Put On a Happy Face

We live in a world of color. Wherever we look, we see color. We see color and it matters.The most significant place where we see this color is in ourselves. It separates us, brings us together, makes us hate some and accept others. It always has--it is in our history as a nation. One thing I noticed while reading this composition was the authors repetition of the word "between." This to me means that there are endless connections to be made about the racial issues that we deal with each day. The excerpt "...the connection between no schools for longer than a century and bad school performances now..." shows us that there are cause and effect aspects to the way we think, for the way our society is run. This same idea can be traced back to the early history of black and white relations, to the cruel system of slavery. This is the root for our social and racial problems today, just as the lack of schools from years earlier results in poor school performances now. 

 Demott also mentions physical, verbal, and mental violence as a part of discrimination. The white man who carries the horrific board sign over his neck is threatened with weapons by a group of young black men. The white male from the movie White Men Can't Jump is protected from physical violence by his black "chum." 

Another detail is the attention and influence that race relations have in the media. This is a means through which the world attempts to ease and clarify racial differences. For instance, the Victoria's Secret ads that feature women of different races posing together, as they do in countless other film and photography clips. The question, though, is whether this effort has become so obvious that we no longer see it as a positive and all-accepting attribute. Maybe it makes a bigger deal out of it than there has to be, or already was. We must be somewhat hardwired as humans to discriminate against others--as soon as we look at something we make judgements about what it is, its value, differences and similarities to our own lives, our own appearances. Most of us automatically accept some and disown others. There is almost an obvious physical reason for the groups we form among ourselves so naturally. 

In the end, we have to recognize that there are always going to be differences between the human race; it the the very definition of what we are, that no other exists who is exactly like us. Our past is our past, and of course it will affect the future. The essence of this composition is to say that the more effort we throw into the equalizing of all races, the more obvious we make it that there will never exist such a thing as total and consuming equality.