I was a little shocked by the turnaround in this story. C.P. Ellis was an ex-Klansman, and was not only a member of the Klu Klux Klan, but at one point in time, he was the president of the group. He was a low-income white man with pent up frustration and had been taught by his father to place the blame for all of the hardships in his life on blacks. This part of the story was not a surprise because that was the attitude and upbringing of many whites at this time in American history. The shocking part is how drastically he changed. He spent years fighting against African Americans, believing that they were the enemy and using all of his power to prevent them from moving up in society and gaining power. Then one day it struck him that the low income blacks and low income whites were actually being pinned against each other by the wealthy whites who wanted to prevent having their power threatened. When he realized that he was being used, he was furious and tried to make a change. Eventually he began to work with the black citizens and fight for common goals. He was shocked by how similar they really were and said that "this gave [him] another sense of belongin', a sense of pride. This helped this inferiority feelin' [he] had. A man who has stood up publicly and said he despised black people, all of a sudden he was willin' to work with 'em. Here's a chance for a low-income white man to be somethin'." (Terkel 70). This quote from Ellis shows that anybody can change and to any magnitude if they allow themselves to have an open mind and fight for what they know is right, whether it is the popular decision or not. This reminds me of even further back in history when whites were working with blacks to help them gain freedom and bring an end to slavery. It was not an easy statement for any whites to make, but they allowed themselves to look past their own popularity and see the bigger picture. This makes me wonder about our modern day issues such as gay marriage. Many people in America are still unwilling to grant these equal rights to a group of people simply because they do not follow tradition, but if they would listen with an open mind to gay marriage activists as Ellis did with black activists, would our country finally accept this change? Would more people vote for it because they see that it is fair even if it is not the popular vote for them to make?
I found Vine Deloria's story to be a new and interesting point of view for the reader because he does not fall under the category of the typical member of a minority group. Deloria was a middle aged, Native American man living in a modernized society. He saw the vast differences between the Indian's culture and the American's culture, and even saw an obvious difference between generations of Indians. He talked a lot about tradition and religion in the cultures of many Native American groups. There were pressures for Indians to conform to the ways of the white settlers but many Native Americans resisted the change. For example, Deloria's father was loyal to his upbringing and did not feel the need to conform to the pressures of society as "he held on to the two cultures without much conflict until the late sixties. The civil rights movement turned him off. The church put tremendous pressure on the Indians to integrate," (Terkel 36). I had always assumed that the minorities in this country would have all joined forces to try to bring equality to all, but Vine Deloria's story clearly shows that this was not always the case. Some minority groups were strongly opposed to the idea of the "melting pot" and wanted to preserve their own customs and cultures. This idea of going to extreme measures to preserve one's own culture brings up several intriguing questions. What groups are currently fighting to keep their independence in America but are being forced to conform to the expectations and behavior of American life? How has America forced people to surrender their own beliefs in order fit in? How would this country be different if some of the earlier groups had never been forced to conform to the settlers’ ways? These are just a few of many questions that this story brings to mind for me.
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