Black history month gets me going
Black history month gets me going about how horribly racist the world still is, and the fact people saying it isn't is making it worse. Anyway, this Editor in Chief of our crappy school newspaper wrote an article praising how much has happened in the past 40 years since the civil rights movement started. He says stuff like "I think this giant step alone would make like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X very proud of what our nation has become." "Segregation is now merely a word learned in history class, and everyone such as students and emplyees [typo in printed article left for dramatic effect] have the exact same opportunities as everyone else." Well, i had ALOT to say about
Dear Mr. Cahill,
In response to your letter praising the great advancement of civil rights, I have quite a bit to say. The attitude you portray in your article is actually the problem with advancing any sort of equal rights. Your intentions may be pure, but to say “skin color and gender … are simply not the controlling factors they were in the past” is a statement made in pure ignorance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Race, sex and even religion are just as big of a factor now as they were fourty years ago at the height of the civil rights movement. One of the largest concerns of most people in the coming election is immigration, and out of that debate stems some of the most racist and bigoted statements that are hardly even looked twice at. The constant debate over the fact ‘they [immigrants] should speak english’ is a prime example. What is the official language of the United States of America? There is no official language to our nation, so why should they be forced to speak English. People even go far enough to say that learning Spanish enables immigrants to be lazy and not learn the ‘true’ American tongue. Segregation, as an official legal practice, has been banned, true, yet there are very few schools with a balanced white to minority ratio, schools almost always either have a large minority population, and a small white population, or a large white population and the few token minority students. The prison system is dominated by black males. Making up only thirteen percent of the population they comprise almost fifty percent of the prison population, and nearly thirty percent of black men will spend time in prison within their lifetime. Is that just a matter of coincidence? Affirmative action, something that most people think is a law, is not a law at all, and most companies and schools have long since dropped the practice. Discussion of reperations inspired by Gen. Sherman after the civil war has dropped off the radar. Halle Berry, a very talented actress, did not win an Oscar until she played an age old racial stereotype, the tragic mullato in Monster’s Ball. Denzel Washington has played countless amazing roles, and what did he win his Oscar for? By playing the stereotypical black buck in Training Day, a stereotype as old as black people being in motion pictures. Little talked about also, is what MLK Jr. was doing around the time he was assassinated. He was primarily speaking out against the Vietnam War, so I doubt he would be happy our country has jumped into a war with peoples most Americans have little to no idea about. The Islamic Malcolm X would probably be equally upset we are at war against “radical Islam.” We have made progress in this country since the 1960s, sure, but to say what we have accomplished, in one of the most developed nations on the planet, is admirable is simply not true. When legal slavery was repealed a new form of slavery, share cropping, sprouted. The same has happened for segregation. And as you say “segregation is now merely a word learned in history class, and everyone such as students and emplyees have the exact same opportunities” (that is an exact quote, hence the typo and the fact it is a run on sentence). It’s a true quote, at least the first ten words. In a class discussion about having a mandatory race and ethnic relations class, someone was quoted as saying “didn’t we learn about that in history class, when we talked about the civil war and slavery.” That is the same attitude you show here, brushing a problem under the table doesn’t make it go away. Next time you feel the urge to speak out on racism, and the civil rights movement, may you should read White Privilege: Unwrapping the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh and compare your answers with someone from an ethnic minority. First realize that Peggy McIntosh’s paper was published in the 1970s, and every question is still applicable. You will probably then acknowledge that you are the oppressor; we have not made the progress you idealized as happening, and we are not headed in any direction that will end racism anytime within the next two centuries. I have no desire to have this letter published, it is obscenely long and leaves research to be done by the reader, but I hope someone on the staff will benefit from this, and I hope it motivates you to realize that looking through rosy glasses makes you ignorant of the world around you, and the only true way to alleviate that ignorance is to dig for truth, and keep digging, never stopping, and get people to join your excavation of true historicity. Perhaps the fact the US Armed Force is dominantly made up of minority groups, from poor inner-city areas shows that there isn’t equal opportunity. Or maybe the constant reminders in all forms of art that there are five tickets out of the ghettos: athletic scholarships, the military, being one of the top 5% of the class, music, or a body bag.
