What I Learned from "The Blind Side"

With the NFL draft in full swing, it is impossible not to think about 'The Blind Side', so here it goes. The movie depicting the story of Michael Oher captured the hearts of Americans all over and gave Sandra Bullock a well-deserved Oscar for playing rich white house wife who adopts a behemoth of a baby with football skills and walks on grass with high heels and Gucci sunglasses, knowing she has a fine tush. I will spoil the ending for another movie once again. A black kid with no chance at a decent future is adopted by a rich white Tennessee family, gets brainwashed, made believed that country music and pick up trucks are cool, and gets a scholarship to play football for Ole Miss, and then gets drafted by a below average NFL team in the first round. It was a terrible conspiracy. The family that adopted Michael are very rich, white, republican, gun-loving, Tennessee family. The father played football for Ole Miss, mother was a cheerleader for Ole Miss and Kathy Bates, his tutor also went to Ole Miss, but she was a pot-smoking-tree-hugging-democrat-atheist so she's cool. They took in this kid and pretended that they like to eat Thanksgiving food at the dinner table to convince him that they were just another run-of-the-mill, Taco-Bell-owning average white family. Even the kids were in on it. The cute daughter would sit next to him in school, the little kid would say words like 'whack' and 'yo' to make him feel comfortable. Until finally somebody was able to see what this evil family was doing. Some angel from the NCAA began an investigation and found out that a rich white family was adopting a black athletic kid to help the school of their choice have a better football team. Appalling. This is an outrage. Kids are meant to live their well-thought out destiny, despite athletic ability. If you are meant to be poor, that is your God-directed future and no destiny manipulator can change this otherwise.

I found that conversation between the NCAA agent and Michael to be one of the stupidest arguments made in relation to adoption. She was worried that the family was using Michael's innocence and athletic ability to persuade him to play football for Ole Miss. She might as well tell him "Honey, you're being pimped out". She said "what if other rich white families began adopting black underprivileged kids with athletic abilities to boost their schools performance?" Could you imagine? Poor kids going to college? That's just ridiculous. I think the hypocrisy that this country places on racist issues is one of the biggest problems we have in class warfare, social issues, and pretty much anything that makes Americans think in terms of "us" and "them". So what if a family adopts a kid because they see he could be a professional athlete? Is stopping these families from doing so going to give kids better grades and opportunities on their own? Do you think that for kid whose options are drugs, crime or death, is really going to care if the opportunities he was given in life were a true gift from God or for someone's personal gain? This country pretends to show the rest of the world how much we don't care about skin color, and the first thing they ask you in most surveys is your race or skin color. Apply for a university and check the racial spread graph they have on how "diverse" they really are. Look at a list of scholarships and read the categories of scholarships given based on race or ethnicity. Their argument is that we have to make things "fair" for everyone, but what kind of message are you sending a black or hispanic kid when you tell him he doesn't have to be the best, he just needs to be better than his fellow black or hispanic classmates?

I think that the greatest disservice for racial differences is the bureaucracy that surrounds the effort to end racial inequality. When organizations like this step in and dictate what's fair, all they do is harm the very people they are trying to protect. It may sound very materialistic of me, but I wish that every poor kid that has any type of ability were to be discovered by a rich family and put that ability on the spotlight. And what about the kids with no abilities? Well, I believe that charitable organizations will be able to focus their resources better if they have less kids to look after. It may sound unfair that out of 2 kids that are impoverished, one may have a future because he's fast, and the other won't. I find it more unfair that they both are stuck in the situation they are in forever and neither of them has a chance to succeed, or even live. You think it's unfair? You think it's mean? Ask Michael Oher what he thinks, I'm pretty sure he's very grateful for the outcome of this whole situation.