Change Begins Internally

The improvement of race relations may be a strenuous process, but it is not impossible. The first step for us is to begin working on ourselves as African Americans. The plight of our race results from cycles of poverty and neglect from the government through the generations. As Barack Obama states in his “A More Perfect Union Speech”, “The lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us”. If our black youth had more access to parks and recreational facilities, so that they might be able to build positive relationships with other youth, then there would not be so many of them joining gangs in search of friendship. Obama also realizes that discrimination and segregation has brought misfortune for black people. He says “Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.” A lack of education for black people is a major reason why we cannot succeed as a whole. The way to keep a culture from advancing is to stop them from learning. This tactic has been used since slavery, and now in our supposed “post-racial” time, our race has lost its will to learn. There is a recurrent theme of hardship in the African American race, which has caused us to isolate ourselves from other. But we must realize that we are not the only race suffering from injustice in America. It is time for us to reconnect with other races, but it will be impossible for us to mend our relationships with other races unless we fix ourselves first. And once we overcome our issues, then it will not be as difficult to overcome our differences with other races.