The Relevancy of Racial Hate

The events of the chapter "The Champion of the World" from the novel I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings seem so foreign to modern society. It seems easy to forget and leave in the past, the ugly history of America.  Joe Louis's career spanned from the mid 1930s to the early 1950s, a time not too long ago.  Maybe some of the "babies [that] slid to the floor" are now grandparents, still alive 70 years later (Angelou 21).  These same children that grew up in a time period where "it wouldn't do for a Black man and his family to be caught on a lonely country road" lived through the civil rights movement and eventually into 21st century (28).  Only one human life separates oppression from freedom.  But even this freedom isn't true freedom.  Because of the inequality that plagued-- and continues to-- blacks, there has not been enough time to truly achieve equality although law has said there is.  Blacks with the financial resources to live and better themselves were faced with inequality of housing, much like the Younger family in A Raisin in the Sun. This play, with a setting closer to modern day, further demonstrates the opposition Blacks faced.  Societies sorting of races only perpetuated inequal opportunity and left Blacks where they started many years ago.  True racial equality cannot be achieved when much of the population could not vote 70 years ago.