Poor is Poor

More on hard-working students who, due to their status as illegal aliens, are having a tough time breaking the cycle of poverty: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/jun/03/their_dreams_filled_uncertainty/

While most of the readers' comments I've read are from hateful rednecks, I found one worthy of comment: a poor white kid (now adult) from Immokalee whose classmates were given scholarships based on ethnicity. He was not given these same opportunities.

Poor is poor. A poor white kid deserves a break just as much as a poor minority. Is this a controversial idea in 2007?

There are projects on 10th Street in the city of Naples, one block from 41, so right across the Tamiami Trail from some of the richest people in the world. Drive down there and check out the chickens running around the street. Jane, the girls, and I have driven down there to see the chickens and talk to the smiley Haitians who seem to own them. Are these chickens there for the eggs? Fresh meat? Cock fighting? In the broken English/French/Creole of our dialogue, it isn't clear.

Grace Place and the Boys & Girls Club are both in Golden Gate, another poor area only a few miles from there. 40,000 people, the "working poor," live within four miles of these two properties. 85% of the students in the local public schools qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Poverty isn't just "over there," in Immokalee.

I don't care what color you are, or what language you speak at home, or how legal or illegal you and your parents are. If you're a kid, you deserve the same chance as everyone else to join the middle class or, better yet, to get rich. Brown, black, white, red, yellow: who cares? All of our brains are the same color, and none of them should be squandered due to lack of opportunity.

And if you're an adult? You deserve a chance, too. This is America, after all. Nobody is entitled to a free ride, but everyone is entitled to freedom - including the economic freedom we need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.