I believe this course has helped me alter my perspective or at least has made it possible for me to see things from another person’s perspective. One example would be the Black Panthers. I had never been taught much about them previously, but I know that I had learned that Malcolm X had a more violent plan for gaining civil rights than Dr.King, so I think this caused me and many others to just assume that the Black Panthers were bad and violent, evil even. It seemed to me that they were trying to undermine Dr.King’s idea of non-violent protest by being violent, and that was not good, so I associated with violence. One of the biggest reasons it seemed they were seen as violent were their guns they carried around. Seeing them walking around with big guns in their hands could understandably cause misconceptions about them and their ideals, but the issue is that no one thought to ask them why they were doing it. As we learned from Huey Newton’s memoir, the guns were basically just for show. They were trying to prove a point, and trying to protect themselves at the same time if a situation occurred and it got really bad, which they had plenty of reasons to believe was possible. It’s interesting to think how the Panthers would have gone down in history, or are really still going down in history as, because people focus on how they look, rather than what they’re saying.
This idea of how people look has been an issue since the very beginning of America, and that is a big problem that we still face today. I will say it myself, and I hope many in America today can make this claim as well, and it’s this- I don’t care what the color of your skin is, I don’t care if you look different from me or even think different from me. If you respect me and my ideas, I’ll respect you and your ideas. We should be able to disagree on issues here in this country without it turning into a screaming match or riots, but that is our rights as Americans to do that as well. We have been given the freedom of speech, and many of us need to speak up and use it otherwise it is going to be taken from us and it will be too late for us to do anything about it.
I have confidence in this country. I took another English course this semester that covered the years from when America was first founded to the Civil War, and there were numerous problems at the beginning of this country, but we survived. We can see from this course that there were many problems from 1968 that are eerily similar to the problems we are facing today, but, again, we survived 1968 and we will survive this year. America and Americans have a resilience that is nothing short of admirable. One of our biggest problems we are facing today is this idea of misconceptions and differing view points, and the problem is not that they are present, but rather that we refuse to acknowledge them. We like to pretend things are alright and cannot bother us if we just ignore them. We can’t ignore the problems in this country because they won’t just go away. They need to be acknowledged and fixed. If we were all just to listen a bit more to each other, these problems could be addressed and fixed, not without a lot of hard work. If we put the work in, this country can be as great as we all know it can be.
Taking time to truly listen to someone’s story is essential if we want to overcome our personal biases, as you mentioned with your personal example of how reading Huey Newton’s memoir shifted your view of the Black Panthers. I would venture to say that we’ve all gained new perspectives on the events and people of 1968 from this course, but the question now is “Where do we go from here?” How can we continue to challenge our personal biases and confront the issues that divide our nation, rather than ignore them like the “white moderates” that so infuriated MLK? The texts we’ve read have shown us many examples of people and groups who refused to stay silent amidst oppression and conflict. I think one thing we can take away from this course is the challenge to model the people in these texts by giving their stories a platform so our peers today can hear their stories too. You say that the problems in our nation today need to be acknowledged and fixed, and I think engaging with literature and voices that we aren’t very familiar with, as well as encouraging our friends to do the same, is a crucial step towards confronting the biases that divide us.
As much as I wish that my thoughts could align with yours on this issue, I believe that the issues that this country is facing are deeply rooted in human psyche and internal morality. When your eyes come into contact with another human being, they assess, recognize, and then search among the files of the brain for clues as to how best interact. The brain is ultimately led to stereotypes, past experiences, news reels, TV shows, teachings from parents, comments from friends, and then formulates a bias or a thought that deems the interaction as one that would or would not be in alignment with your normal way of functioning. This process is what we call prejudice. Like the comment above, I will argue that this process is truly automatic. However, I think the onus lies on us, then, to take the thoughts from our brain that are automatic, and re-assess them, acting only when we have taken into account feelings of empathy, sympathy, kindness, and the statutes of morality. In this way, Americans can “get through” this time “for the better.”
I also hope that many people can say the same as you have– that they do not judge based on appearance, but unfortunately I have found that appearance is something that everyone makes snap judgements on. It is a part of the human psychology to do this, and it is automatic. I do think that we can overcome this, like you said, by civil dialogue and intentionally making a point to recognize our own biases. I think the rioting, anger, and constant screaming at people with differing ideas comes from this overwhelming frustration at a system that does judge based off of appearance– whether it be the color of one’s skin, their gender, etc. When people feel ignored, shut down, and degraded, it feels that the only option is to scream and make a ruckus so that people will hear them. I think that you are right when you say that our country will survive this, but my question is will our country come out of this better or worse?