorities.

We write our own ticket.

Life will pay what we ask of it. All life asks in return is that we be decent human beings who have something to offer our fellow world-inhabitants. Life asks that we prepare ourselves for the opportunities it sends our way, that we have goals, true and healthy desires.

It is in our hands to succeed or to fail. It is in our hands to get the “breaks.”

It’s time we took responsibility for ourselves. It’s time to get off the “let’s feel sorry for us” wagon. Some of us are not looking; we’re just standing in the way waiting for somebody to tell us to do this or that--we do it without questioning reason or logic (the L.A. riots, for example).

Then, of course, there is the justification: “We are an oppressed minority. Give us opportunity, give us a break, give us hope, give us, give us, give us.” AIDS is not near as deadly as the GIVEUS disease.

We, as “minorities,” have a lot of muscle, we have power.

Along this vein, let us remember President Theodore Roosevelt: “Power undirected by high purpose spells calamity; and high purpose by itself is utterly useless if the power to put it into effect is lacking.”

High purpose has always been available. Power is in our hands.

It’s time to put these two together; it’s time to combat the GIVEUS disease with a big shot of UPTOME antidote.