When I was reading American Apartheid, I could not help but instantly get a very uncomfortable feeling when it actually referred to if a black person wanted to even live in a "white neighborhood" they would only be allowed to live in the low income neighborhoods. This bothered me because even though this should not even be something that we even discuss today, it still happens. There are movies that display how blacks are not looked at as equal and how they aren't really accepted into their own society. It may be a stretch to use this movie, but when I think of the movie, the color of friendship, which is a Disney movie that discusses how a White girl becomes a foreign exchange student to a black congressman family, how she truly learns to accept color and actually build a friendship. In the movie however, it constantly shows how blacks and whites even the blacks that did have more income were still not accepted into society. There was a scene in the movie that once the foreign exchange program found out that the white girl was living with a black family, they immediately made her pack her bags to go home. They asked her questions like "are you okay", "did they hurt you", I'm so sorry you had to live there", and she had no clue at that point what was so wrong. But it gave a great example of how the African American race has not, and even still not even today truly accepted into society.
The movie taught several different lessons and things to really consider about the different ways that we are separate and not equal. Because this is a brief post, I am not actually posting all the great things that would absolutely amazing to get from the movie so if you would like to see the movie or get more details of the movie you can visit http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213565/ or check the movie out for yourself.
A different kind of example that I thought of was this: at some point, some African Americans acquire financial means and they can move their families to better communities to get better opportunities that they may not have been afforded. In this same aspect, what happens to those White individuals that do not live up to what society thinks a White person is supposed to do. In my own opinion, those people that don't live up to the standards are also not accepted into society, so they go where they are. Once, again, I may be stretching this concept but I look at the movie, 8 Mile. How Eminem and his family were surrounded by African Americans because of their financial situation and how they were accepted there, and in some cases even made fun there but I looked the community and I asked myself, why is it that they did not live in a nice neighborhood and the answer is simple. A trailer is not something that would fit in to what it means to be a White person or someone who lives in a good community so they went to where it would be more accepted and less frowned upon.
The bottom line that I would like to point out is that in this society, African Americans have never truly been accepted. Maybe more tolerated than accpeted and things need to change. In a recent course that I've taken here at NIU, I found out that my generation is doing something that is really putting a huge dent in these different aspects and stereotypes and its that we are becoming more diverse. My generations willingness to have interracial families is putting a extreme dent in these different aspects.
This image that I received from NY daily news (http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/interracial-marriages-u-s-hit-all-time-high-4-8-million-article-1.1023643) explains how interracial marriages are continuing to increase. If this keeps going, just maybe we will actually have some sort of improvement and can cease all the stereotypes of minorities.
This is a very interesting blog and I really enjoyed reading it. As a sociology major I found it uncomfortable also when I read blacks are unequal and are only allowed to live in low income neighborhoods. The thought that we have residential segregation based on economic status and racial history is beyond me. The more populated this country gets the segregated and the more racism will arise. For blacks trying to live in white neighborhoods to get out of the unsafe neighborhood they are only allowed to live in is sad because where is their freedom. If money we focused on money instead of the color of someones skin then racism wouldn't be a factor. But because of the long history back to the slave era, racism will continued to be justified in multiple ways to maintain a social order to keep blacks inferior to whites.
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