When you look around the sociopolitical landscape, perhaps you hear this refrain in your mind: Why can’t progress happen faster!? Our humanities classes are delving into the root of this question these next few months by examining cultural identity and social justice in the United States. 

English classes are addressing this question from a historical lens in both 6th/ 7th grade’s reading of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and also 8th grade’s short story comparison. From Mildred Taylor’s Depression era through Flannery O’Connor’s desegregated South to the aspirational Million Man March depicted in ZZ Packer’s short story, how do different generations attempt to redefine African American identity and social progress?

In 8th grade English, we’re seeing how the rigidity of one generation’s established idea of social progress conflicts with the next generation’s viewpoint, and how that conflict may be necessary. In “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” Julian and his mother’s views of race become a battleground on a bus ride in 1960’s Georgia, using segregation as psychological warfare against one another to meet their own ends. In ZZ Packer’s “The Ant of the Self,” a young high school debate champion, disillusioned by his father’s attempt to exploit the attendees of the 1995 Million Man March, tells himself that “it’s good [my father] Ray Bivens Jr. and I fought. Most people think that you find something that matters, something that’s worth fighting for, and, if necessary, you fight. But it must be the fighting, I tell myself, that decides what matters, even if you’re left on the sidewalk to discover what you thought mattered means nothing at all.” 

How slow does progress need to be and is it characterized by a gradual ramp-like incline or measured in determined steps that, only in retrospect, appear backward? Let’s look deeper.