Karlie og racial segregation

Karlie is a common black man who is unsatisfied about the rights that black people have. He is a man that draws almost no attention to him as he doesn’t want to get in trouble. He attends a demonstration against the racial segregation between black and white people. The demonstrators want equal rights for everybody – no exceptions. There were both black people and white people on the platform, behaving as if there were no differences between the colors of their skin. This was the day they all became individualistic human beings instead of just a man judged by the color of his skin. While he is listening to the words that are being spoken at the rostrum, he speculates about something the speaker said “ […] We must challenge the right of any people who see fit to segregate human beings solely on grounds of pigmentation. Your children are denied the rights which are theirs by birth. They are segregated educationally, socially, economically […] “ “He says I am as good as any other man, even a white man.” As he left the demonstration he was almost run over by a white man in his car. The white man threw a racist sentence at him, and Karlie thought that the man had surely not heard the speech or seen the woman offering a cigarette to a black manAt the start of the demonstration Karlie was very sceptic about believing the things that the men and women said, but in the end he begins to wonder if that could ever happen where he lived. He goes to the train station and he sees a mass of human beings, black, white and brown, each treating the other with a certain mistrust of fear. Each treating the others with suspicion. They lived in their own little world. The speakers inspired him to challenge these kinds of things in one’s own way, and that’s where he saw the bench. The bench was a true challenge for him to sit down on a “Europeans only” bench to show the world that blacks should have the same rights as white people should.He doesn’t understand the system of segregating blacks from whites which he felt that he was an innocent victim of. “If he sat on it, he was a man. If he was afraid he denied himself membership as a human being in a human society.”If he stands his ground and keeps sitting there even if a white man tells him to get off, he proves to himself and the people around him that blacks have the same rights as whites do. He shows that he cannot be controlled by other people. He would feel that if he didn’t sit there, he denied himself of his independence, his humanity, his rights as a human being. He would just be like a robot in a system, controlled by others and not having his own opinions. When he just sat there, waiting for someone to tell him to leave the bench he had mixed feelings. Something inside him told him that he had no right to sit on the bench, but the voice of a new religion asked him why shouldn’t he sit there? He had every right to sit there, just like any other human being. He felt proud as he had done something that his father and their fathers have never dared to do. As he was sitting there it felt as an anti-climax for him because nobody seemed to care about him. He WANTED someone to act.As he was waiting, a white woman walked towards him and a voice said “You should stand and let the white woman sit!” Karlie felt excitement as he gripped tighter at his cigarette. He sat there totally isolated to the outside world, having a million thoughts in his mind. The voice shouted “Get off this seat!” “I said get off the bench, you swine!” Karlie snapped back to reality, leaving his comfort zone. Karlie felt the weakness as the man called the police. He thinks that the man is afraid of taking the action himself. He feels superior. People were streaming towards his location, and shouted things like “Don’t get up! You have every right to sit there!” This was a part of Karlies plan; to show the world that he, a black man, had as much right as white human beings. I believe that Karlie achieved his goal in the end. He had sat on the bench because he had the right to, just as any other person. He stood his ground and faced the “demons of the past”. He proved not only to himself, but to everyone that he was a human being and that he should not be judged by his skin. “The pen is mightier than the sword”. You achieve much more through words than with violence. Words can change the world, change perspectives, change thoughts. Violence is not the right way to act. Violence is often responded with violence which can lead to chaos and destruction.