West - Pre Class Blog

In the reading by West, he focused heavily on the issue of racial inequality and injustice in our society. We tend to "other" African Americans due to the color of their skin and thus use them as scapegoats for problems within this country the reading pointed out. This piece highlighted the politics of racism and the different views of liberals and conservatives on this pretty large issue that has been going on for years. West stated that the liberal view is that we need to stop "othering" the poor individuals and integrate them into our society. The conservative views on this issue tend to differ. West believes that we need to rid ourselves of racist thoughts, or the individualistic perspective as I have learned about in my State of Black American course, and accept people of color and realize how important they are to to our world today; he basically would like us all to embrace equality and practice it. This reading directly relates to everything I am learning in one of my CMC electives, State of Black America taught by Dr. Royce. In this class we have outlined the causes of racism and what it means, discrimination in the workplace, residential segregation, education segregation, economic differences, the White Middle Class versus the Black Middle Class, and many other sub topics to these general topics. I really liked this reading because I finally felt like I knew what the author was trying to convey to me as a reader and I liked relating it back to studies I have talked about in Royce's class and in class readings we have done. I think a big part of West's reading is the constant war between people who believe the individual perspective versus those who believe in the structural perspective. It was a really cool connection to make between two of my classes!