Lipsitz (2008) discusses the thoughts that a sixteen-year old high school student expressed to a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. She said, as I’m sure many other white men and women have, that she could did not believe that white people owe black people anything. She claims that because our ancestors were the ones that were responsible for slavery that we should not have to pay the price for what they did. As I was reading, I was surprised at first to see that someone would actually say or even think something like that. After thinking it over for a little while, however, I realized that there are probably many people that believe the exact same thing that this sixteen-year old girl believes. Why would they think any differently? As a white girl, she has not been taught any differently through examples of her social group and through the stereotypes that white people and institutions have placed upon other groups. A seventeen-year old girl expressed to the reporter an opinion that basically implies that because her family did not own slaves in the past that she should not be held responsible for what the ancestors of other families have done. I was equally surprised by this opinion as by the prior one at first.
White Backlash to Electing Black Politicians – Then & Now
This blog entry from CNN discusses how the first Black man to be elected to the U.S. Senate was met with a white backlash that “helped destroy Reconstruction” after the Civil War. It draws parallels between the white backlash then and the white backlash to electing Obama in 2008. What are your thoughts? Is is a reasonable comparison to make? The post quotes a history professor from Fordham who says we aren’t post-racial but we also aren’t going back …
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