In the seventh section of Barack Obama’s book, Obama focuses on Hurricane Katrina. He discusses how the hurricane has served to illustrate an underlying problem in America. The problem is an ignorance of social problems in this country. Obama elaborates, “It was obvious that many of Katrina’s survivors had been abandoned long before the hurricane struck” (229). Many of the people left behind were poor, living on the streets originally. The slow reaction to the hurricane ignored many of these people. From my personal standpoint, this follows the trend that our country has been following for a while. We don’t help the poor, content with being ignorant to society’s deeper troubles. Obama continues, “Nearly two months after the storm, after the outrage and shame that Americans across the country had felt during the crisis, after the speeches and emails and memos and caucus meetings…it felt as if nothing had happened” (230). People say that they help, but they often don’t follow through. When Katrina occurred, media attention made a lot of people talk about helping people in New Orleans. When the spotlight dimmed, however, people lost interest. In think this shows how narrow-sighted and ignorant people can be.
Moving on to the broader issue of race, Obama talks about the continued problems in today’s world. He mentions one event with a friend in a club. They had noticed that there were no African Americans in a club whose town had a one-fourth African American population. When they asked about it, people told them that the club was private. Obama’s friend says, “It’s 2006, for God’s sake” (239). Racial prejudice is still a relevant issue in today’s world. I think that many people today ignore the fact that there is a continued sense of racism in many places across the country. Obama later says, “Under recent Republican Administrations…enforcement of civil rights has been tepid at best, and under the current Administration, it’s been essentially nonexistent”(243). There is a lot of frustration from minority groups toward politics that seem to forget their existence. Racism should be taken seriously in government, and not as some forgotten issue.
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3 comments:
Many people don't realize that although racism is and always will be a prevalent issue in our society, it can go both ways. I think that although I completely disagree with the "private" club that you mentioned in your post, it is a privately owned business and has a right to run how it will. I also think that Obama's attack on the Republican administration was incorrect. Civil rights in this country are among the highest in the world, some could even argue that programs like affirmative action bolster the rights of minorities beyond the general American public. As I said earlier in my post racism can go both ways. It may not be as obvious or severe, but it is possible. Even uttering the "N-word" can cause things like suspensions and accusations of extreme racism (which it is), but it is sometime used by African Americans referring to themselves, while using the term "cracker" or "honkey" to refer to a white person doesn't even turn heads.
Contrary to what Obama's friend said, that people ignore the face that racism is prevalent in certain areas of the US, I believe that a great deal of people are aware of the fact. It may be that Obama's friend says this because people don't do anything about racism. In my opinion, there's not much people can do to halt it other than to not committing the act because it will always exist. On a semi-unrelated note, I agree with Campbell that a privately owned club has a right to do whatever they please.
I agree with Punky, and think that people are usually aware that racism still exits in society, but think that the people themselves may be slightly racist also. Racism is a concept that has been preventlent in much of history, and no matter how much people want to change it, there will always be feelings of superiority from one race over another.
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