Hilton Als has quoted saying that ” standing by my mother’s living room window, I tried, tentatively, to ask her why our world was burning, burning. She gave me a forbidding look: Boy be quiet so you can survive, her eyes seemed to say”. What Als is saying is that people of African American are always being look down upon, and they don’t have a voice in the world. African Americans are always being treated as inferior people and they demand justice for themselves, in which the results end up being not good. Even with protests of black people being treated the same as all human beings, they still end up being defeated by high authority, and the fighting keeps going on until they demand justice for themselves.

Als says that “like any number of black boys in those neighborhoods, I grew up in a matrilineal society, where I had been taught in the power- the necessity- of silence”. The explanation Als is giving is that black women in particular don’t have a voice in society. The reason why this is an issue is because along with women not being treated the same as men, black women not only of have to deal with gender, but with race as well. Black women are almost all of the time look down upon in these neighborhoods and they don’t get as much respect as other women of color.

One quote that interested me is when Als says that “it was a drama that I saw play out, over and over again, as I was growing up. I don’t remember when we moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant, but demonstrations and riots followed us there.” Als is saying that neighborhoods that are mostly populated with blacks always have protest and riots of blacks demanding for for justice. What is interesting about this quote is that protests and riots are happening mostly in neighborhoods with most blacks, which makes sense because blacks want to be seen the same as any other human being. However, non-blacks look at blacks at not even being helped and causes racial tensions. Blacks are always going to protest and riot in these neighborhoods no matter what happens because they deserve something that wasn’t given to them and they will keep doing it until they have they’re justice.