Response to the "Equity & Diversity Awareness Quiz"

            The Equity and Diversity Awareness Quiz that we did in class definitely made an impact on me.  The answers for many of the questions shocked me greatly, and many angered me as well.  One particular fact that made me angry was the fact that African American women in the U.S. are four times as likely to die in childbirth because they lack adequate prenatal care.  I guess I was being overly optimistic, but I would like to think that in this day and age, such a large gap –or any gap at all for that matter–would not exist in America. 

            Another shock to me was that immigrant men between ages 18-39 in the U.S. are five times less likely to be in prison than their American-born peers.  I have to admit that I would have thought they would be more likely to be in prison, and that seems to be what society repeatedly tells us.  This just shows how easily a misconception that large groups of people have can be fully accepted as being factual and can be obliviously believed by a majority of people because they have heard it so many times before. 

            The fact that the three richest people in the world have as much wealth as the 48 poorest nations combined is sadly what I actually would have expected.  It truly disgusts me to think that only three people could have so much wealth while millions of people in these poor nations are struggling to provide even a meal for their families.  It just astounds me that it is even possible to obtain that much money…what on earth do you do with it all?!

            Lastly, it also sickened me that the average full-time worker in the U.S. earns as much in a year as the average CEO earns in only one day.  I would have obviously guessed that CEOs earn a significant amount more than typical workers, but I never would have believed that it was to this extreme.  The saddest part is that it is not only comparing these wealthy CEOs to extremely impoverished people making a bare minimum wage; it compares them to the average worker, and the average worker likely earns a good amount more than minimum wage.  Overall, this quiz made me really disappointed in the way our society is today.  We can be so easily manipulated by skewed statistics and false judgments that we begin to accept completely false things as being true simply because we've heard them time and time again.