Reaction to Amy Wax

After our talk with Amy Wax, I still find myself disagreeing with her main arguments. I feel that her views on the topic are ones that have been formed after a lifetime of privilege and little experience in someone else’s shoes. She has never been a black American in this country, only a white woman who pity and attraction has followed. For the majority of white Americans, they will never firsthand feel the wrongs that are being done to many black Americans. Two of her main points in our conversation were black’s underachievement in education and family structure. She says that it is up the black community to want a better education so they can have a step up like the rest of us. Yet I find this very hard to believe. Education is run by the government which is notoriously white and whiter. The school districts are drawn to give a ‘fair’ education to all, but in so many cases this is not true. I do not think that is it is a consequence that there are so many districts were 80% or more of the student body is black, and then their neighbor district is 80% or more white. It is all shown that these district that are a majority black have few resources given to them for school supplies and quality of teachers. There have also been so many psychological studies that teacher inherently discriminate toward black students and do not take the time to teach as well because they know that statistically they will be imprisoned most of their lives. So, these teachers focus their efforts on the promising students or better known as the white students. On the note of incarceration, she points out that most black American families are households of one. This has a huge part to do with the racial profiling in the judicial system. If a crime was committed and there were two suspects one white male, one black males, and the witness did not see the skin color of the assailant at the time of the crime, it is statically proven that the jury will convict the black male. The incarceration rate for black males is 5 to 12 times higher compared to white males depending on the crimes. Therefore therefor 5 to 12 times more black families will have one parent homes because their fathers are imprisoned. This cycle won’t stop either because young black men are taught that their future is jail as well, because of their skin color they will be accused of things then white men did. This stigmatize makes black males less likely to go through higher education because they feel that this is a cycle, they cannot break themselves, therefor causing the next generation to go fatherless as well. These two vicious cycles will not change due to a new mind set for black Americans like Wax states. These are cycles of systematic oppression that are driven by the white communities lack of wanting to give up their privileges. Nothing will change like she says it will unless the nation decides to change.