Keeping this ubiquitously known fact in mind, it is easy to chalk any circumstances of injustice to a mentality of “It has always been this way; that’s just the way humans are.” However, this is the exact mentality that perpetuates toxicity and inhibits change and progress from developing our world. Since the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the quality of life of many minorities and marginalized groups has increased considerably. Schools have been racially integrated; many opportunities have been made accessible to historically oppressed groups. Numerous other economic and social gains have been made, but despite that all, we still fall short of the Dream envisioned by prominent civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin.
Civil-rights laws have made it illegal to deny a student admittance to a school because of their race. However, in many parts of the country, schools are still segregated, even if by circumstance. Most kids attend a school in close relative proximity to where they live. Since blacks and whites still often live separately, they often learn separately as well. This hinders students from obtaining a quality and ultimately a well paying job. In most cases, if a neighborhood is poor, so is its public school. Students in well off public schools and expensive private schools have up-to-date textbooks, computers, and a plethora of extracurricular activities to contribute to a well rounded education. However, many students attending inner-city schools with smaller budgets have to work with old equipment, outdated books, and few to no special programs. Even when blacks and whites attend the same schools, they often run into another kind of segregation. Unless teachers, parents, or students make a special effort, white kids tend to hang out with other whites, and black kids with other blacks.Fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, black individuals still earn 20 percent less than their white counterparts for doing the same job and are twice as likely to live in impoverished conditions, a Vanderbilt researcher says.
Velma McBride Murray, professor of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University expressed in her brief exposition, “Are African Americans Living the Dream 50 Years After Passage of the Civil Rights Act?,” that improvements in regard to increased earnings in black household, up 5 fold since 1964, and the rise of black individuals to positions of power in business, politics and entertainment, notably TV personality Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama.
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Overall, however, race-based disparities in education, employment, income, health and life expectancy stubbornly persist.“It is clear that, despite the progress made in many arenas of life, African Americans are still burdened by the legacy of slavery, segregation and discrimination,” asserts Murray. “In fact, it may be that the dramatic successes of a minority of blacks have made it harder for Americans to recognize the continuing disparities and injustices facing the remainder.” African American children remain at a greater risk for problems associated with growing up in poverty. “This helps explain why African Americans are disproportionately affected by chronic illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and, because of lack of access to quality health care, are more likely to die from these illnesses and diseases,” she states.
Some are in opposition to the idea that we have still not realized the dreams dreamt by civil rights activists. Their arguments may include how persons such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were fighting only for the integration and fair treatment of black people. Yes, we now live in racially integrated society that for the most part values diversity, but there still exists disparities in the quality of treatment received by blacks and especially other minorities. Most notably, people of the LGBT community still face prejudices invoked by the circumstance they cannot alter. Even today, many fewer laws exist to protect the basic rights and liberties of people under this umbrella term than that of other groups.
To offer advice to you, the reader, in taking the steps necessary to further diminish instances of injustice, I would say that to become accepting of someone, you must allow yourself to learn from, cooperate with, and take the perception of that person. The root of all discrimination is ignorance, so to combat that discrimination, one must educate themselves so that they do not make rash, inaccurate decisions. When we as a society finally decide to overcome the obstacle of ignorance of each other, only then will we have realized a dream, and only then will the lives of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and any other martyrs for the cause not go in vain.
