Black in America

500 word blogger entry on your general thoughts about the CNN Special "Black in America." What struck you as important, surprising, depressing, hopeful? What did you learn?
The special report, “Black In America”, brought up the obvious points of the difficulties of one of being in one of the major subordinate groups in America, the obvious difficulties, such as being submitted to racism during job interviews, and by the police were discussed. As well as the unseen side of it, that black men were more likely to go to jail, that they were often told “You seem very articulate!”, as Whoopie Goldberg said, “School B¡†©#!!!”. The fact that media has come into play so much, showing rappers that are pimps and ballers, effects how everyone, even blacks, view the black community. If there is an educated black person, he/she is made fun of, called white, and people are surprised when they are articulate and educated. The media however isn’t the only thing playing a part, the black community itself, with an absence of father figures in most homes, and crack/cocaine appearing so early in a child’s life, people in that situation feel as though there is no other way out, they grow up expecting to be a part of that. If they cannot rap and cannot play basketball well enough, to make a life out of it, crime, prison and cosine gets involved in their lives. Many of the “successful” black men interviewed talked about how they were seen as “the black man” at work, the opinion they brought to the table was black, the music, the lifestyle everything. However, they said that with their friends they were “the white man” because they were educated with a “white mans job”. These kind of prejudices are the barriers that still hold back society from getting the jobs and getting out of the place many of them are in. There were staggering numbers of the number of young black men in jail, many of them there on cocaine, laws that were meant to help the black community have done nothing but set them back. Many young black men say the law is unfair to them and is incredibly prejudice, the point is arguable, but the numbers would be an asset in arguing that point. For many it takes a life of crime to realize what they want to, and can do. The preacher in the special had been in prison and now taught young black men that had been in prison as well, helped them find work, as well as being a preacher. The two brothers, raised in the same home, went completely different paths, one not realizing the error of his ways until being imprisoned. The entire CNN special was hard to swallow, and at points hard to believe, but showing America this isn’t going to change, that won’t come for quite some time.

Epistolary Wrting

The epistolary style of the writing in “The Last Days of Summer” makes the book more unique as well as more entertaining to read. The epistolary style means that the book is not told from a narrator, and the dialogue is not all in conversations, instead, the book is written in the form of mostly letters, with report cards, ticket stubs, and telegrams thrown in. The book follows a boy named Joey Margolis, a twelve year old Jewish boy who has major troubles with boys on his street beating him up because of his religion. He begins writing to Charlie Banks, 3rd baseman for the New York Giants, to find someone to stick up for him. Joey and Charlie develop an very unusual relationship, as well as a very close one. Joey ends up going on a road trip with the New York Giants, and becomes very good friends with famous singer, Hazel. The style of writing makes this book much more enjoyable because of the fact that not only do you get the story, but you also get a form of cleverness that you wouldn’t normally see in a book. The hidden humor requires readers to pay much more attention to pick up on the subtle hints that are encoded in the book. The fact that we have the ability to pick up on the story is amazing with this kind of writing, but the fun part about it is that we can see the story from many different sides. For example, when Joey and Charlie are writing letters to Hazel, we hear one side of the story from Joey, making Charlie seem like a mean person that locked him in a room in the train. While when Charlie writes a letter to Hazel at about the same time at about the same situation, he makes it seem as though Joey was being incredibly difficult. The fact that we get to see the same situations from so many different sides adds a great deal of humor and enjoyment to the book. It helps to piece things together in a way that helps the reader to side with certain characters, and understand the situations that they are in much better then the typical style of writing.