The message the young black boy receives from his country, Billy Brooks says, is “ ‘You ain’t shit. You not no good. The only thing you are worth is working for us. You will never own anything. You not going to get an education. We are sending your ass to the penitentiary.’ They’re telling you no matter how hard you struggle, no matter what you put down, you ain’t shit. ‘We’re going to take what you got. You will never own anything, nigger.’ ”
Wow
You don’t have nothing, so you going to take something, even if it’s not real. You don’t have no street, but in your mind it’s yours.”
All the problems that black people face today face stems from the past
black people keep on making it, white people keep on taking it—a fact of nature. “All I wanted was a house. And that was the only way I could get it. They weren’t giving black people loans at that time,” she said. “We thought, ‘This is the way it is. We going to do it till we die, and they ain’t never going to accept us. That’s just the way it is.’
This kind of uncovers a cycle that seems hard to break
In 1951, thousands of whites in Cicero, 20 minutes or so west of downtown Chicago, attacked an apartment building that housed a single black family, throwing bricks and firebombs through the windows and setting the apartment on fire. A Cook County grand jury declined to charge the rioters—and instead indicted the family’s NAACP attorney, the apartment’s white owner, and the owner’s attorney and rental agent, charging them with conspiring to lower property values. Two years after that, whites picketed and planted explosives in South Deering, about 30 minutes from downtown Chicago, to force blacks out.
White folks used physical force to remove Black people from their neighboods. They went as far as burning houses down which I think dull or foolish
Here we find the roots of American wealth and democracy—in the for-profit destruction of the most important asset available to any people, the family.
the root of american weath and deomcracy divides families, thus stripping away all the innocnece and humanity out them
When the wife and children of Henry Brown, a slave in Richmond, Virginia, were to be sold away, Brown searched for a white master who might buy his wife and children to keep the family together. He failed:
The fact that black man has to find a white man to purchase his family so they can be together is cruel. The thought of people being bought for work is already staggering, but the fact that the white man who looks in the mirror everyday does't regret is even more cruel
But the memories of those robbed of their lives still live on in the lingering effects. Indeed, in America there is a strange and powerful belief that if you stab a black person 10 times, the bleeding stops and the healing begins the moment the assailant drops the knife.
The lasting effect of systematic racism is a heavy on toll on the black American and also motivates perpetrators to carry out the wrong ideals.
Whatever the Obama children achieve, it will be evidence of their family’s singular perseverance, not of broad equality.
the author is trying to make clear that the Obamas achievment were much more harder than a white man's achievment. Many obstacles were in their way they had to overcome, such as inequality or just the lastign effects of the past
Its homicide rate is 45 per 100,000—triple the rate of the city as a whole. The infant-mortality rate is 14 per 1,000—more than twice the national average. Forty-three percent of the people in North Lawndale live below the poverty line—double Chicago’s overall rate. Forty-five percent of all households are on food stamps—nearly three times the rate of the city at large.
These issues are the lasting effect of systematic racism.
The story of Clyde Ross and the Contract Buyers League
The contract system was scam for African Americans. They had to pay for taxes water bill, gas etc even though they had no ownership of the house. On top of that they were charged double or even triple the amount of money the house cost. Black people had to work multiple jobs to sustain such conditions and were often times considered "strangers" in their home to children because they were really never able to see them
In a contract sale, the seller kept the deed until the contract was paid in full—and, unlike with a normal mortgage, Ross would acquire no equity in the meantime. If he missed a single payment, he would immediately forfeit his $1,000 down payment, all his monthly payments, and the property itself.
Prime example of how Black people were treated unfairly just to make the white man happy
If cotton was selling for 50 cents a pound, the Ross family might get 15 cents, or only five. One year Ross’s mother promised to buy him a $7 suit for a summer program at their church. She ordered the suit by mail. But that year Ross’s family was paid only five cents a pound for cotton. The mailman arrived with the suit. The Rosses could not pay. The suit was sent back. Clyde Ross did not go to the church program.
Black folks are being underpaid for the amount of work they do. In reality, they are being robbed and treated less. As a result, both black adults and children suffer badly, weather its loosing their innocence or just loosing their right to live a happy life
Then, when Ross was 10 years old, a group of white men demanded his only childhood possession—the horse with the red coat. “You can’t have this horse. We want it,” one of the white men said. They gave Ross’s father $17.“I did everything for that horse,” Ross told me. “Everything. And they took him. Put him on the racetrack. I never did know what happened to him after that, but I know they didn’t bring him back. So that’s just one of my losses.”
Even the things they worked for, was stripped away from the white man
Local white children had a school bus. Clyde Ross did not, and thus lost the chance to better his education.
This piece exposes the barrier Black folks face when trying to move up in society. I say move up because society has forged a social hierarchy that puts white folks at the top
“You didn’t talk about it or tell nobody,” Earvin said. “You had to sneak away.”
Life was difficult for Black folks during that time. They were mistreated and not viewed as human. This is prominent in the south. People try to sneak away to escape the reality their living in.
trickery of the poll tax and the muscle of the lynch mob.
People in power used these tactics to systematically keep black people from voting. Groups like the KKK really revolutionized these ideals mainly carried out the lynching of African Americans.
kleptocracy
When ruler uses political power to steal country resources