This week in class, we discussed different racial attitudes in present day. One of these ideas was that black Americans continued to have resentment towards whites because of their mistreatment for hundreds of years. It was hard to believe that blacks were still mad about everything that happened with the slavery, segregation, and civil rights even though all of those situations had been corrected. It was especially inconceivable because many blacks have not even lived through the circumstances that they are angry about. So, to me, it seemed unreasonable to believe this.
I forgot about the topic until I was taking the train home one night. A young black man, probably in his twenties, was talking on the phone very loudly, swearing and basically yelling. In the seat behind him sat an older white woman and her grand daughter, who both heard this man speaking but tried to ignore it. After the black man failed to realize how obnoxious he was being, the old white woman decided to speak up and said calmly, "Excuse me, could you keep it down and stop swearing? My grand daughter is sitting right here and she can hear every word you're saying." Immediately after hearing this, the black man went off on a rant about how he will do what he wants without her permission, and said things like "Your people don't own me anymore," and "I'm a free, black American." This experience really changed my perspective on what we had talked about in class. It was obvious to me now that a percentage of black people felt that way about whites. However, it still confused me why they felt that way.
According to Wikipedia (Wikipedia), the African American race is the most impoverished race in America with 24.7%. Non-hispanic whites are the least impoverished with 8.6%. This is a very distinguished difference in wealth between two races. It would not be surprising to me if this isn't a coincidence. A line can be drawn from the poorness of blacks today to the oppressing of blacks for centuries. Do you think blacks have resentment towards whites because of this, or are they angry because of what their ancestors had to go through because of the white man?
Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteA wonderful melding of the personal with the statistical. I think you learned a great lesson in empathy. I was really surprised by the African-American man's response so I am glad you quoted him.
I would be careful not to paint A-A people with such a broad brush, especially if you didn't intend to do that: "that blacks were still mad about everything"
Lastly, I would try to look at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry to find the original source.