The Great White Way Summary

Racism is against equality, divides unions and promotes stratification. The differences that humans have created between race are some of the causes of America's division. From thousands of years ago, racial injustice has meant oppression for Hispanics, Asians, and blacks primarily. Although racism is not as visible nowadays, it still exists, but it is more subtle, which means that sometimes it is difficult to identify an action that has a discriminatory purpose. In the article “The Great White Way” by Debra J. Dickerson, she presents the impact that race has in America, and emphasizes the real purpose of having the “whiteness” status. Similarly, in the letter to his teenage son called “Between The World And Me” written by Ta-nehisi Coates,

For Dickerson if you were considered as non white, your privileges would be diminished, therefore, she argues that race is an arbitrary system for establishing hierarchy and privilege (51). People may not see it clearly, but there is no other purpose of focusing in one’s race. She uses black people as an example of having unequal opportunities. As she mentions in the article, Social Security program at first excluded black people, for she argues that it was an intentional racist program. They were not able to have a Social Security number, and the reason could be that it would be easier to put them away from “whites”. And this is just one example of how people were discriminated back on the days. In the same way, Coates also recalls that the only purpose of separate people between races is to organize a society, so this one can be favorable for those who considered themselves as “whites”. “The process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy” (Coates 551). All of the deal about the color of someone’s skin, the language, body traits was only to impose power and privileges. Racism goes beyond someone’s color or culture, and it is not the idea of being literally “white”, but of being

Back on those days, there were black veterans, who were fighting and giving out their blood for their country. They were doing the same duties as whites veterans did, but blacks did not get the same benefits. Their education, mortgage, and housing benefits lagged behind the benefits of ‘whites’ (Dickerson 53). There is no better example for racial injustice than this one that is about these heroes who didn’t get what they deserved, for a society which prioritize people based on their havings. Likewise, Coates presents another example of racial injustice for black people. It was a black man that was selling cigarettes and polices shot him, or like he states “sell cigarettes without the proper authority and your body can be destroyed” (553). He was just earning his bread, there was no reason for a policeman shoots him like he was a criminal. If instead of being a black man would be a “white” man, the police would probably have more consideration. The fact of being part of a minority, it is an automatic signal that this person will be treated as he has a lower