BLOG 5

As an African American male growing up in Detroit Michigan; racism, discrimination, privilege, prejudice, and the systems by which the American people live by does not surprise me anymore. As a matter of fact I find it quite puzzling how people can be surprised that such things still exist. In one article that we read this past week a student said “Racism, does that still exist?” and after reading that quote I thought to myself: Wow! People are only attentive to what is going on in their individual lives that they are oblivious to what is going on in society, however, can they be blamed? When you live in a social environment away from discrimination and away from prejudice because your community is so polarized, i.e. either massively white, massively rich, or massively ignorant, a person is not aware that other lifestyles exist; mainly due to the fact they never had to care about the other lifestyles. Throughout my life and my family’s life we have and encountered and endured all of such discrimination but depending on how life served us our lemons differentiated how we lived our lives.

In my family history paper I learned that certain members of my family was unable to continue their high school careers, begin a college expedition, as well as they were unable to receive high profiled careers because certain things in life prevented them from doing so. My family is not wealthy and like most other black families in my community we work day to day to make ends meet. While discussing the topic of racial privilege a lot of Caucasian in the articles we read felt that it is the black communities own fault for their continuous downfall and if they attempted to get a college education and tried harder in school than they too could have economic and social successes. What my white counterparts fail to realize, however, is the fact that they have three hundred plus years of privilege and the black community is trying to catch up. America declared their independence from Great Britain in 1776 but it wasn’t until 1954 that the black community was allowed to receive integrated education, i.e. the supposedly same education as the white community because the segregated schools was indeed insufficiently teaching the black students, but even with the integrated schools in today’s society an inner city black student is not nearly receiving as close to a good education as a suburban white student. Due to inner city schools lack of funding and poverty-stricken citizens the option of receiving top notch education is not affordable and therefore not existent. Majority of the black community lives in these impoverished areas and although school is important survival is most important and in order to eat, have shelter, and common necessities such as water and electricity, money is required, so instead of being able to go to school and get an education these inhabitants stay in their area to work a minimum wage job to ensure that these common necessities is acquired. I am aware and understand that people should try to get an education especially since more opportunities are available to us now than they were in the early 1900’s but due to the fact that the black community have been oppressed for hundreds of years and only been treated as equals by law for a little over forty years a lot of people in the black community cannot afford to take such opportunities because we have to settle a debt from hundreds of years of oppression.

It is so puzzling as to why people can’t see that they have privilege or that they
indirectly do racist things, even if they are not a racist. As an African American male I know that I have privileges that other people don’t have. I know that I can walk alone on a dark street at night without fear of someone sexually assaulting me as a woman does not have such privilege. Whether she is black or white, women as a whole do have to worry about such occurrences and take precautions to prevent sexual assaults from happening. I know that I have the privilege of receiving a free education until my college career as an American citizen yet the children of Argentina have to pay to receive good schooling and children of Uganda receive insufficient schooling if any at all. I am aware of my privilege as a heterosexual male, I know that I can show affection publicly or go to city hall in any state and get married while a homosexual couple may have fear to show public affection and are denied the rights in a lot of states to get married at all. Even with all of my disadvantages I am still aware that I have privileges and although I have not been appreciative of these privileges my whole life I know that if I have these privileges people opposite of me have the drawback. Although me acknowledging my privilege and their disadvantage does nothing to help the problem of social injustice in the world; allowing injustice to occur and do nothing about it is just as wrong as being a part of the social injustice. As people with privilege we have to stand up for the underprivileged and speak with them about the injustices, because it is more likely that privilege people listen to each other as they would listen to an underprivileged talk of how unfair they are being treated by the privilege.

All in all White America need to speak to each other and discuss how they do have privileges and ways to fix the injustice that occurs. They should discuss how they are able to go into a convenient store and not have to have the cashier hover over them to make sure they don’t steal anything, they should discuss how it is easier for them to get job opportunities and loan approvals, as they also should discuss why it is they are less likely to get arrested, convicted, or serve prison time regardless of the crime and its circumstance. I am proud of my race and the obstacles we have to overcome but I want to be seen as more than a professional basketball or football player as I want to be looked at upon as an equal. Law requires people to give me opportunity but I want opportunity because I deserve it and my fellow peers know that I deserve it. My race and age has caused me many obstacles in my life and even though society tend to say they are colorblind, in one some aspect of my life everybody tend to stereotype something about me because I am black as they don’t take me serious because I am young.

Being African American has its trials and tribulations as well as it has it glories and celebrations and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Unlike the obstacles my family had to go through there is a lot less blatant racial activities occurring as well as a lot more diversity accepting people in America today. For the stereotypes I do receive from people inadvertently prejudging me and the racist comment I may hear from those who are not ready to accept the changing path America is undergoing gives me ambition and drive to do better and go further. I want to make my family proud but more than ever I want to prove everybody who doubted that I would succeed wrong. My motto: In all life’s aspect I am great…expect NOTHING less.