Good The Persisting Color Divide In The US Essay Example

[Professor]

The racial divide in the United States has been dismantled through the Civil Rights movement. However, the color divide is still persisting up to this day. The economic condition among most of the African Americans is still in dire situation as opportunities that do not leave anybody behind has not knocked on their doors yet. In the film entitled Am Beyond the Color Line Chicago, it presented the cycle of poverty experienced by generations of African Americans in the Chicago ghetto. It chronicles the lives of the young and old settlers and concluded that education will resurrect them from the quagmire of poverty.
The presentation in the film however displays a deep-seated economic inequality between the English Americans and the African Americans that needs to be addressed in a long-term technique and not just by getting out of poverty. The first part of the film already drew the color line. It presented the city of Chicago undergoing demolition in order to erase unsavoury history that the Chicago ghettos symbolize. It said that the ghettos symbolize poverty, laziness, drugs, and even sex among the African Americans. In this video alone, it reflects the kind of mind-set that media meld among the American citizens. Despite the legislation of equality, the African Americans are still presented as lazy and crime perpetrators. It is not to say that the representation is not true but it has mired them further into powerlessness.
The film presented that African American prefer to peddle drugs than to find a more stable and noble job. The interviews explained that peddling drugs is lucrative as they can have way higher income than settling to a lowly job that will provide them $US600 per month. Drugs peddling give them instant money. The film focused more on how to get out from the quagmire of poverty, drugs, and chaos. It suggested that acquiring an education can help the younger African Americans of finding a new home which is more peaceful.
It was good that the film pointed out the needs of the youth but it missed to mention of the structural causes and structural change that need to be done in the country in order to achieve what Obama administration’s mantra which is leaving no one behind. On a personal note, the situation presented in the film was just part of the ripples of effects of the absence of genuine social service among the colored races in the country. The narrator even said that the left-wing activists are always blaming the government and the Whites for the dire situation of the minorities. His presentation of the ways forward is even more individualistic rather than systematic. I think that the failure to pin point the structural causes of poverty among the minorities including the African Americans will only repeat the cycle of violence. Getting out of poverty needs to be done in a systematic way. There is a need to question the structures that deny the African-American population of jobs that are decent and with living wage. There is a need to study the social services being provided in the ghettos.
It was good for the film to highlight the initiatives for the recovery of young African Americans who were detained for drug pushing and other crimes through a community that remolds their mind-set regarding their future. However, it is again a “Band-Aid” solution. It does not address the fact that more and more young African-Americans are drawn to drug pushing as their parents have no source of stable income. The issue should not be viewed separately with the overall economic and political landscape of the nation. Until the persisting color divide the US is erased then the economic empowerment will follow.