@M3R!CAN PI3

After reading chapter four, I feel that instead of dwelling on the immortal issues of racism and skin color differentiation, stereotypes and discrimination, we should come to terms with it for it’s going to always be here. As long as these hate groups are living, and they are instilling in their children these same ideologies, they are going to be here for as long as we are living and many generations after we have passed on.

As Silverman said, “we want to be – and are explicitly trained to be – democratic in the ways we view others, by the way they act toward us, not the way they look. ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover,’ we say, but we are always judging books by their covers, and people by their appearance.” All Asian looking individuals are smart. All African American males, especially the tall ones, are great basketball athletes, and every Mexican person lives in a crowded house while the men work many hours on a construction job, so forth and so on.

I feel it is we, the minorities, ourselves hindering our own success in America, and in the world for that matter, because we keep dwelling on the issues. Yes, it’s here, alive and well, we all know that, but don’t make it an excuse for our failure. My most hated line when something doesn’t go as planned, “it’s the man keeping me down.” I mean who is the man, and why does this one man seem to have control over so many peoples lives? [Sounds like a whole bunch of bull crap to me, for lack of a better word]. We are the man or the woman, controlling our lives, and we need to understand that. We determine how much we succeed or how hard we fall in life, not the system, or anyone else.

We all have access to the same opportunities in this world, we just have to go out and look harder for them, and not sit back expecting for them to simply drop into our laps. I feel anything that’s easy to get is not worth having. We must learn to stand strong, even in the face of defeat, and the first step in doing so is getting over the burdens of racism, stereotypes, discrimination, etc, which is blocking our view of our piece of the American pie. Once it’s in our view, and we keep our eye on the prize, there would be nothing that could hold us back.