I think race relations are getting worse. It's a very complex problem, and there isn't really a solution for it. Multiple schools of thought of how it should be handled, what parents should do, the roles of schools in the matter, etc. I think it boils down to some very simple problems that have become the source of much tension.. not just race.
First and foremost, I think the people of color in this country don't have many role models to look up to. Sure, there is Barack Obama... but outside of his skin color, he hasn't really been a traditional "black" leader. Obama is not cut from the same cloth as say a Martin Luther King Jr. While Obama's story is one of inspiration to blacks and people of color everywhere, I don't necessarily think of him (the individual,) as an inspiring person for blacks. Even without that distinction though, I think the negative icons in the "minority" communities too greatly outnumber the positive ones. At least in the 80s/90s, the celebrities that were negatively portrayed by the media were the same celebrities telling us to fight the power, get out the hood, and learn. (Nas' "I Can" still gets played every now and then.) Now a days, kids have people like Lil' Wayne, Future, and any other artist on BET/MTV telling them what's cool and how they should behave to appeal to their peers.
The other biggest issue that I can identify is the lack of realism by Americans in general, but in particular with ourselves. When I think of an example of this, I imagine a school in the middle of the hood with textbooks from 2007-2008, where the classes are overcrowded and undeserved, and the in-school detention center is more remnant of a federal prison than a disciplinary tool. Meanwhile, in the suburbs, there are schools that get new sets of textbooks every year, each student gets an iPad to use over the course of the school year, and classes look more like focus groups than they do classrooms. Despite the differences, we still tell the students in the "urban" school that, with hard work and dedication, they will have the same opportunities as students who attend that suburban school. As someone who has overcome "the system" and got to college from an urban school, there is no way in hell that I would ever buy that BS from anyone. Kids who are forced to attend these poor schools are put at a disadvantage from day 1, and the chances of them straying away from the path of education rises literally every day they go to school. Instead of telling kids they're going to have to work twice as hard to get half the recognition as these suburban kids, we tell them they they too can go to college. And even if by some miracle the kids to get accepted and can afford college, the way our public schools are organized, we don't prepare them for anything to come in post-secondary education.
Let me stop before I write an essay... but yeah man... I definitely feel that things have been getting worse, not better.
