Race Matters “ by Cornel West

Does Race Matter?

        After reading the article “ Race Matters “ by Cornel West, I believe that racial differences still do matter, it shouldn’t, but it does. I feel like a lot of people don’t talk about race or think about people in terms of racial differences because we are concerned about appearing racist. Even though we know that racial differences exist. But I do think it’s important to talk about this issue because it’s still relevant today. Black Americans often encounter racial prejudice and discrimination in their everyday lives. For example, in the article is says “eighty-six percent of white suburban Americans live in neighborhoods that are less than 1 percent black”. This goes to show that white people prefer to live in a neighborhood where there is no black people because they might think that the presence of a black family will make the neighborhood look impoverished, crime ridden and dirty. But they won’t make any of those assumptions when an identical white family in the same house. Another example of race being an issue is when it comes to the well-being of the person, “about one out of every five children in this country lives in poverty, including one out of every two black children and two out of every five Hispanic children”. Black people are significantly more likely than any other Americans to live in high poverty neighborhoods where there is poor schools, limited access to healthcare, jobs and social networks which results in less opportunity and a lower quality of life. Poverty is also a problem because every race earns significantly less money than white people even though they may have worked the exact same amount of hours. This gives black people less opportunity to strive for their potential. It is very unfair that their lives are negatively affected just because they were born in a society where color and ethnicity determines your fate. My last point is on the sentence “…urban influx of poor Spanish speaking”. I think race does matter because sometimes people get yelled at for speaking in their own language when they are around other people that don’t understand what they are saying, these other people may think they are trashing them when simply they are just communicating to each other. Americans may feel like since they are living in their country, they should just be able to speak English and not in their own language because they want them to fit into their American society. Since they think they are the superior race, they want every race to just be like them. I think overall, we tend to notice other people’s race yet rather than addressing racial differences directly, we go great lengths to avoid talking about it. I think we should be able to talk about race more comfortably, of course in a respected way not “a trashing that race” way.

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