Black and White- Post- Reading

  For my post-reading I am choosing to write about the quote, "For better or for worse, you'll find out everything you want (or don't want) to know about this world".  This quote connects to the book and to life both in many different ways.
  In the book we all learn that the man that Eddie (white) shoots, recognizes Marcus (black) and accuses him of the shooting. Even though Marcus didn't shoot the man, he "confesses" to doing it. When he does this, Eddie's name is never mentioned. I think that by doing this the author is trying to show diversity and maybe even a little bit about how racism comes into play in this book. The book as a whole doesn't really ever come straight out and talk that much about racism and social diversity. The reason I have mentioned social diversity is because a woman also recognized Eddie from a previous stickup, and when it came time to get lawyers, Eddie was able to afford one because he lived in a higher class neighborhood with wealthy parents. Marcus lived in a neighborhood in the bad part of town with his mother and his younger sister. ( His dad died.) His family did not have any extra money to spare, this is why they started doing stickups; to get money. This is how the author hinted at racism and social diversity throughout the book. So, whether we wanted to or not we all learned something about how others in the world think about skin color, social classes, wealth, etc.
  Everyday we learn something new whether this is at school or outside of school, whether we wanted to know it or not. Sometimes these new things that we learn can be sad or scary, and some can be exciting. Some things that we eventually learn about include death, racism, war, sickness, poverty, and homelessness. In this book we learned about racism, poverty, people not telling the truth to save themselves, and sometimes even bad friends. We have all experienced at least one of these examples.
  So, no matter if you choose to or not, you will learn something new about this world every day. But when you do, don't reject it because you never know, you might learn something new about yourself.

   

Pre- Reading Black and White

For my pre- reading, I am choosing to write about "how I want to be remembered." Obviously I want people to remember me as a good person and a good friend.  Don't we all?

  I think we all want to be remembered as a good person who people liked. After we are gone, when people/friends think about us we want them to think happy thoughts, only good things. I want them to remember me as a person who respected herself, adults, and her friends. When people think of me, I don't want them to think, "oh remember her? Remember how disrespectful and rude she was?" That's not how I want to be remembered. That's why I always try to respect others and be as kind as possible to everyone. That's a good attitude to have.  I want people to miss me when I'm gone instead of them being happy that I'm gone. When my friends and peers think of me, I want them to think about how I was a good listener, how I helped them through tough times, how I made their problems my problems, how I would always support them in their (good) decisions and actions, and how I was an all around good person. That's how I want to remember my friends. I also want to be remembered as a person who tried to make something good out of every situation. Maybe some people want people to remember them as a rebel, or a person who "showed them". This might be part of the reason that we have crime, robberies, school bombings/shootings, and other bad things. Maybe these people want to be remembered as a bad person, or the first person to do something like that, thinking it will make a difference and therefore making others want to follow in their footsteps. That isn't at all me, I'm not going to do something to ruin myself just to be remembered as a rebel or criminal. None of us should, we should all strive to be good.

  So, I want to be remembered as a good person with all of the qualities I listed above, but most of all I want to be remembered as a person who loved being here, living life and enjoying it. We all deserve to feel this way. We need to cherish every moment and make it count, because we never know when we will start being remembered.