persuasive speech
Uploaded by rafter on May 05, 2004
“It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.” James Baldwin
The year would have been one in the late 1920’s when James Baldwin was aged five or six, yet 75 years on, and many years after his death, few things have changed for people of minority; and it is as simple as cowboys and Indians. Because of immaterial issues such as a person’s name, how they look, talk and act, they are persecuted by those who fear the “different”, just as when white man first inhabited America their fear of native Indians was provoked by them looking, acting and no doubt speaking differently. James Baldwin, in his quote, indicates the distress that an innocent child faces when the realization of discrimination being adamant in their lives is founded and at the same time comprehending that for no other reason than being “different” (than those who have claimed superiority) they have drawn the short stick in life. Hate has plagued society for longer than can be remembered with a historical process having developed in which one comes to know themselves in relation to someone different to them.
History is overwhelmed with discrimination, prejudice and intolerance. It was devastating when whites hated the Indians hundreds of years ago, it was ugly when the whites hated blacks through hundreds of years of slavery, it was repulsive when Hitler promoted hate against those of Jewish decent and in fact everyone different to himself and it is still considerably alarming in today’s unstable society. Amongst the human race there has always been someone to be hated, and even more people to hate them. Discrimination is so prominent in society that groups are formed with generally no other common interests than their hate for other groups. The John Birch Society, Ku Klux Klan, Invisible Empire, NAAWP, White Aryan Resistance, American Front, Nazi Skinheads, Posse Comitatus, Aryan Nation, The Order and National Alliance, just to name a few. Furthermore, the formation of these groups calls for the people they target to feel hate towards them, creating one vicious cycle of extreme dislike. As James Baldwin once said, “People who treat others as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.” Unfortunately for society this...