BLACKS - A STRUGGLE FOR RACIAL EQUALITY

Almost everyone would like to have racial equality in the world today.  It is often said that all people have been created equally.   That is true, however sometimes not everybody is treated equally.  In society, blacks are still struggling for racial equality.

We should note that in the 1940'1, blacks were not considered equal to the whites.  We see this in  The Power of One .  Blacks could not socialize with whites.  P.K. a young boxer asks the manager at the gym how he gets away with mixing blacks and whites.  The manager says that outside the ring a black man is not equal, inside he is but not in public, only in private.  This clearly demonstrates how blacks were not treated equally to whites in the 1940's.

We also see this in society today.  We are able to see how blacks are looked upon when we examine a quote from The Runner ,  a novel by Cynthia Voigt.  "If there's one thing I can't tolerate Pete agreed "it's an uppity nigger."2  We can see that Bullet, a cross country runner is talking to a team-mate named Pete.  It is indisputable that Pete has some antagonism towards blacks.  He treats them with very little respect and uses the racist term "nigger."  This helps to justify that blacks are treated with considerably less appreciation than other races of people.

Let us also look at the fact that blacks are often socially outcasted because of their race.  We see this in The Runner.  "You're telling me you won't work with him because he's a negro?"  "That's right."3  As we can see the above exert clearly shows how the black person was outcasted.  Bullet's coach asked him to train with another person on the team but Bullet refused to train with him because he is black.

Another quote that shows how blacks are still in a struggle for racial equality is in short commentary, A Fair World for All by Dorothy Canfield Fisher:

       "Suppose that you are in a market or food shop buying

       things to eat.  Everybody is relaxed and easy, standing

       around waiting for his turn to buy.  All of a sudden a big

       snake crawls along the beam of the roof and drops down

       amongst the shoppers.  You don't need anybody to tell

       you how most of the crowd will scream and rush for the

       door..."4

This was a perfect analogy used by the author to explain racial inequality.  If the snake was black, nobody would scream or run out but we can easily get the message how we are sometimes narrow-minded towards people of other races.

We are clearly able to see that blacks are still struggling for racial equality if we examine an exert from an article that compares blacks' salaries to those of whites.

       "Blacks-regardless of their academic credential or skills

        earn substantially less than their white counterparts.

       For each dollar earned by a white working fulltime,

       Asians made 82 cents, blacks averaged 74 cents..."5

As we can see, the above quote clearly shows that blacks are still in the struggle for racial equality.  These statistics were put from a survey based on 1989 wages and salaries.  This helps to prove that blacks still have to strive for equality.

Therefore, in society blacks are still struggling for racial equality.  In the 1940's, blacks were not considered equal.  If we examine the general public today, they have not made enough progress, they are sometimes socially outcasts and they are also paid less that whites and Asians.  If we all work together, we can put an end to the discrimination that exists today.

ENDNOTES

1. The Power of One.  Directed by Arnon Milchan, movie, colour.  Screenplay by Robert Mark Kamen.

2. Cynthia, Voigt, The Runner (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985), p.57

3.Voigt.p.93

4."A Fair World for All" in Collier's Junior Classics: Harvest of Holidays, ed. Ruth Weeden Stewart (New York: The Crowell Collier publishing company, 1962), p.278.

5.Author is anonymous, "Blacks get Smaller Salary Payoff for Education, Califonia Study Reveals" Jet, Feb. 1, 1993, p.29.