Why can’t America ensure our children a better world?

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OPINION — In my youth, the hope that American democracy based on enlightenment ideals of liberty, self-governance, equal opportunity and justice would defeat the worldview of domination and unfairly profiting from others’ labor, knowledge and resources was widespread.

Scholastic and athletic contests taught us that how you played the game — by the rules, cooperating, making friends and graciously accepting the outcome — was far more important than who won or lost. Your own honor and reputation and everyone’s self-respect and dignity rested on your conduct.

Hidden from sight in Arizona, children of non-white farm workers studied in Quonset huts in a dirt field while we learned in landscaped brick buildings. Japanese American children returned from desert internment camps to resume lives interrupted by incarceration, my college roommates told me.

Native American children hired to iron our clothes came from wide-open spaces to dormitories at Phoenix Indian School, where every minute was dictated including language and family contact.

My fellow poll workers said they — as Black, Hispanic and Asian children, learned to not play or swim in public parks and pools.

We’ve had 250 years to create that better world.

Enough of us working together long enough to overcome the selfishness and greed of domination and exploitation is the hard part. The ugliness and cruelty of current policies, both domestic and foreign, exposes the alternative.

Ordinary people cheat to obtain scholarships; athletes demand obscene salaries and gamble on outcomes. Elections and policy decisions go to the highest bidder. Greed is endemic.

Can’t we now ensure the same quality of education is in every child’s neighborhood public school; reform courts to end the wealthy avoiding accountability with endless litigation; change elections to make self-governance possible; replace the fixation on “win by whatever means” with compete with honor? Children deserve that world.

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