Critique

In the editorial, The Pentagon’s war on theAmerican dream, an course called Power and Privilege which is offered by Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute is suppose to help teach those who are going to be in the Defense Department how to promote human dignity and that every individual is equal to you no matter if you are rich or poor, black or white. Its purpose is to teach students that a misunderstanding between power and privilege can lead to discrimination. What caught my attention in this editorial is the fact that in explains a slide on socioeconomic privilege features a picture of a happy-looking white family of four sitting outside of a middle-class home. that is suppose to illustrate to the student that the American dream is only reachable if you believe in the idea that what you get out of the system is the same as what you put in. This to me isn’t always true if you really get what you put in then my parents lives would be just peachy. Which inevitably I agree with what the editorial said about how only suckers fall for that one. Another thing that caught my eye was the fact that race was brought into the concept of what individual equality is. On another slide it shows white men playing golf. That picture to me feeds the stereotypical view of what our society “should” look like. In a way the editorial describes this as being a war on class-stereotypes and how if it were a different picture for example Tiger Woods playing golf with those four white men then it would be a different story. To me I feel that the author is targeting Congress and the people so that Congress can either change or cut the program completely because it does not claim to teach what it is intended to teach. Well, at first glance. To me I feel that the author is taking this class and the pictures a bit too much out of proportion , yes I agree that some of the slide look like they represent something other than what it’s intended to teach. But what do the rest of the slides contain? How can I fully respect his or her view without more representation of how bad this class is? To me I feel like the Defense Department is doing an outstanding job at teach their students. In no way will this simple class effect the outcome view of its students in a negative way towards politics and/or the government.