Exemple de synthèse (794 mots 

 )

As James Baldwin once said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but
nothing can be changed until it is faced.” The corpus of documents under
study shows this will for change and the struggle of American artists and
politicians to build a fairer country.
The corpus under study is composed of three documents, a poem by Langston
Hughes about WWII, a speech by Barack Obama from 2008 and a photograph
from 2020 showing some painters working on a mural which is a tribute to the
BLM movement. We shall study through these documents the evolution of the
racial struggle in America. First, we will study the roots of the Civil Rights
movement and then, we will see how this fight is perpetuated nowadays.

The American nation has been built on a system of oppression which

dehumanized part of its people. Ever since 1619, African Americans have had to
struggle to survive or claim the rights. In the poem, Will V-day Be My Day too,
Langston Hughes writes in the name of a soldier who fought for his nation
during WWI and wonders whether he will be considered equal once he goes
back to America. He wishes his son were treated as a man and not treated “as
the Germans did the Jews” (l.53). He shows here the paradox between the way
he is treated in the army and the way he is treated in “his” country. The poem
addresses the readers and the Americans directly which makes it very powerful.
It seems that there are many rhetorical questions “Will the Jim Crow laws still
stand?”(l.43) to force the Americans to face their incoherencies. How can
triumph be celebrated if some people are still oppressed? Langston Hughes
shows that the unity that existed during the war must prevail in the country so as
to establish a true “democracy”L.68 which corresponds to America’s inalienable
rights: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
In his speech, Obama alludes to those sixties fighters who struggled to have the
Civil Rights and Voting Rights passed (respectively in 1964 and 1965) and
“suffered the yoke of oppression” (l.6). He then explains that their fight for
equality was a success thanks to unity: the Montgomery bus boycott that he
alludes to was a success because not only did Rosa Parks refuse to give her seat
and then take the bus but then many African Americans followed her steps and
this lead to the desegregation of buses in Alabama. Had they not been united,
they wouldn’t have managed to change the situation. Obama also insists on the
involvement of white people in the process. He also explains that what Dr King
said at the time “is the great need of this hour as well”.

Indeed, in 2008, Obama was elected and became the first African American
president in America. Even if it may seem that things have evolved regarding
Exemple de synthèse (794 mots  )

race issues in America, there is still a massive “moral deficit” (l.28) in the
country. Obama explains that discrimination is still rampant in the US. He
mentions the question of education in so far as schools are still vehicles of
injustice: l.32 “schools in the forgotten corners of America where the color of
your skin still affects the content of your education”. Here Obama alludes to
MLK’s speech “I have a dream” and shows that there is still a long way to go
before reaching unity and equality. Document C goes in that sense as it dates
back from 2020, the year when the Black Lives Matter movement was on the
front line after the death of George Floyd. In this photograph, we can see some
painters working on a mural before the renaming of the street. Even if America
has known a black president and is no longer a segregated country, there is still a
lot to be done. African Americans are still going through a lot of discrimination
in all fields and particularly concerning police brutality. In the photograph, we
can notice that both white and colored people are working together on the mural,
showing us that the fight for unity in a work in progress, which demands the
involvement of all. “We are all tied together in a garnment of destiny” (l. 30)

As a conclusion, we may say that what was true in the 60s as far as the racial
question is concerned is still true nowadays: a fight is usually won when people
gather and collectively struggle to reach more equality and justice. Derek
Chauvin’s recent trial and sentence to 22.5 years in prison has shown that unity
has enabled things to change but there is still a long way to go before justice and
equality are truly achieved after 400 years of oppression and inequality.