Discrimination in Modern Day America.. Mr. President, We Need Change: Final

Dear Mr. President,


The current state of our country is unsatisfactory. Not because of particular laws or policies, but because of the frame of mind of many Americans. It has been over 50 years since the Civil Rights Movement and despite all of the progress made through the years, our society still does not meet the standard and is not living up to the potential that it can due to the way that many people think. In a selection from the anthology, The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader, African Americans received discriminatory treatment and as it continues, we feel the same pain that they did during the Jim Crow era. Similarly, over the years, I have had more than one encounter with people and police where I was viewed as something I am not. In order for our country to make further progress, you as our president, can do a variety of things in order to bring change in the way how society judges people.


In my life, I have had encounters with people that may not be considered racism, but are very similar to it because I was treated differently based on assumptions that were made and stereotypes that get placed on people with hair like mine. India Arie once said, “I am not my hair, I am not this skin”. This beautiful lyric says it all because a person is not the hair on his/her head or the color and texture of his/her skin but the character and personality within. Therefore it is not ok for anyone to look quaintly at, judge, or pigeonhole anyone based on their appearance. I am sick and tired of people making the impudent assumption that because I have thick, natural dread locks that I sell and/or walk around with weed in my pocket. I am sick and tired of being stopped for those conveniently “random searches of backpacks and other large containers” (once is more than enough but two and a half times is ridiculous!). And I am most definitely sick and tired of getting those dirty looks from old ladies and their grandbabies on the bus and in the street. It is beyond provoking walking to school or through the park and being asked if I got that good ****. I remember one time me my mom and her boyfriend were driving home from our cousin’s house in queens and the police decide to stop us because it looked like we were trying to “avoid” them by “turning on a red light”. So we get out and the police search my mother’s boyfriend and me and then one of the police officers decides to say, “You have any weed on you? Don’t worry; you can tell me, I wouldn’t say anything. Just be honest, you got any weed” and I’m like…no. These experiences I have had make me even more aware of racism and the fact that it still exists because it affects me directly. Sometimes I wonder, if I wasn’t a young African/Caribbean American male with long dread locks, would I be having all of these experiences.

A passage that is very important in the relation to my personal experiences can be found in, The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader. Although this selection was all facts, the evidence from these facts have made me aware that the effects that my experiences have had on me is similar to the effects that living during Jim Crow had on the young people of its time.

In The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader, readers were told that segregation was even justified in the school systems because parents and the white race on a whole did not want their children or themselves to learn in the same institutions as blacks. They felt that we blacks were inferior only because they had different color skin. Research was done to see how life in this era affected the psyche of young children. They conducted this experiment with the use of dolls and when the young children were asked questions like, “choose which doll you would rather play with” and “which doll is cleaner and which doll is the clean one”, they all picked up the white doll. But when negative questions were asked, all of the children picked up the black doll. The evidence from that experience proved that the policies and “culture” of Jim Crow had a negative effect on these children. This can be related to my story because when someone constantly associates a person with negative connotations because of the way they look, it has an effect not only on the individual, but also on the people who live around them. Young children especially can be very impressionable and may adopt these stereotypes as they grow up.


In society, individuals tend to look at people and make postulations and that can be dangerous for the one making the assumptions and the one in which the assumptions are being placed upon. Mr. President, you must break the stereotypes by coming into the communities and showing everyone – Black, White, Hispanic, Asian etc – that not every black person walking the street, hanging out with his friend or even walking in the train station with his book bag and other large container is selling drugs or looking for trouble. Bring the media, bring the news reporters, bring whoever is necessary to aid in the curing of the ignorance that has clinched the minds of millions for so many years. By helping to change the mentality of the public, many young adults that have been sent to jail and/or whose lives have been disrupted will have peace of mind knowing that they can go outside late at night and not have to worry about the police stopping them because they “look” like they might have some form of illegal substance on them. Education is also the key because many people remain ignorant to all of the progress and changes that African Americans and other minorities have made in society today. By doing things like hosting meetings and seminars to bring awareness to the people, most of the ignorance in this country can be cured and many people would be able to conduct their lives freely without fear of being discriminated and judged or without being afraid of people because of stereotypes or discrimination.