LaDon's message

I really enjoyed LaDon speaking to our class last Monday. Seeing her side of Mart and the internalized racism she was enforced to be apart of growing up was fascinating to hear. The most impressive part about LaDon is that she removed herself from that environment because she did not want to be apart of it's beliefs and the generalizations/assumptions that were taught to the generations. My mom's side of the family is from a very small town as well, Colmesneil, TX, which is outside of Lufkin. Population under 700. This small town to has similar qualities that Mart exhibits such as strong involvment in Church and expressing the religious beliefs publically, football games being the only exciting weekend event, and the obvious separation between clicks. In Colmesneil, there too is the 'public drinkers' as LaDon said Mart had, the 'church kids', and then the grouped African Americans. From my experience visiting my family in East Tx, I never noticed racist slurs or enforced separation between the whites and blacks, however I suppose it was just more comfortable for the community to act this way. Which leaves me to the question, why is that? Even though racism may be unspoken of now-a-days (slurs and verbal bullying isn't as present) why is the separation still existant? It's kind of like Courtni said in class, she feels like nothing has changed at the end of the day. Sure equality is supposed to be represented by all throughout our society, but is it really? The separation of clicks in communities makes me feel as if this is something we may never overcome. And it is not only restricted to whites and blacks, in public high schools if you look in the cafeteria at lunch you'll see the separation of ethnicities grouped together. Maybe it is more comfortable, maybe it is because only they have things in common, or maybe because internalized racism is still present but "unspoken".