Informal Essay

Both races have different experiences about how they experience race and how it shapes their daily lives. White people will never be able to understand the experiences of black people and it’s the same way around. As much as we try to understand the experiences of others who are different than us, we never will.

In the blackness project, there were interviews among black people and their experiences. One man, Narvell, experiences race at a gas station when he was in the parking lot. A middle-aged white lady started screaming racial slurs at him. The racial slurs didn’t affect him as much as teaching the younger generations does. He explained in an interview that she did this infront of her children, and when the children see what their mom is doing they will think it’s acceptable behavior and they will act that way towards people in the future.

Race in the United States has been a problem for centuries. Many of the people in the blackness video want to move past the idea that they’ve been affected by slavery in this generation, instead we need to move forward. Michelle quoted “When we talk about african americans before emancipation, it’s not available because it was never created and that’s heavy. It’s difficult to say in a society that didn’t feel the need to create those records to begin with, the best way to answer that is, no I’m gonna find it and i’m gonna take those stories back out of obscurity and remember them.” No one can change the past, however, we can set goals for the future and educate the younger generations.

In the whiteness project some of the participants had the same idea about slavery as some in the blackness project. Chaney said that because white people had slaves and tortured them in the past doesn’t mean this generation is as bad as they were. She believes we should move forward and “do good for your own race.”

When race started to be affected by institutions of power there is a obvious difference in thoughts and experiences. In the blackness project it showed unnecessary beatings and shootings by police officers. They believe that their is a lot of racism and assumptions made about people of their color. They are almost always asked to get out of the car and if they make the slightest move, their life could be taken away from them. There needs to be more education and guidelines made to stop these crimes from occuring. One guy, Nathan, explained that he believes cops are blamed for things that aren’t their fault; his example was Ferguson. This is an example that some people from both races would disagree with.

There may never be an end to racism, however people should learn to cover up their thoughts like Yoshino explains in his article. Learning to cover up your true self in order to save the feelings of others is something that everyone should learn to do. If people want to believe in something socially unacceptable, then it’s their decision. However, sharing it with the world is extremely unnecessary. People who believe that way should communicate their thoughts to the person they hate because they will come to realize they had no reason to.