Zac O’Neal
Dr. Ketzle
Writing 2211
On the fiftieth anniversary of the historic civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, President Barack Obama, the first African American president of the United States addressed the crowd around him, giving a speech as much to address the continuing racial inequalities in the United States as to honor the price paid by the marchers so many years ago. In this speech, he offers a hopeful view of the United States. This speech runs in direct contrast with the book Between The World And Me by Ta-nehisi Coates. Coates takes a much more negative view on the situation as a whole, and offers a very differ perspective of burden of the inequalities placed upon black america. While the two different interpretations of the current state of race relations in the US for the most part differ, there are some basic areas where the two views align. The …show more content…
For Obama, the method that should be used is on of moving forwards as a country. He claims that America is already a fantastic country, in part as a result of allowing ourselves to accept that we still have problems that need to be fixed in the past, and that we should accept as a country that there are still problems with our country so that we, as a whole people, can move on to fix them. In Obama’s opinion, “All of us need to recognize as they did that change depends on our actions, on our attitudes, the things we teach our children. And if we make such an effort, no matter how hard it may sometimes seem, laws can be passed, and consciences can be stirred, and consensus can be built.”. Coates, on the other hand, believes that it is up to those who think the are white, the “dreamers”, to make the change. They’ll have to make the effort to make the change. Before anything can be truly addressed, the “dreamers” must fall from their dreams and face the reality of the real world that many black people
Dr. Ketzle
Writing 2211
On the fiftieth anniversary of the historic civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, President Barack Obama, the first African American president of the United States addressed the crowd around him, giving a speech as much to address the continuing racial inequalities in the United States as to honor the price paid by the marchers so many years ago. In this speech, he offers a hopeful view of the United States. This speech runs in direct contrast with the book Between The World And Me by Ta-nehisi Coates. Coates takes a much more negative view on the situation as a whole, and offers a very differ perspective of burden of the inequalities placed upon black america. While the two different interpretations of the current state of race relations in the US for the most part differ, there are some basic areas where the two views align. The …show more content…
For Obama, the method that should be used is on of moving forwards as a country. He claims that America is already a fantastic country, in part as a result of allowing ourselves to accept that we still have problems that need to be fixed in the past, and that we should accept as a country that there are still problems with our country so that we, as a whole people, can move on to fix them. In Obama’s opinion, “All of us need to recognize as they did that change depends on our actions, on our attitudes, the things we teach our children. And if we make such an effort, no matter how hard it may sometimes seem, laws can be passed, and consciences can be stirred, and consensus can be built.”. Coates, on the other hand, believes that it is up to those who think the are white, the “dreamers”, to make the change. They’ll have to make the effort to make the change. Before anything can be truly addressed, the “dreamers” must fall from their dreams and face the reality of the real world that many black people