Blacks: A Struggle for Racial EqualityAlmost 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 arestill struggling for racial equality. We should note that in the 1940’1, blacks were not considered equal tothe whites. We see this in The Power of One . Blacks could not socialize withwhites.
P. K. a young boxer asks the manager at the gym how he gets away withmixing blacks and whites. The manager says that outside the ring a black man isnot equal, inside he is but not in public, only in private. This clearlydemonstrates 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 arelooked 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 Wecan 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 treatsthem with very little respect and uses the racist term “nigger. ” This helps tojustify that blacks are treated with considerably less appreciation than otherraces of people. Let us also look at the fact that blacks are often socially outcastedbecause of their race. We see this in The Runner.
“You’re telling me you won’twork with him because he’s a negro?” “That’s right. “3 As we can see the aboveexert clearly shows how the black person was outcasted. Bullet’s coach askedhim to train with another person on the team but Bullet refused to train withhim because he is black. Another quote that shows how blacks are still in a struggle for racialequality is in short commentary, A Fair World for All by Dorothy CanfieldFisher:”Suppose that you are in a market or food shop buyingthings to eat. Everybody is relaxed and easy, standingaround waiting for his turn to buy.
All of a sudden a bigsnake crawls along the beam of the roof and drops downamongst the shoppers. You don’t need anybody to tellyou how most of the crowd will scream and rush for thedoor. . . “4This was a perfect analogy used by the author to explain racial inequality. Ifthe snake was black, nobody would scream or run out but we can easily get themessage how we are sometimes narrow-minded towards people of other races.
We are clearly able to see that blacks are still struggling for racialequality if we examine an exert from an article that compares blacks’ salariesto 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. . .
“5As we can see, the above quote clearly shows that blacks are still in thestruggle for racial equality. These statistics were put from a survey based on1989 wages and salaries. This helps to prove that blacks still have to strivefor equality. Therefore, in society blacks are still struggling for racial equality.
In the 1940’s, blacks were not considered equal. If we examine the generalpublic today, they have not made enough progress, they are sometimes sociallyoutcasts and they are also paid less that whites and Asians. If we all worktogether, we can put an end to the discrimination that exists today. ENDNOTES1. The Power of One.
Directed by Arnon Milchan, movie, colour. Screenplay byRobert Mark Kamen. 2. Cynthia, Voigt, The Runner (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985), p. 573.
Voigt. p. 934. “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.
