San Antonio's Tony Alcaraz shares Five Things He's Learned about America
Discover the next in our new series of messages, ideas, and inspiration – shared directly from Americans we admire.
Five Things I’ve Learned began with the aim of learning directly from people we long admired. Find out what they think most important to share, we believed, and we’d learn and be inspired by their example.
This summer, we’re doing something more: soliciting and sharing written pieces, short videos, and other bursts of ideas and inspiration from people whose ideas and experiences give shape to the issues that continue to shape America and November’s upcoming national election.
Today, Tony Alcaraz shares Five Things He’s Learned About America.
Tony a senior director of operations for a government contractor in healthcare. A native of Southern California, he currently lives in San Antonio, Texas with his wife. He has three children.
Five Things I’ve Learned about America
I’m a native of Southern California, born in San Diego, raised in San Diego, and in El Centro, California. I moved to Texas about 15 years ago. I have three children: two biological, one stepdaughter who I’ve raised since she was three. Married to my wife Dorothy. I’m in the government sector of work. I’m a senior director of operations for a government contractor in healthcare, and I enjoy it. I enjoy my family and spending time with them.
I’m also a 100% disabled veteran. I love this country because it affords its veterans a lot of benefits – ensuring my children having free college education in California, helping to offset costs for housing and books, things of that nature. Those are great benefits that our country provides, and I’m appreciative.
Here are the Five Things I’ve Learned about America:
America takes care of its veterans, and their families.
America is a very proud country, which is why those of us who have served in the military are proud to serve. My service has given me the chance to advance, to provide for my children, even to share many of my military benefits with my wife and children. I’m very proud of America for that: This country takes care of those who have served.
Service has also given me lifetime relationships, lasting connections that I’ve made with all sorts of people. I have two friends who are retired who live nearby here in San Antonio. We’re friends to this day, and they loved their experience, too.
The life lessons, the growing up, the maturing – those are benefits that I don’t think that people who haven’t served might think about at first.
It's the American way that makes prosperity possible.
Of course, our land provides great resources, and with them great opportunity for prosperity and success.
I’m a proven example of what’s possible: I’m going to be 50 this year, and I haven’t finished my degree. But by working hard, having some education, and being able to apply what I’ve learned together with a positive, consistent work ethic, I have had the opportunity to be prosperous.
I’ve been sure to take advantage of that opportunity. And, I’ve been able to advance, to learn, and to take advantage of all the things afforded to me because America is a capitalist country. It’s through our American version of capitalism that the people who do the work and the companies that employ them are afforded opportunities. Thanks to America’s free market, I’ve done well and the owner who put in the equity to create the business that employs me has his own ability to prosper.
This success is twofold, and I appreciate that.
Our education system gives us all the chance to improve.
Our education system – and our healthcare systems, too – are the best in the world. People can come here and get the resources they need. Not every country provides those sorts of resources to its citizens. As a result, America truly is a melting pot. We have more ethnicities probably than any other country in the world.
I know people who got here whose family was from India, or from the Middle East, and they all prospered. They prospered because they were eager to take advantage of the opportunities offered to them. Case in point: I dropped my stepdaughter off for college at UC Davis and she was part of a huge melting pot there. I met fathers from Germany, from Korea, from all over. Families whose first language wasn’t English but who were eager to take advantage of the resources America provides.
The same is true in San Antonio. This is a huge military town, and you have people from outside of Texas and outside of San Antonio that come here for education. A good portion of people in San Antonio are either second- or third- generation Americans. They’re part of the Latino community, and they’re motivated by education. Maybe back in my grandfather’s time and even part of my mother’s time, education wasn’t necessarily promoted 100% because people thought as long as you just work hard you’re going to find your way among the Latino community. But now, people value education most of all, especially along the border because of the economic challenge they’re facing.
Isn’t that what we all as Americans? As a citizen, I would say that we all want to improve. We could always improve – improve ourselves, improve as a country, and improve as a society.
Media – and our confidence in the information we receive – is changing fast.
Where we are as a country right now is very much driven by our media, and we need to recognize that there’s some form of censorship taking place – no matter where you get your information. My voice or your voice is competing with millions of others on social media. I may be able to speak clearly but I can’t be sure that the kind of information I have to share – or the kind of information I discover on my own on Twitter or TickTock – is being shared with others in the same way. On more conventional channels like CNN, or Fox, we are only seeing the window of the political conversation these media outlets focus on.
Somehow this all needs to be monitored so that everybody gets good information, so that you can say, “Okay, well I can believe in what I’m receiving. It’s not swayed one way or the other.”
Our institutions may not be perfect, but we still have every reason to trust our government.
I trust our government to give me information that I can decipher myself.
During COVID, our government made it possible for people to get vaccinated in record time – in 18 months. But from where I work within the government sector, not everything that happened at that time went perfectly. I can see today that we still have a long way to go before a good portion of our citizens trust our institutions.
We’re only now starting to understand some of the consequences of that quick COVID rollout, for example. Some people are saying that it all happened too fast, or that there might be side effects that we didn’t see at the time. But there’s more and more information available and I think one thing that our institutions have learned from COVID is that the more information they share with American citizens the more these individuals can trust them.
That confidence in the people is very much an American thing: People in countries like China, Russia, North Korea – their government doesn’t share that type of information with them.
I trust the institutions and I trust that the president – whoever it is, Democrat or Republican – is doing what’s best for our country.
I trust that checks and balances are still in place to prohibit that person from doing something that’s not in our country’s interests.
San Antonio, Texas.
ABOUT TONY
Tony Alcaraz a senior director of operations for a government contractor in healthcare. A native of Southern California, he currently lives in San Antonio, Texas with his wife. He has three children.
ABOUT FIVE THINGS I’VE LEARNED ABOUT AMERICA
Five Things I’ve Learned about America presents live, personal conversations with leading thinkers, organizers, and advocates for our democracy. In tandem, we’re soliciting and sharing written pieces, short videos, and other bursts of ideas and inspiration from people whose ideas and experiences are equally inspiring and instructive.
Discover more good things at myfivethings.com.
