Readers Response #6 Selfe's Essay

Eng100a
2/21/10
In the article “Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution” Cynthia Selfe talks about how advertisements often try to paint the picture that America is a land of “equal opportunity” for everyone despite things like gender, color, and social status, and that everyone who is willing to take in American values is welcome here. Selfe disagrees with this in her essay and she states “America is the land of opportunity only for some people. The history of slavery in this country, the history of deaf education, women’s suffrage, and immigration remind us of this fact; as do our current experiences with poverty, the differential school graduation rate for blacks and whites and Hispanics, and the fact that we have never had a woman president. All these things remind us that opportunity is a commodity generally limited to privileged groups within this country.” This long fact filled passage puts portions of our history and as well as today’s issues together to describe what Selfe believes to be the true America, that advertisements replace with the rich white dream family to give us what we want to see instead of what we know is there.
I think that America is actually one of the most opportunity filled nations in the world. Selfe can say that it’s not but the simple fact is, if you compare us to other countries, we are. In India you are born to a certain social status, and you stay that way for the rest of your life because it is believed that if you are born in the slums its because you did something bad in a previous life. In the U.S. Women can run for all the same offices as Men, and they do. Just this last election Hillary Clinton ran for president and Sarah Palin for vice president. That sounds like gender equality to me. As for slavery, America had slaves at a time when most of the world had slaves. While that doesn’t make it right I think its safe to say that slavery is no longer an issue in this country. It seems to me that America is the land of great opportunities, and second chances on top of that. Here if you make a bad decision like to drink and drive it won’t be your last decision like it is in many other countries. With enough hard work and perseverance almost anyone in America can be successful despite things like color and social status. For example, my dad (a Native American) was born to a family living off of welfare checks and food stamps. He worked his way through college with the help of financial aid and student loans and now has two rental houses on top of the house we live in and can easily send his son to college. There are countless lives that follow a similar story and it’s because we live in a country where the hard working and determined rise to the top. Selfe says “Opportunity is a commodity generally limited to privileged groups within this country”. I say opportunity is something we take for ourselves and is generally limited to those who seek it and are willing to work for it.
I used countering according to Joe Harris in my response. In the beginning of my paragraph I “argued the other side” showing how the examples that Selfe gives actually prove the opposite of the point she is trying to make and aid my argument. I then went on to analyze her statement about opportunity and say how I disagree about what she is basically saying opportunity is.