Above is the website I took my information from.
While looking over the website of James Perry, there was one article that struck me as interesting. I guess it struck
me as interesting because i took a class on Race relations last semester and this topic was highlighted throughout
most of the class. James wrote about the unemployment rates of blacks since the recession. This is based on an
article in the LA Times, so the statistics were based out of California's population. The blog that James posted
emphasized that the unemployment rates for blacks, "reached levels not seen in decades". Which to me it seems
impossible but true. In his blog he went over the impacts of the Jim crow era which for decades held the blacks
back from accumulating any type of wealth or passing down education opportunities like the people in "Traces of the
Trade". So when the generations over times try to gain any type of status in the US, they have a hard time due to
education opportunities, job training, and their living conditions (are they living in a high crime city area or suburbia).
Not only has this recession impacted lower class blacks, it is now affecting middle class blacks as well.
In my Race Relations class this was a big deal of how there is a white privilege, and that our generation and
also the generations younger than us, do not understand. We have grown up on black and whites are equal, equal
education, values, money, everything. So we do not understand that the generations of blacks have not been able
to accumulate wealth, job status, education opportunities etc, that many whites have. There was also another
key concept that came up in the class that emphasized those who are hired last are the first ones to be fired. So
the blacks in this case were the last ones hired in certain types of jobs, and so in the economy we are in now, they
are the first ones to be fired.
It is amazing that we are taught in school that we are of equal status of blacks in this country, and hey look
there is a black president. But, in reality there is such a class difference and privilege difference between the blacks
and the whites in this country. That is why it is hard to grasp the concept of being ashamed of your heritage
that is why it is hard to grasp wanting to go through the pain the slaves when through, because the country we are
growing up in today is a country of equals.
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