Blog #9

Charles Lawrence's "One More River to Cross" - Recognizing the Real Injury in Brown: A Prerequisite to Shaping New Remediess is basically stating that brown vs. the board of education did not really give blacks as many equal rights in the school system as some may believe. Personally I don't agree with this. I think it was a a stepping stone that needed to be taken in order to BEGIN to give blacks the same opportunities as whites. It would be too far fetched for one issue to change what had been going on for decades before. Lawrence goes on to talk about segregation in length and appears to think that it has not really gone away. However he quotes Professor Charles Black "it was actionable defamation in the South to call a white man a Negro, that placing of a white person in a Negro railroad car was actionable humiliation, and that a small portion of Negro blood put one in the inferior race for segregation purposes." I personally think that these ideas have changed dramatically and issues of race have diminished a lot since the time that segregation was around. I do agree with "to seperate engro children from others of similiar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community in ways unlikely ever to be undone" because I cant imagine being forced into a room seperate from others just because of my skin color. I think there would be a lot of resentment and frustration to say the least and those feelings would probobly not go away very easily, in fact they would probably go on and stay with you for life. Lawrence believes that the segregation in schools isn't the only problem and that fixing the school segregation won't fix life for blacks.

I really enjoyed reading "Whites Swim in Racial Preference" by Tim Wise. The opening paragraph about the fish and the water was a good analogy and caught my attention immediately. The article is basically about how racial preference is relevent today, however many white poeple can't see it because they are so used to it. "White families on average, have a net worth that is 11 times the net worth of black families, according to a recent study; and this gap remains substantial even wehn only comparing families of like size, composition, education, and income status." and "A full time black male worker in 2003 makes less in real dollar terms than similar white men were earning in 1967." These two quotes really proved to me, even if I dont necessarily want to believe its true in this day and age and that people are allowing this to happen, that some forms of segregation and black privelage do occur. Wise ends his article with "So long as those privilages remain firmly in the place and the preferential treatment that flows from those privileges continues to work to the benefit of whites, all talk of ending affirmative action is not only premature but a slap in the face to those who fought, and died, for equal opportunity." I believe this is very true and also eye opening because people talk so mcuh about equality and how things are so much better now, but in all actuality life is still really hard for minorities and they arent given the backpack filled with all the tools they need like white people are. No matter how mcuh poeple talk nothing is going to change without action to back up the words.