We shall all suffer at some point. It does not matter the severity of the suffering but the fact remains that suffering is inevitable. After the abolishment of slavery, African-Americans thought that all was over and time had come for them to enjoy equal opportunities with the whites. Despite legislations that were against discrimination based on race being established, other methods of discrimination have been devised. These methods are indirect and are difficult for people to notice.
Today, African-Americans suffer in different ways. Some of the sufferings are attributed to employment and licensing. Numerous regulations have been imposed that people are required to abide by before being granted licenses to venture into businesses perceived to be labor-intensive. There are those who argue that these laws have been established to ensure that entrepreneurs maintain law and order when establishing their businesses. However, this is not the case. The introduction of these regulations is a replica of Jim Crow laws and is aimed at incapacitating the Blacks. It is hard for African-Americans to venture into these businesses while White entrepreneurs continue enjoying the bumper returns from the businesses.
Continued increment of wages in the labor market is not aimed at helping the unskilled labor force. Rather, it is aimed at ensuring that organizations choose to spend on capital equipment thus making it difficult for unskilled African-Americans to secure jobs. Other forms of suffering that African-Americans have to encounter in their day-to-day life include discrimination in schools as well as in accessing equitable health services. Children with African-American backgrounds are found to study in schools that have limited learning facilities while those from whites’ families study in schools equipped with all the necessary learning materials.
As a way of expressing their suffering, African-Americans have embarked on participating in criminal activities. African-Americans have been reported to participate in mugging, looting, and all sorts of crimes in their bid to financially sustain themselves.
After the slave epoch, African-Americans thought that racism had come to an end and that they would be treated equally as their White counterparts. However, the reality is that the current suffering being experienced by African-Americans is related to their ethnicity. It would be unreasonable to affirm that the suffering is not ethnically related. If it was not ethnically related, it would have been distributed across the different races in the country. Nevertheless, the problem has been found to greatly affect African-Americans.
Most of the slave narratives were developed to show how their inventors used their sufferings to forge their identities. For instance, Wheatley, in her poetry, describes how she managed to mold herself to her current identity. It is high time that African-Americans accept that they are suffering because of their race. They need to reach out to the people around them and come up with an identity that does not just portray them as blacks. African-American writers also need to use their skills in drawing the whites’ morality. Writing about the suffering they experienced would make the Whites reflect on their actions thus changing their attitude towards them. This was the strategy used by Frederick Douglass. He wrote about the suffering he was going through as a slave. Frederick incorporated aspects of Christianity in his narrative so as to draw the attention of the northern abolitionist society. Such a strategy will help African-Americans develop a strong identity as well as make the Whites reflect on their actions.