BLOG: It's Not About The Flag, It's About Creating Opportunities For All

It’s been nearly two weeks since Watertown sworn in its elected officials, including first time Town Council member Caroline Bays. Bays received a lot of backlash in the past two weeks after she knelt during the saying of the “Pledge of Allegiance.” It made news state-wide, when Fox25 picked it up this week.

Bays explains why she chose not to stand and say the “Pledge of Allegiance” in a Facebook post on last week. She “did so because [she] can not say ‘with liberty and justice for all’ while that is not true in our country. People of color throughout our nation do not experience the same right and privileges as white Americans.” No one listened to her reason, which is completely valid.

As citizens of the United States we all have the same freedoms and rights to do whatever we choose. We all like to believe everyone is equal and have the same opportunities, but the truth is not everyone is equal. And it has NOTHING to do with race. It has to do everything to do with opportunities.

Not everyone in this country is afforded with the same opportunities to do whatever they want, and it’s through no fault of their own. As Mark Zuckerberg said when he returned to Harvard to give the 2017 commencement address, “if I had to work to support his family, I probably never would’ve built Facebook.”

If Bill Gates was not afforded the opportunity to do real-time computer programming, and able to spend hours in the computer room as an eighth-grade student, he probably never would’ve started Microsoft. Gates was able to dedicate that amount of time to learning computers and programming, because he came from a wealthy background.

Gates parents sent him to the private school where he discovered computers. Zuckerberg attended prestigious, New Hampshire prep school, Phillips Exeter Academy. Both these schools led them to Harvard, where they met the people who would be instrumental in the creation of their ideas. Gates met Paul Allen, while Zuckerberg met the Winklevoss Twins, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.

When you have money, and grow up into a family that has resources, your world expands. You’re involved in more elite activities and surrounded by many successful and highly-educated people. Being around these people teaches you a lot. It teaches you how to act and talk around smart people, and almost through osmosis you pick up a little bit of what makes them successful.

You’re the average of the five people you spend most of your time with. And if you’re surrounded by smart and successful people, you most likely will be smart and successful.

But many people don’t have this opportunity. They may have grown up in a broken home with a single mother or single father, who had them at a young age, and are now working a minimum wage job at McDonalds just to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Brighton. They probably aren’t hanging out with smart or successful people that are pushing them to make the right decisions, so they make the wrong choice and end up continuing the cycle they are in.

What Councilor Bays wanted to get across is, while we like to pride ourselves as a nation of equality, we are not truly equal. There are always going to be people with greater opportunities for success. If you are one of those types of people who is benefiting from a tremendous opportunity, then it is your duty to help others who may not be as fortunate.