My mom and dad, like many of their generation, were the first in their families to go to college. It's true that their families owned small businesses, but only one grandparent even finished high school.
When I was a kid, we lived in a housing project. Admittedly my dad was in dental school, paid for in part by the GI bill, and my mother worked as a secretary, and he worked in a hospital. But still, we were poor.
And now we aren't. There was government help along the way, the GI bill, the housing project, my husband and I took out student loans, and the guaranteed home loan helped, too. For all of those I am grateful, so would not deny them to others. But we also worked hard.
When I was in law school, our con crim pro (constitutional criminal procedure) professor, who was formerly a federal prosecutor, set it up so we could ride around in a police car for an evening. I rode with one black woman cop, and when I told her that I had lived in the St. Thomas Housing Project, she took me to see the old neighborhood. I pointed out the apartment we had lived in.
She told me that earlier that year, she had taken a bunch of children out of that apartment, because the mother was arrested for selling crack. She said that there was no food, no sheets on the bed, no toilet paper, that after the children went to the bathroom they wiped themselves with their fingers, and then wiped their fingers on the wall.
I don't think there are two Americas. Some people have a lot of bad things happen that are not their fault. And some people make bad choices because they don't feel like making good choices. |
