
Racism has plagued America and it rightly deserved the response it received from Stokely Carmichael. It is unsettling the sheer amount of discrimination a person endures simply because the color of their skin. African-Americans experience legal, institutional, and civil injustice regularly during the 1900’s.  America was a country of “white or black” (Carmichael). 

Carmichael points to a bigger picture – a picture where whites take place in the civil rights movement. Not just white activists that are trying to begin change by acting in African American communities. But, white activists that are willing to spread the word to other whites. Because, change is not the problem with the minority within the country - it is a problem with the majority. A majority that fears what an “equal” black man will be capable of (Carmichael). Blacks are initiating change through groups like the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). However, for permanent and substantial change, there needs to be an outcry from white American people. Whites are only beginning to become convicted of the transgressions they have made and the transgressions they have not stopped in the past hundred years. A small group(what group) of people decided to act on their convictions; they have put racist bigots in throes with the recent abolishment of Jim Crow laws (Wormser). These laws have been a way of life for generations in the Southern United States. It is something that literally disregarded the Declaration of Independence when it came to all men being created equal. Reasonably, a large portion of whites are outraged and they are doing everything they can to hold on to their way of life. That is why it is so crucial to have others stand up in this swelling movement. After all, it took a civil war to emancipate slaves; one can only hope the cost is not the same for civil rights.

Another major point Carmichael speaks out against is institutional discrimination and the severe neglect that black children face in education. African-American children are segregated, not just in the South, and are given poor resources by the education system (Green 274). They endure poorly qualified teachers and permanent substitutes that teach subjects they do not understand (275). They are separately bussed to rundown schools that are in desperate need of repair. Their test scores, which are compared to the white students’ scores, affect the path of their education. If they score poorly they are put into simple classes that have little to no challenge (275). By the time a poor African-American student graduates from High School they are greatly behind the vast average of white students. Graduating for most minorities ill-equips them for working a middle-class job. On top of that, the teaching material is exclusive of all other cultures and does nothing to promote non-racist attitudes. A common theme of accepting the mainstream culture of the ideal American white male is prevalent; it is laced into both their coursework and the accepted modes of teaching (275). If they do well enough academically and score excellent test scores, they can go to college. However, they must go to an African-American college – segregated from the whites. That is considering the student’s parents are not one of the 94% of African-Americans who live in extreme poverty. Institutional racism spreads farther than just in academia. 

Stokely Carmichael speaks from an impassioned point-of-view. Racism has been running rampant throughout America for many years and brown people are just beginning to speak out against it. Carmichael was an active member of both the BPP and SNCC. He speaks of the violence that they have endured during peaceful protests or broaches the number of times he has been locked up for “disturbing the peace”. The vast amount of hate and fear of black people has shaped the civil rights movements. Strangely enough, African-American protestors do not respond to violence with violence – they respond with the lack thereof. The significantly anti-black populace has shown that they are not afraid to take twenty black lives for each white life taken (Carmichael). Stokely is fed up with just how involved whites are with the black population. Blacks have been told where they can and cannot move, where they can and cannot eat, and what they can and cannot say. All this unequal jurisdiction over people because their ancestry and the color of their skin has upset many people. From Carmichaels words, we can sense the anger at everything that has been put in place to keep black people from being “equal”. 
