Chapter 14 discussed the civil rights movement, in particular with martin Luther King Jr. These civil rights movements as we have all learned about was for equality among everyone. He wanted the segregation to end everywhere, including the school systems. He pushed for equal learning rights for all students and when schools became integrated and the barrier was broken a battle was won. But that was only the beginning. African American students were still treated differently and in some cases they still are today. The most obvious cases of it are the zoning laws for the public schools. I remember of hearing about a case in Texas where the districts were drawn all different ways and blatantly showed that the lines were drawn around the communities that were more African American then others. Is it ok to deny anyone the right to go to a school because of where they live? Is it ok to change the zoning lines to keep people separated?
It is interesting to see that some institutions say from the beginning that they do not guarantee equal treatment from the beginning if they do not speak English. I have to say I agree and I disagree with this. I do agree with it because I feel that if you are in this country then you should learn to speak the language. But aid should be offered to people to learn how to speak English. But I feel that if they are making a conscious effort to learn English then they should be offered the help. But there are some other immigrants that refuse to learn the language and make it so much more difficult. I work in an Italian bakery and I deal with a lot of customers. Some of the customers are Italian, Albanian and Spanish. I find it very insulting that when I try to wait on the customers and they do not speak English for them to get mad at me. I do not understand why they would get mad at me. I am more then willing to help but because I don’t speak their language it does not give them the right to yell at me.
