Blame the victim

Journalist Ruben Navarrette Jr. In a article on the CNN website wrote about talking to a Las Vegas Nevada construction worker who was complaining about illegal workers driving down wages. Mr. Navarrette opined “And of course, he never thought to look in the mirror and blame himself for not taking steps to improve his skills in the last 20 years. Maybe he could have gone into a different line of work long ago. He decided not to. I suppose illegal immigrants were to blame for that, too.”

I for one am sick and tired of the top 28% of the country blaming the bottom 72% for not being as smart as the top 28%.

Say what?

According to the US Census bureau 28% of the US population has a college degree and if you believe the college entrance exams, they are the “smartest” of each year’s high school graduating classes. So now a construction worker who didn’t get a degree is being blamed for not being born as smart as the author. When I googled his name I found out that Mr. Navarrette has two (2) degrees from Harvard. That puts him in some small percentage of that top 28%.

Now I’m sure Mr. Navarrette worked hard for his degree, but three quarters of the population can’t match his performance. If they could, we wouldn’t have entrance exams, anyone who wanted to could just sign up and attend college. The exams are used to limit who can attend college to the people that the school expects can actually do the work and learn the material. I’m sure that some percentage of people who don’t get good enough scores on the college entrance exams just goofed off and didn’t study, but the majority did the best they could and still couldn’t make the cut.

Like the construction worker who is the subject of the article, they went on and got the jobs that they could and made the best of their talents and abilities. Along comes this writer in the top 1/4 and blames the construction worker for circumstances beyond his control.

Chaps my hide!