Hicks, J. P. (2004). Black and Hispanic Acceptance Eludes Mayor, Despite His Efforts. New York Times. February 5, 2004.

Nothing can be more embarrassing than getting a cold shoulder even if you made every effort to please someone. That might be how Mr. Michael R. Bloomberg, the Republican mayor of the city of New York, felt about after knowing that his approval numbers have not risen above 35 percent among blacks or Hispanics in a recent poll.

The disapproval is based, according to some political scientists, much more on economics. They were referring to the mayor?s latest tax policy about raising taxes, particularly the property tax. Yet, middle-class Latinos and African Americans, many of whom are first-time homeowners or work in or own small businesses, viewed it in another way. In Leeanna Joseph?s word, who works as a waitress in Queens, ?I think that he just doesn't understand the regular person.?

This issue explicitly suggests several important aspects within the American value system which has been briefly discussed in Steele and Redding?s article. The most obvious one is the ethical equality, which was usually taken into account in the first place especially when confronting situations regarding rights of minorities. This value of being equal is ?before the law?, in my opinion, even after the establishment of law, ?the core of our system of justice? (p. 87). In the ideal world, equality is the cornerstone on which the world runs smoothly and people would be entitled to live with equal opportunities they were born with. Equality of opportunity, another value mentioned by Steele and Redding, is the reification of ethical equality in my understanding.

Nevertheless, it is understandable that the image of being ubiquitously and absolutely equal is not always the case in real life. Despite the claim that all men created equal, it is inevitable that everybody was raised in different family backgrounds, educated on different levels and employed by different institutions. Nobody, except few politicians, can deny the fact that minorities still have to make more efforts to achieve the same goals compared with the white. Especially in a country where achievement and success (p. 86) as well as effort and optimism (p.87) are highly commended, it is a more strenuous struggle for minorities to get success in career than their white counterparts.

Being criticized as ?someone who doesn?t relate to the average person?, Mr. Bloomberg?s subsequent political activities, including making social issues like low-income housing a central goal of his administration and attending the funeral for a 19-year-old black woman killed in a police shooting, more like a show to transmit the information implicitly to the public that ?I do care about you?. Mr. Bloomberg?s dilemma between maximizing his own benefits from his career and serving his people is no exception in most similar careers. The former consideration is unimpeachable in that it is just the incarnation of ?achievement and success?, one of the American spirits; the latter one is respectable in that it represents a higher moral and means self-sacrifice sometimes. Regretfully, politicians often failed to find the golden mean and make this a win-win game. As a result, there have to be some victims, but not them.