Another book I am reminded of from this reading is Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man. In it Ellison has this passage: “ these white folks have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesman to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world, a lie, they can tell it so well that it becomes the truth; And if I tell them that you’re lying, they’ll tell the world, even if you prove you’re telling the truth. Because it’s the kind of lie they want to hear.” I think this quote is fitting for how racism in its many forms persists. They tell themselves lies and disguise them as facts. Such as with the case of segregation and taking away a vote. They tell themselves that it is “fairer” to both white and black folk, and people believe it because they want to believe it. Believing a pretty lie is much easier than accepting the ugly truth.

I believe gerrymandering is racially charged to this day. If districts are formed around the poorest of poor and richest of rich, the poorer districts receive less funding than the more wealthy districts. Take the case of Texas unlawful gerrymandering of 2025 in which the “Texas’s GOP-controlled legislature aggressively redrew its congressional map to target the political power of communities of color and try to create 5 more Republican seats in time for the 2026 midterms.” Not only does this affect voting but it affects education. It effects education funding but also how those votes are now distributed to silence people of colors voice on educational decisions in our government.

As I continue reading about the once (mostly) unsegregated states shifted to segregation I am somewhat bewildered by how much racism is exacerbated by outside contexts like the war or economy. Richard Wright wrote in 1945 in his book Black Boy, “ watching the white people eat would make my stomach churn and I would grow vaguely angry. Why could I not eat when I was hungry? Why did I always have to wait until others were through? I could not understand why some people had enough food and others did not.” Wrights question fits with the circumstances of why and how racism is intensified by things like the economy. It comes down to greed, and fairly obviously power. White supremacy elevates the needs of white people and their hunger above black peoples. It is a system that tells them to “wait their turn” and that serves white people first in every way (whether that be educationally, economically, or industrially).

About a year ago I read a book called 12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright. The book went into heavy detail about the Great Migration and the different Key “personae” that impacted the black community as well as overlapped in terms of economic context as Black people did. In the book there is the Black community, the lords of the land (descendants of the slave owning class who still make the formerly enslaved work as sharecroppers on their plantation), bosses of the business (business owners/apartment complex owners), as well as the poor white. The poor whites were the ones situational context overlapped the most to the black community. They held power due to their whiteness, yet like black folk (to a degree) lacked economic power. This lack of economic power and inability to grow wealth made the poor whites fear and segregate the Black community. The bosses of the building liked it this way, because, rather than the poor whites blaming them it made Black people the “enemy.” This affected education too, because White people knew that education was a primary way to get into industry.