Ian Wagener
Dear Mr. Cahill,
In response to your letter praising the great advancement of civil rights, I have quite a bit to say. The attitude you portray in your article is actually the problem with advancing any sort of equal rights. Your intentions may be pure, but to say “skin color and gender … are simply not the controlling factors they were in the past” is a statement made in pure ignorance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Race, sex and even religion are just as big of a factor now as they were fourty years ago at the height of the civil rights movement. One of the largest concerns of most people in the coming election is immigration, and out of that debate stems some of the most racist and bigoted statements that are hardly even looked twice at. The constant debate over the fact ‘they [immigrants] should speak english’ is a prime example. What is the official language of the United States of America? There is no official language to our nation, so why should they be forced to speak English. People even go far enough to say that learning Spanish enables immigrants to be lazy and not learn the ‘true’ American tongue. Segregation, as an official legal practice, has been banned, true, yet there are very few schools with a balanced white to minority ratio, schools almost always either have a large minority population, and a small white population, or a large white population and the few token minority students. The prison system is dominated by black males. Making up only thirteen percent of the population they comprise almost fifty percent of the prison population, and nearly thirty percent of black men will spend time in prison within their lifetime. Is that just a matter of coincidence? Affirmative action, something that most people think is a law, is not a law at all, and most companies and schools have long since dropped the practice. Discussion of reperations inspired by Gen. Sherman after the civil war has dropped off the radar. Halle Berry, a very talented actress, did not win an Oscar until she played an age old racial stereotype, the tragic mullato in Monster’s Ball. Denzel Washington has played countless amazing roles, and what did he win his Oscar for? By playing the stereotypical black buck in Training Day, a stereotype as old as black people being in motion pictures. Little talked about also, is what MLK Jr. was doing around the time he was assassinated. He was primarily speaking out against the Vietnam War, so I doubt he would be happy our country has jumped into a war with peoples most Americans have little to no idea about. The Islamic Malcolm X would probably be equally upset we are at war against “radical Islam.” We have made progress in this country since the 1960s, sure, but to say what we have accomplished, in one of the most developed nations on the planet, is admirable is simply not true. When legal slavery was repealed a new form of slavery, share cropping, sprouted. The same has happened for segregation. And as you say “segregation is now merely a word learned in history class, and everyone such as students and emplyees have the exact same opportunities” (that is an exact quote, hence the typo and the fact it is a run on sentence). It’s a true quote, at least the first ten words. In a class discussion about having a mandatory race and ethnic relations class, someone was quoted as saying “didn’t we learn about that in history class, when we talked about the civil war and slavery.” That is the same attitude you show here, brushing a problem under the table doesn’t make it go away. Next time you feel the urge to speak out on racism, and the civil rights movement, may you should read White Privilege: Unwrapping the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh and compare your answers with someone from an ethnic minority. First realize that Peggy McIntosh’s paper was published in the 1970s, and every question is still applicable. You will probably then acknowledge that you are the oppressor; we have not made the progress you idealized as happening, and we are not headed in any direction that will end racism anytime within the next two centuries. I have no desire to have this letter published, it is obscenely long and leaves research to be done by the reader, but I hope someone on the staff will benefit from this, and I hope it motivates you to realize that looking through rosy glasses makes you ignorant of the world around you, and the only true way to alleviate that ignorance is to dig for truth, and keep digging, never stopping, and get people to join your excavation of true historicity. Perhaps the fact the US Armed Force is dominantly made up of minority groups, from poor inner-city areas shows that there isn’t equal opportunity. Or maybe the constant reminders in all forms of art that there are five tickets out of the ghettos: athletic scholarships, the military, being one of the top 5% of the class, music, or a body bag.
Ian Wagener