Almost all of us by now believe that we were all created equal and we all deserve an equal opportunity to survive in life; but still we don't live in a society of equal opportunity. 

 

We are not all equal in our abilities and naturally, the better you become at something, the more status; acknowledgement; and opportunities you earn. So unfortunately, we can't create equality nor do we really want to. 

 

But we can live in a world of equal opportunity - where all individuals are given the same level of respect and consideration; and where all individuals have the freedom to earn a seat at the proverbial table. 

 

So how do you create equal opportunity? Definitely not by lowering the standards for the oppressed group. We create it by addressing two things: (a.)privilege and (b.)bias.

 

(a.) Although many of us prefer not to acknowledge it, privilege exists. We can never totally get rid of it, but we can do more to equal the playing field. Not the government we, but we as individuals. We as individuals can acknowledge our own privileges and do our best to pay it forward. 

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(b.) We all have biases; they are ingrained in us by the society we are raised in. For many people, most of their biases go unrealized. Unrealized bias is a plague on society. It causes us to make negative assumptions and judgments, and to say and do negative things before we ever fully understand the situation or get to know each other. This is one of the most common ways 'evil' manifests in the world. 

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As a society we should do our best to remove bias from all environments either by teaching awareness in unhealthy environments, or by leaving the old environment behind and creating a whole new environment to suite our preferences. 

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We can all participate in making the world a better place by taking time to evaluate our own unrealized biases and privilege, and then working hard to override these.