Most people do not realize how much racism goes on in our daily life, and if they do realize it, they do not care enough to do anything about it. African-Americans have a much higher change of something happening to them than the average Caucasian. People of color have a 70% change of getting arrested while a Caucasian could get pulled over the same thing and they would get away free with no charges. African-Americans have to break down so many barriers just to get where they want to be in life and most of the time they just accept where they are now, Caucasians get so many things handed to us and we do not even realize, in fact, most of us take those opportunities for granted and they still complain about what they have. The topics that will be discussed in this research paper are how African-Americans do not get the same education opportunities as Caucasians, how African-Americans do not get the same job opportunities, and how they struggle with everyday life that we do not realize they go through.
“People are starting to realize that public education in America was designed for the masses of poor, and its intent has been to trap poor people into being workers and servants. If you do not want that for your children, then you look for something else” (Jonsson-Kenworthy par. 4). Most parents are deciding to home school their kids because they do not want them to be involved with racism as much when they are kids, although they will face it eventually, most parents do not want to send their kids to public schools due to the amounts of racism they could endure but their parents know the child will have to face racism at some point in their life. Parents could also keep their child home if they are getting bullied because of their skin color and other kids would think that that would be okay to do since their parents are not teaching them any differently based upon the circumstances they have at home. Although most parents decide on how they want their kid raised is based upon how they were raised themselves. Ama Mazama, a professor of African-Amercain studies at temple university in Philadelphia, wrote about homeschooling and said a lot of people keep their kids from going to public schools is the amount of racism. The number of parents choosing to home-school their kids have been doubled in a little over a decade, about 220,000 black school-ages children are being homeschooled up from estimates of 103,000 in 2003, according to the National Home Research Institute (Jonsson-Kenworthy, par 6). Parents could choose not to discipline there kids because their parents chose not to discipline them for anything which could result into the kid causing a lot of problems with other kids and continue to do it because nobody tells them to stop what they are doing. Most kids do not care what they say to other children and it is up to the parent to keep them out of trouble or the kid will continue to be the main cause of a lot of stuff. Although it seems that this problem could be related to their parents and that is probably what this is telling people reading this, but the parents do have a big factor in how their child behaves. The majority of kids pick up on what their parents say, so if the parent is racist, the child will pick up on what they say and they will repeat it whether they know what it means or not. Depending on what the parent does during the time their child is a toddler, the child will pick up on it and start using what they have learned in their daily life and not even realize how bad it could be or the affects it has to other little kids. Little children like to copy others, so eventually the kid who started being racist or copying their parents’ bad behavior, other kids will start to do it and then that will lead them to trouble and start spreading racism. African-Americans could also not be able to afford public schooling due to their lack of finding a decent paying job to be able to support their family.
African-Americans have a harder time finding a job that pays the same as the average Caucasian. Most African-Americans have to break down barriers just to give them any kind of opportunity that Caucasians get handed to them. Most successful African-Americans only see their place is life nothing more than a simple opportunity (Gates, par 4). “If such opportunity were extended and broadened, a thousand times as many Negros could join the ranks of the educated and able, instead of sinking into poverty, disease, and crime” (Gates, par 5). W.E Du Bios defined the urgency of black social responsibility in his famous essay, “The talented truth” in 1903. The class divide is one of the most important and overlooked factors in the rise of Black Lives Matter. The African National Congress is trying to pass an Anti-Racism law that would jail anyone guilty of ‘Racial Bigotry’. Blacks mostly live in a sprawling township called Tumahole, next to an informal garbage dump while whites are living in a part of the city lined with antique stores, hotels, and government buildings in Africa. African-Americans are working for the same family their ancestors worked for centuries ago, while Caucasians are usually the farmers who hire the African-American workers. People in Africa were expecting some type of change and they were hoping for things to get better so maybe one day they would be able to live together, but nothing has changed. African-Americans cannot do anything to speak up for themselves without the Caucasian saying how the average African-American will do anything they can for the attention. In America, 41% of Americans are saying that racism has grown into a bigger problem over the past couple of decades. Caucasians who make up 9% of the population, earn about six times the average African-American does with the same job. Caucasians usually do not
The chances of something happening to African-Americans is greater than if a Caucasian was doing the same thing that the African-American was doing. Social media and video (by smartphone or dashboard cameras) of actions by law enforcement are playing a role in creating rapid awareness of racially-fueled incidents and protests (Warner par 3). “According to CNN, the percentage of people who think that racism has grown into a big problem is higher than it was two decades ago, a time when the country was caught up in the O.J. Simpson trial, and just a few years after the brutal beating of Rodney King drew national attention, when 41% of Americans described racism as a ‘big problem’” (Warner par 1.). The Black Lives Matter Movement maintains that colorblindness has merely become a way for Caucasian Americans to ignore the deeper and more insidious form of racism African-Americans are still facing today (Jonsson par 4.). “Before 1965, the United States was 85% white. Today, Racial and ethnic minorities make up one-third of the population” (Hong par 1.). High profile cases of African-American men killed such as Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray, have all raised a public awareness of what African-American men face when confronted by law enforcement, and have galvanized the Black Lives Matter Movement (Warner par 2). African-American cops are usually caught between two words that are used to describe them while they are in uniform and neither of them are particularly nice, but when they are out of their uniform, Caucasian cops see them as the regular suspicious black man. Police involved shootings have been a big topic since Michael Browns shooting in Ferguson, MO. At a peaceful protest in Dallas, five police officers were sniped. “The excess per capita death rate of blacks from U.S. police action rightly concerns the policy analysts, advocates and the press” (Healy par 5.). When African-Americans are stopped and questioned by police, they got arrested in eighty-two percent of the eighty-five percent of cases. In 2012, U.S. police killed roughly 1,000 people and injured 54,300 others during legal stop-and-search incidents and arrests. Firearms accounted for 95% of those deaths and for 23% of hospital admissions. “It always seemed like it was getting better than previous generations, but the TV started telling us a different story, with all of these shootings by cops” (Warner par 8).
African-Americans have a harder time with getting a good education for their kids, finding a decent/well-paying career that supports their family, and life in general. Many will say that African-Americans do not get treated any differently than the average Caucasian but they do not know all of the facts and they will say that the color of their skin does not matter but it interferes with the most important aspects of their life. We all need to realize how much racism goes on in our daily life and stop pretending like it does not happen. What will happen if we do not stop it and we keep pretending like it does not happen?
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