Rage of a Privileged Class

As I read "Rage of a Privileged Class," I could not help but feel saddened, angered, and shocked by what blacks have on their minds, let alone what they feel. It provides an insight of what they have gone through, and what they continue to go through. The Author, Ellis Cose, offers stories, experiences, and his own encounters to help picture the frustration blacks have endured for years. The chapters of the book enlighten on the way they have been mistreated, and continue to be mistreated. The book as a whole is amazing, however, three chapters stand out in my mind. The chapters I would like to discuss are three, five, and nine.

Chapter Three: A Dozen Demons. As most of the book's chapters, this one starts off with a past event. It tells the story of a Reverend Cecil Williams and his experience with racism. His grandfather dies and as they are waling through the cemetery, Williams thinks to himself that his grandfather will be buried in a beautiful and peaceful place. To his horror, he finds out this is only the whites section, and that his grandfather will be buried in an unkempt pasture. This single experience made him lose his sanity for sometime. When asked about it, it states that he still feels the humiliation by the whites, but that he is now stronger because of this.

As the chapter continues, Cose describes that there are a dozen demons that blacks will in sometime come across. A few, inability to fit in, low expectations, and identity troubles are the ones that I found myself asking "Why?"

Under the inability to fit in, he describes how many people in executive positions examine black differently than whites. In their minds, blacks do not have the same criteria to meet as whites do. He goes on to say that whites are more likely to fit in than blacks. They have to hire based on who can blend into `the great white mass.'

As I read the part on low expectations, I found myself agreeing with Cose. One of his fellow employees of the New York Daily News talked about his career being blocked. His own expectations of himself were causing him no room to grow. Conrad Harper commented that if someone is constantly being told he can never amount to anything better, he will in fact start questioning his own abilities.