Black Suffrage in 2016

Many of you may not realize this, even those of you who are Black, but Ghettos were created to isolate members of the Black community. Ghettos were created to limit the growth of Black people and to make them feel inferior. It isn’t by accident that a mass portion of the Black community lives in poverty stricken neighborhoods.  I’m currently taking a course that is focused on the study African Americans . The course covers the plight of  Black people from slavery, to the migration from the South to the North. It was through my research in the course that I uncovered information about how Ghettos came about and how poorly mistreated Africans Americans have been over the course of history and still are. One portion of my research truly caught me off caught. I came to the conclusion that the education system is more segregated now than it was over 10 years ago. Black children in inner city schools are learning less cognitive skills than their White counterparts from more suburban areas. Many inner city schools where the population is predominately African American do not have adequate resources and students are not exposed to the same opportunities.  Furthermore, regardless of how educated a Black person is they are two times more likely to be unemployed than a White person merely because of race. We have advanced since the early 1900’s, but education for Black children is still far from equal.

With that being said, this is why it is so important for African Americans to vote. Our voices need to be heard.  We can not allow someone like Donald Trump to rule any country. We can not allow others to keep deciding what is best for us. We can not allow people to keep making decisions with our supposed best interest at heart.

When I started writing this post I had every intention to go further into detail, but I will keep my words to a minimum. Speaking from a Black woman’s perspective , we’re fighting to survive in a system that was designed to see us fail. A system that was designed to undermine our intelligence and designed to keep us barricaded into one area.

 

 

Finish Line

On April 29, 2016 I officially finished my no meat challenge. In the beginning it was a struggle simply because for the first time in my life I was unable to eat meat, poultry or seafood. After the first week I got beyond the desire of wanting meat but towards the end I had an urge for chicken strips. Now that the no meat challenge is over and I actually can have meat, I don’t have a desire for it. I ordered chicken strips from Famous Dave yesterday, they were good but I felt bloated and more full than I usually do. I didn’t like that feeling. I noticed that by only eating vegetables I would get full but I would become hungry relatively quicker than I would if I had a meat that included meat. I found that having a smoothie with my meals solved that problem. Overall, not having meat in my diet wasn’t as difficult as some people made it out to be.

I’m not sure if I’ll continue to eat meat or if I’ll become a full pledged vegetarian.  My digestive system improved drastically and I felt better energy wise. I’m not sure if I actually lost weight because I was eating a lot and I mean a lot of veggie pizzas. For a while I felt a difference in my pants sizes but I’m not sure if that’s because they were too big to begin with. I realized that not eating meat isn’t difficult but finding things to eat that aren’t pasta and/or bread was difficult seeing that there aren’t a large variety of vegetables that I enjoy.  I really love spinach, broccoli, and salad other than that I don’t have a lot of go-to vegetables.

I’m proud of myself because I stuck to my guns and didn’t fold when things got difficult. I’m proud that I was mentally strong enough to even try something like this. I think my next challenge will be not eating bread or potatoes for a month,we’ll see!