Does White America Deserve The Blame

3 Pages 825 Words

Does White America Deserve the Blame?

From almost the beginning of time, with the Atlantic Slave Trade in the early 1500s, the title slave has been synonymous with African Americans and their culture. These human beings, with feelings and emotions, were stolen from their homeland and chained together, where they were tortured and forced to work in harsh conditions against their own will. For years, this slave-driven continental United States was home to a “white” America, where “niggers” and “negroes” were the working horse of the society. Through much hard work and determination, much of this “racism” and evil-heartedness has diminished ever since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. In recent times however, this explanation of slavery has been the scapegoat for the black community, which blames all individual problems on “white” America. In reality, it’s not the white individual’s fault or even the white-dominated society in which he or she exists. If African Americans aren’t succeeding, there is no one to blame but themselves.
Eric Watts in “The Color of Success” criticizes African Americans who ridicule one another for “acting white” and who say that success based on academic achievement is “not black.” He says that these groups of people are making false distinctions because they are misclassifying themselves as victims. Watts explains how the theory of the once “victimized black race” is being outdated. Truly, the youth of Black America was born after the Brown v Board of Education decision of 1954, and with the passage of such laws as the Civil Rights Act, the Economic Opportunity Act, and the laws dealing with Affirmative Action, problems faced by African Americans are falling on deaf ears.

On July 2nd, 1964, the most important law passed since the reconstruction acts” was passed. The Civil Rights Act “entitled blacks equal voting rights, banned practices of segr...