Ellis was an interesting story. He certainly gives a different perspective on the Klan. What he says about the anger and frustration at being poor still doesn't justify what the Klan did. The way they made black people suffer was so much worse than just an inferiority complex like Ellis's, which I might add, blacks at the time were practically born with. I'm talking specifically about the doll experiments which were used to help win the Brown v. Board of Education case.
I'm glad that Ellis began to change from his views of hate. I think that one of the major parts of understanding the experience of being a human is to understand that many people share your experiences. In the case of Ellis, he realized that blacks were just as looked down upon as poor whites and that ultimately, there was no difference.
Andy Johnson didn't catch my interest quite as much as Ellis did, to be honest. I think this is because Ellis focuses a lot on the change that happened within his mind and why it happened, where Johnson doesn't go into quite as much depth. Possibly, there isn't as much depth to go into.
I suppose I'd like to talk about what Johnson ends by saying. He says that on our present course, we're going straight to hell or some other bad place. I strongly disagree with this. One thing that has been common throughout all of human history is change. Our present course is not a set thing; it never stagnates. There's always a guarantee as long as humans exist that change will happen, and that is part of our present course.
