In Which Miss Jill is Semi-Socialist

When we were leaving the Harlem Chapel on Tuesday night, a man approached my friend and me and asked, "Who is in charge of those surveillance cameras? (there are some on the chapel) I think that there may be something on those tapes that would help some guys I know. They're in trouble." After my friend went back into the building to find an authority figure, we started having a heart to heart. He was monologueing me about his love for Sylvan learning center when he suddenly said, "Ma'am, I think that you should stand closer to the building. There are some wild kids in this neighborhood and you could get hurt." After I acquiesced he said, "Since the change folks like us should look out for each other. Doesn't matter if you're white and I'm black, I should try to help you." The change meaning:



At first I laughed to myself about it, but then I started think that maybe there is seriously something wrong with our country if it took Obama for some people to start feeling enfranchised. The older I get, the more angry I am about the economic and educational disparities that I see here in the United States. So much in life is affected by who your parents are, who your parents know and what your parents taught you or didn't teach you to value. My MBA friend says that moving to New York has made her start turning socialist, because the economic stratification is so blatant. Seriously, you can get from the Bronx to the Upper East Side in twenty minutes. It reminds me of this movie I saw about Israel. The Palestinian side looked like a sketchy part of Honduras and the Israeli side looked like an affluent part of the United States and I thought, "No wonder they are mad!"

I think that the only way you can be blind to inequalities is if you are a suburban upper middle class white guy, living with your parents (yes, I am thinking of someone in particular) I realize that no one reads this for my social commentary, so that is all.