How Far Have We Come?

The March on Washington and the “I Have A Dream” speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the most (if not the most) famous event concerning civil rights. That is what our history books tell us, anyway. “And then they all lived happily every after.” Was that the end?

Civil rights are the freedoms and rights that a person has as a member of a community, state, or nation. In the U.S., these rights are guaranteed to all citizens by the Constitution and acts of Congress.

Since the 1960’s, there have been many laws passed to guarantee civil rights to all Americans, but the battle continues. In modern day America, not only blacks, but many other groups - Hispanics, Asian-Americans, the disabled, women, homosexuals, homeless and other minorities – are also fighting the civil rights battle.

While many of these groups, especially blacks, have made many great strides forward, there is still much work to be done. There are three problem areas that a Scholastic article discusses, which I will briefly mention on this blog - housing, education, and the political ground – where African-Americans are still not treated as equally as other Americans.

1)    Housing

Millions of Americans today live in insufficient, substandard homes or have no housing at all. This is because they either cannot afford decent housing, or they are kept out because of prejudice/discrimination. Many African-Americans fit into one or both of these categories.

The housing that poor people can afford is more often than not in awful condition. The property has been neglected, repairs have not been made, and sometimes other basic things/needs are not provided or met; and often times fighting the landlord or whoever owns the building is pointless, or leads to even more issues.

A decent population of African-Americans can afford better accommodation, but are alienated from such places because of the color of their skin – which by the way is against the law if you haven’t heard! Yet people have found ways to bend the law, like realtors “forgetting” to show blacks houses in white neighborhoods, or “just happening” to pick the white applicant instead because of their own personal bigotry. 

What is the solution?

2) Education

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional. It is against the law to reject a student to a school because of his/her race; however, in some parts of the United States, schools are still segregated, by circumstance. Generally speaking, most children go to school that is near to where they live. Blacks and whites still tend to live apart even today, thus they learn apart in different schools as well. The same issues I discussed above that blacks face with housing, they face in education as well. Usually if it is a poor neighborhood, the public school nearby will also be poor. The children who go to private, or well-funded schools have access to the latest technology, textbooks, and nice facilities for learning and physical education/fitness. Yet kids in inner city schools have smaller budgets and help thus they have to make things work with outdated books, old equipment, and few nice programs, technology, and facilities.

Even in schools in which both blacks and whites attend, there is still segregation. (I would personally argue some of the reason is self-segregation). White kids tend to hang out with white kids and black kids tend to hang out with black kids.

Do you see this playing out at Rhodes? Your high school? If not, why do you think that did not happen- how can it be fixed?

3) Government

After more than 200 years of hard work and struggle, African-Americans are getting closer to having large, true representation in the House of Representatives. (African-Americans are 9 percent of the House). Increasing numbers of blacks are governors, mayors, and local officials. Blacks are making their presence known and felt through the voting booths. Politicians (as we somewhat discussed in class) try to acquire their support when election time comes around.

There is no qualm that blacks have made significant progress since the year 1963; however, black leaders tell us that issues still persist.

I love what Scholastic writes,

“ So what comes next? Should we be satisfied with the progress already made? Or should AMERICANS — black and white together — work harder to achieve the 1963 march's goals of jobs, justice, and peace?”

Also this is just my own personal thing – I don’t like it how people refer to people as white, black, “nigga”, Asian, whatever – we are all Americans. We see things in the news like “Black teen shoots teacher.” Is that necessary? And of course this is on all sides, but we are ALL Americans, regardless of the color of our skin and we need to start acting like it and treating everyone as such.