black in america

Sarah Rodriguez

"Black in America" Blog Due [02/27/09]
500 word blogger entry on your general thoughts about the CNN Special "Black in America." What struck you as important, surprising, depressing, hopeful? What did you learn?

Watching “Black in America” made me realize that being African American is still a problem to some people today. People still have their own ideas about how African American people behave, react and what their role is in America. One fact I remember from the video is that black men are always going to be a target to the police. I think that the police think that black people cause more danger to people than white people would. Some people look at black people and think, “oh what have they just stolen or they must be selling drugs.” I personally have seen people and have heard white people react like that around black people. Jonathon from the video has his opinion that it is not the color they look at but their class they look at and react too. I think that his opinion is true because I think that looking higher class white and black people, it looks like they do nothing wrong but when you see white and black people in the lower class, people automatically think that they are criminals. A dozen black men go to court every week for drug use or stealing. Another statistic is that 1/3 of black men will have a prison record in his lifetime. More than half of the ex-cons will end up back in jail again for either doing the same thing they did before or doing something different. This is absolutely crazy to me. That would be a lot of black men struggling to find a job because of the bad record. It is true that it is a lot harder for black men to find a job once they have a prison or jail sentence on their record. A statistic for black men in Indiana is that 17% of them will graduate from high school in Indiana. 60% of black male dropouts will end up in jail. This is a huge number of black men that will be going to jail that has either not finished high school or college. This is one of the worst statistics I have seen so far and I think it is crazy amount of people that will end up in jail from dropping out. In 1960 only 26% of black population graduated and in 2007, 82% of black population will graduate. It is good to see that the percent has gone up and I hope it will keep rising. The reason that so many of these kids are troubled is because the lack of parenting. 60% of all black children grow up without a father. Growing up without a father is hard because you wont get the father figure you need and you wont have a role model. It is hard to think about not having both of your parents growing up. I could understand why these kids grow up and become angry or feel the need to get back at the life they had. I really learned a lot about this video and think that more people should become educated about this. It was also very hard to watch at times.