Equality, Diversity, and Democracy free essay sample

Justice and Equality Cannot Coexist, For When One is Achieved the Other is Infringed Upon: Equality, diversity, and democracy are the three components that America claims to revolve around, but unfortunately lacks. America is a nation filled with envy, rage, and such preposterous behaviors and actions. Since the founding of the nation, to the present of America, and according to the predicament of the future, this territorial notion that America abides by is slowly corrupting the nation.Since the establishment of America equality was always an issue, but always an issue of avoidance. In the article Deconstructing America, Buchanan states, â€Å"As for the Africans, they arrived in 1619 in slave ship, and were not freed for 246 years. Then they were segregated for a century† (465). Buchanan stresses the idea that America claims to be a picture perfect nation where all is equal, but in reality they’ve lacked equality since their uprising. Another idea that Buchanan stresses elaborates more in the idea that equality has been an issue in America. In Buchanan’s article Deconstructing America, he refers to the English, the Virginians, and the Americans in this quote: â€Å"They believed in superiority of their Christian faith and English culture and civilization. And they transplanted that unique faith, culture, and civilization to the America’s fertile soil. Other faiths, cultures, and civilizations like the ones the Indians had here, or the Africans brought, or the French had planted in the Quebec, or the Spanish in Mexico ___ they rejected and resisted with cannon, musket, and sword.This was our land, not anybody else’s. (466)† Americans have been, and still in some ways are territorial and limited to their beliefs, customs, and rituals. These beliefs were more crucial in the past decades, but still haven’t drastically changed. Equality is past of freedom of speech and that idea is also restricted in America. For example, African Americans still endure hardships in America to this day. Their options and privileges are narrowed down. How does a nation expect respect from its own people, when the nation itself is corrupting?The diversity in America has expanded tremendously, it no longer consist of more than half of the population being Caucasians. The many different ethnicities in America are fluctuating as time passes by; the minorities are now becoming the majority. The idea that America has become such a diverse nation is what is causing problems within a nation itself. Many of the problems America has undergone is due to the immensity if diversity, and all the ethnicities grudging each other. In Spike Lee’s film Do The Right Thing, this idea is shown more clearly. In a neighborhood of African Americans and Puerto Ricans, the owners of the pizzeria belittle the African Americans who reside there. Pino the son of the owner, Sal, constantly has something crude to say about Mookie or any African American who steps foot into the pizza parlor. In one point they kick an African American male out of the pizza parlor and that is when the fight between the two ethnicities rises. The man died after the police hit him, then the other African Americans begin a riot and a brutal fight begins, where it causes the pizza parlor to be burnt down.This whole scene allows American people to see how corrupt the diversity is making the American nation. In Deconstructing America, Buchanan states, â€Å"Is the diversity strength? In the ideology of modernity, yes. But history teaches otherwise for how can racial diversity be a strength when racial diversity was behind the bloodiest war in the U. S. history and has been the most polarizing issue among us ever since? †(469). Buchanan tries to point out the idea that America has war within the ethnicities that make it up.This is slowly bringing the nation to an end. Hsu restates a remark made by President Bill Clinton in 1998, in his article The End of White America? : â€Å"Today, largely because of immigration, there is no majority race in Hawaii or Houston or New York City. Within five years, there will be no majority race in our largest state, California. In a little more than fifty years there will be no majority race in the United States. No other nation in history has gone through demographic change of this magnitude in so short a time . . . These immigrants] are energizing our culture and broadening our vision of the world. They are renewing our most basic values and reminding us all of what it truly means to be American† (500). Hsu discusses the idea that America will soon become a nation with no majority race, and that the American people take for granted all the new ideas these different ethnicities are bringing into the nation. Instead of learning from them, they seek violence and inequality as their solutions. Democracy is an even bigger issue in America.In The Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Richie states, â€Å"The reality of contemporary religious pluralism may be either one of the greatest threats to democratic freedom, civil or ecclesiastical, or one of its greatest assets† (471). Richie comes across the issue of democracy with religion, which is a big issue in America, along with all the other freedoms the American people are said to have. Every aspect in America is Democratic, America is a â€Å"this or that† nation, you can’t have more than one, and America won’t settle for drastic changes.In the book Democracy in America, by Alexis De Tocqueville he states: â€Å"In the United States the ablest men are rarely placed at the head of affairs Reason for this peculiarity The envy which prevails in the lower orders of France against the higher class is not a French but a purely democratic feeling Why the most distinguished men in America frequently seclud e themselves from public affairs† (200). De Tocqueville stresses the idea that in America people with power avoid having to deal with situations that are of importance.This idea points out how people of different ethnicities have limited advantages, when those with power don’t make the correct choices, or don’t know how to deal with them. In Deconstructing America, Buchanan states, â€Å"If Jamestown and Virginia were not about democracy, equality, and diversity for the 350 years between 1607 and 1957, who invented this myth that America was always about democracy, equality, and diversity? And what was their motive? † (465).