Great Depression Oral Interview

I am going to write about the interview in which Horace Clayton was the interviewee. Studs Terkel interviewed him. According to the source given by this blog assignment, Horace Clayton was an African American that is talking about poverty. In my opinion, Horace Clayton sounded like a white man because of the way he said some things and what he said. He was referring to black people as “Negros.” I thought that only white people called black people Negros back in those times. I did not know that black people called other black people Negros as well. I guess I am mistaken. Also, he was saying that he dressed better than some of the other black people. In a sense it seemed as though, he looked down on the other black people, as if he was not a black person himself. He also made it seem like he was better than the other black people and looked down on them because of the tone of his voice that he used when he was saying certain things about them. I think that this is extremely wrong. I do not think that anyone should look down on anyone else no matter how much higher in society they may be. Someone should definitely not look down on someone that is within the same race that he or she is in. I like how he said that the black people stuck together when it came to laying down on the ground together. I think that people should stick together like this, no matter if it is the same race sticking together or multiple races sticking together. Americans should stick together as a whole. Hopefully, Barack Obama becoming president will help all Americans, no matter the color of their skin, stick together. I think that Americans of all races have grown closer together since the days of slavery and are continuing to grow closer together and erase race lines. This is shown through Barack Obama becoming president. Not all of the people that voted for and supported Barack Obama were black. This shows that many Americans did not care if Barack Obama was black or white, which is a great thing. I thought that it was kind of neat how Horace Clayton was with the other African Americans, but he did not get beaten like some of the other blacks did. I wonder why this was the case. Maybe it was because he was better dressed than the other black people were; or maybe it was because he was light skinned (I do not know if this is true or not). I thought that this would not matter. I thought that as long as he was black, he would be getting the same horrible treatment that all of the other blacks got. Although some of the words Horace said may have sounded like they could have came from a white person, the way in which he talked sounded like a black person. I do not know how to describe it, but the way he talks sounds like he could have been black regardless of what he actually said.