C.P. Ellis

C.P. Ellis's story about overcoming the racism he'd felt all his life seems credible. Terkel helped him to establish his credibility by keeping that narrative in Ellis's own language. By retaining the dialect, the reader was able to better connect with the uneducated, poor older man. In the beginning, Ellis described his encounter with two young black men downtown, where he put a gun up to one of their heads. By admitting this shame, he strengthens the idea of how big of a change he endured. Sitting down and talking about family and common problems with his enemy, Ann Atwater is what finally pushed him to find that black people are just as human as he is. Although it doesn't seem like a situations that many people would have the opportunity to experience, I think that that is a perfectly reasonable way for a man to change his opinions about race.

However, I don't believe that this is possible on a larger scale. Ellis was distinguished from others because he was actually willing to work with Ann Atwater, even though she was black. When he walked door to door, he found that many white people were calling him a sell-out and slamming the door in his face. This was the same response that Atwater faced walking to the black households. Ellis's epiphany was sitting and having a conversation with a black woman, but based on other peoples' reported reactions, I don't think that they would be willing to o so far. Most of those people are probably the type who would feel more comfortable sticking to their own blind beliefs. As Ellis said on page 521, the people he met in the KKK were mostly individuals who were poor and felt oppressed by the system. They were unwilling to surrender their scapegoat. Ellis faced feelings of inferiority, and for many of these individuals, to deprive them of a more oppressed people than themselves would have caused many to fall into a deeper depression. I'm not saying that this justifies their racism, but it does prevent a complete reverse of societal perceptions of racism or other prejudice.