 Also, sexism against women was not as severe as racism against the Native American and Black population, nor was it met with such a violent protest as many Blacks suffered.
	I believe that women have prospered more so than African and Native Americans, and that Native Americans have also prospered the least.  I feel that there is a direct correlation between time spent in the education system, or decades spent in an equal educational system, to how far each minority has come in their achievements.  Women were first granted the right to higher education, and many social activists came forth for women’s rights that started the domino effect of more women in social activism roles (such as Willard’s perpetual influence).  Likewise, African Americans were next given better opportunities for education, as the desegregation of Black Americans happened at about the time that Native American boarding schools were just ending.  Native Americans had to take time to recover from their injustices, and as their numbers had dwindled from millions to hundreds of thousands, they did not make up the same percentage of the population as the Black community did, hence their plight received less attention.
	The fact that Black education grew towards equality more quickly, and that Native American education was stunted by the damage the boarding schools had on their populace (like alcohol and drug abuse from the trauma they had suffered) meant that Native Americans have still prospered less than African Americans have to this day.  In time, and through continued activism and equitable actions, hopefully America will become a place where White men, women, Native Americans, African Americans, and all people from divergent backgrounds will truly be able to take advantage of equal opportunity in education by overcoming the remaining obstacles lost time has caused.
 

I attended PACE ten years ago.  I came to PACE because I was having difficulty concentrating on my work in public schools.  My home life was overwhelming. My mother is an alcoholic who has not held a job since before I was born.  I can remember coming home from school as a child and opening up the refrigerator to find it full of beer, a sign that the child support checks had come.  She often dumped my younger sister, Rachel, and me off at our grandmother’s house for days on end to be fed and watched while she drank.  My elderly grandmother cared for us instead of my mother.  When my grandmother passed away in my sixth grade year, I was devastated. I felt like I’d lost my parent. My support system instantly collapsed.  My mother ran amuck with the inheritance money, delving further into alcohol and other drugs.  When the money ran out, the electricity and telephone were shut off for weeks before she conned another boyfriend of hers to pay our bills.  I had been blessed with good influences in my life, like my late father who lived in Newberry and also my aunt and uncle in Ohio, but my mother manipulated me into ignoring and turning away from them in order to conceal the severity of her addiction and neglect. 