Civil Rights Reflection

During our study of civil rights and the movement that it was involved in, I have grown to understand the recent struggle of America. As we started the unit, I was pretty interested in the movement and learning about leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. in learning about these two popular leaders I learned that there are always different ways to approach a problem. In the case of civil rights, I learned I would agree with leaders like MLK Jr. or W.B. Du Bois compared to their peers. I though this because these two in particular were about uplifting the spirits of their people in order to overcome. Personally, this is the only way to make a situation better and it was good for our generation to learn about the struggles of others in order to help us become better people.

I feel that the civil rights movement connects directly to our counties struggle today. People of new races arrive every day as we become more and more integrated. And although America prides itself on being equal for all, we aren't. Institutional racism still divides the society as a whole without knowingly doing it. then some groups of people suffer from poverty because of unconscious racism, like "white flight". But if the civil rights movement taught us anything it is that we must first change ourselves in order to change the rules. I learned this also from learing about Martin Luther King, and the Black Panther party in particular. However, to this day I feel that many americans are threatened by this so they choose to fear the things they do not understand. In order to get past the race barrier we must all realize that we all have differences and that our race or skin color should be the least of our concerns.

Reaching social equality was the goal of the civil rights movement and to this day it still has not been achieved. I thing that social equality will never be fully achieved untill every person is racially mixed. However, in the modern day America it is hard to find a person who is not mixed in one way or another. Because of this I feel that we are closer than ever to reaching social equity, but still so far. i say that we are far because of things like racism and stereotyping that all Americans struggle with today. I think we struggle with this because it has been a dominant way of thinking for so long. Nobody wants to think of themself as less than another human but that is exactally what stereotyping does. So it is up to the people to realize that by bettering ourselves, we then begin to treat ourselves with equity. We are our only barrier in achieving quality, and the sooner we realize that the sooner we will achieve the original goals of leaders like Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Charles Houston, and all the other who wanted to make a difference. social Equality will be achieved one day, but first America needs to realize that we create inequality without knowing it.