The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that people act in their own self-interests. This belief that we all act in our own self-interests is well supported by the two readings, “Harlem: Dark Weather-Vane,” and “The Politics of Disorder: Re-examining Harlem's Riots of 1935 and 1943.” Both readings discuss the unequal treatment that Black Americans received during and before the Great Depression and how they reacted to it. Black Americans fought for their civil equal rights in the United States and White Americans tried to preserve their social prestige and class by preventing them from moving up the social ladder. Reading about the fight between two different interest groups, which often resulted in race riots, made me realize that our selfishness is the driving force that pushes this society forward and advances it. Now, as a result of this fight, we have the first Black President in the history of the United States.

 

While I was reading the two, I couldn’t help but recall a tragic history of Korea during the Japanese colonial era. Many black Americans led strikes, pickets, and boycotts to achieve their goals. In the same way, Korean people fought for their independence. Not surprisingly, Black Americans and Korean people that joined and led the fight shared some common characteristics. First is that they had one common factor that tied them strong: a desire for social equality. Black Americans tried to gain their equal rights through protests and Korean people did it through gaining independence. Interestingly, most of them that led the protests were very young. (One of the readings says that a lot of black Protestants were between 19 and 24 years old.) I guess it’s because they wanted to make a change to a society to turn the society more favorable to them when they jump into a work field, which is an act of self-interest ultimately. It was just interesting to notice that what happened here happened there and what happened there happened here in a similar way, proving the argument that we are all the same human beings. So, I learned that there shouldn’t be any more issues with unequal treatments these days no matter how hard it is not to be discriminating, as we are all the same after all.