Equal Opportunity?

         America is the land of the free, home of the brave and the land of equal opportunity; but is equal opportunity really equal? Everyone may be able to do the same things in theory, but everything costs money, and not everyone has money for those specific opportunities. Some people may argue that there are scholarships and programs to help those who do not have the finances for specific opportunities such as college. The problem with these is that not everyone qualifies for those financial aids because there is only a certain amount of money other people can afford to give out from their own budgets.

            A good example of this situation is in Toni Cade Bambara’s essay, “The Lesson”. Miss Moore who has a formal education likes to take Sylvia and her friends on field trips to show them other types of living. On one trip she took Sylvia and a few other girls out to a toy store in a rich white neighborhood. They found out that the toys there were very expensive and all of the girls could not wrap their minds around spending that much money on a single toy. At the end of the trip Sugar says, “Equal chance to peruse happiness means and equal crack at the dough, don’t it?” She is explaining that equal, is not always so equal. There are many factors that go into the term equal, but a large contributor is whether or not the person has the finances for those opportunities. This is why equal opportunity is not always as equal as it is perceived to be.