Assignment #2

Race is a topic that affects different communities across the nation. Not everybody believes that white privilege exists and caused some issues in our society. There are people that evade the past. They close their eyes, forgot how slavery, segregation and humiliation affected African Americans and other races established in this country.

 Race made everyone's life complicated on different situations. Is hard to believe that people that have power to rule our country do not see how much impact race has on its citizens. Is easier for white people to be in a stable job than African Americans, Asians, Hispanics and other cultures due to lack of support. Not everyone notices this because people get busy with life events, policy changes or economic issues. In a way, they are giving more power to the system to affect our development. Using slavery as a way to organize working class people was a mistake that was fixed many years ago. Everyone is equal now and race should not be a factor that defines work quality.

Sometimes is just impossible to understand how something so useless like skin color could lead to segregation at some point in time. Learning that in America slavery happen without the need of a war makes the situation very uncomfortable in our society. Joseph Loguidice explains on the story of the white man covered in dust how injustice uses race to be unequal to others. Nowadays, is very common to compare skin color with abilities, physical possession and personalities in our society.

The first step to fix this acts of  discrimination against different races and communities is to recognize racism, and work ways to stop it from spreading in our communities. Our government needs to make authority figures value and respect every race. Letting cops assume that young African American men that drive fancy cars are drug dealers while white men in the same car seen as spoiled brats is just killing respect for our society. Tim Wise mentioned how cops intentionally stop more hispanics and African Americans because they assume they possess drug than white people.

We Together, CAN make a Difference......

Throughout Bob Herbert's article, I realize many things that the Black community is known for consist of very negative and depressing facts. My first thought was that is unfortunate that even though this was approximately written 10 years ago, I can still hear people mentioning the same issues today. I was raised in a border town city where diversity was not present, so I was not exposed with any African Americans until I came to Austin. Also, since I was raised in Mexico it was very hard to understand the negative offensive comments online because I did not understand what they were referred to. However, now I feel like there is more to do than before to address this issue. When Herbert mentioned that  Black American is" self-inflicted" I personally agreed with him when I read it for the first time. However, the more I read about it and about how the film "Ethnic Notions" described the African American community I felt aggravated and disagree with his statement.
As an African American, to me he sounded ashamed, aggravated and disappointed of how his community is developing in this country and how this facts have impact in  our society. Confessing all this to a white majority population kind of sounded like, "this are our issues, we are bad, someone has to do something". He was not telling them specifically he just threw up the idea of getting help. However, I disagree with blaming the community itself because at the end of the day the issues are something that the community can not fix on its own. There is ignorance because not everyone grew up in a good school district or a place with resources. There are no resources because of lack of communication to ask for help. We need support from the rest of the populations to stop degrading people because of their race, religion or color. In Martin Luther King's speech, I heard honesty, passion, desire and hope for a better tomorrow where African American and the rest of the U.S citizens can relate to each other in peace. This can happen if people learn to accept their mistakes and ask for help to people outside of their community. His speech sounded to me more as a" both sides have to agree in forgiving, forgetting and moving on" kinda goal. Everyone plays a role in this country and change has to come from all parties not just one mainly. I think Herbert sounded more of like "one person can fix this" instead of King who sounded more of a "together we can make a better tomorrow". Unity is key to support and just like he stated "their destiny is tied with our destiny".

Try Out 1

Live Happy every day of your life because at the end of the day you only remember what made you happy more than what made you sad...