Nation's Wealthiest One Percent Demands Minority Status
WASHINGTON, DC-A grass-roots coalition representing the highest
socioeconomic stratum of Americans marched on Washington Tuesday to
demand that the nation's wealthiest one percent be granted official
minority status.
Journeying to the nation's capital from monied enclaves and gated
communities across the nation, the marchers gathered on the National
Mall in a unified call for "an end to the discrimination we face daily
as members of America's least-recognized minority group."
"We have been invisible for far too long," said billionaire shipping
heiress Mrs. Winston O. Lathrop, of the Boston Lathrops, in an
impassioned speech at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. "Just because
we are among the richest persons on the planet does not mean we are not
human beings. Just because we have yachts, mansions and vast corporate
holdings in major multinationals does not mean we deserve to be treated
as second-class citizens."
Calling the current system of federal support for only certain minority
groups "grossly unfair," the marchers demanded that the nation's
wealthiest one percent be afforded the same benefits other minorities
enjoy.
"Public schools, from what my servants tell me, now offer Hispanic and
African-American students special counselors who are sensitive to their
unique needs as minorities," said Manhattan socialite Virginia Des
Jardins, founder of One Percent Nation, a newsletter dedicated to
increasing awareness of minority-elite issues and raising
identity-consciousness among one-percenters. "Where are the counselors
who can relate to our special needs? Unless you were raised in an
environment with 17 maids, you cannot possibly understand what it's
like. And day after day, as the economic gap between us and the masses
widens, the situation only worsens, and we become ever more
marginalized."
Exacerbating the problem, Dallas-based oil baron H. Milton Endicott
said, are affirmative-action programs that give economically
disadvantaged minorities preference in hiring and college admissions at
the expense of the minority elite.
"Black students are becoming an all-too-familiar site on Ivy League
campuses and in the board room," Endicott said. "It's getting harder and
harder to get accepted to Harvard solely on name alone. All we're asking
for is a level playing field."
Marchers, accompanied by their chauffeurs, manservants, and thousands of
paid employees, were vocal in their demands for special programs that
would help members of the minority-elite live in a society that, as one
rallygoer said, "all too often views us with fear and loathing, just
because our massive stockpiles of wealth somehow make us 'different.'"
"People on the street stare at us like we're not the same as them-and
why?" mining magnate Herbert Lassiter IV said. "Because of the vast sums
we have hidden in Swiss banks? Because we receive dinner invitations
from Saudi royalty? Because our ties cost more than their families earn
in a year? We must learn to embrace these differences and use them to
bring us closer together, not to drive us further apart."
Lassiter also stressed the importance of intervention for at-risk
one-percenters, many of whom are driven to low self-esteem and
self-destructive behavior by the outside world's great indifference to
their plight.
"Misunderstood by a world that sees them as outsiders not to be trusted,
more and more of the wealthiest one percent are turning to white-collar
crime," Lassiter said. "I've seen kids as young as 23 spending up to six
months in minimum-security facilities for tax evasion, wasting away in
places that offer only the most rudimentary of golf and dining
accommodations. That's a hell no young scion should ever have to face."
One-percenters, Des Jardins said, need access to "safe spaces" where
they can nurture and foster their own sense of socioeconomic pride and
identity with others of their own kind, free from the disapproving glare
of the non-wealthy majority. Educating the masses about the special
challenges facing the wealthiest one percent, Des Jardins said, is also
vital. Such efforts, however, are only the beginning.
"Until the majority learns to stop their terrible othering of the
wealthiest one-percent, there will never be true equality," Des Jardins
said. "For every one of us, there are 99 plebeians who view us with
bigotry and anti-plutocratism."
Organizers called Tuesday's march a "major step forward" but recognize
that the road to acceptance for the ultra-rich will be a long, hard one.
"I look forward to a glorious day when the wealthiest one percent can
walk down the street, hand in hand with their lessers, as brothers,"
textile heir Julius Worthington White said. "But, sadly, that day is
still a long way off."
"They look down on us, just because we're superior," White continued.
"Well, our response is, 'We're here, we're fabulously well-off, get used
to it.' We shall overcome."
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