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For my second formal writing piece I am considering writing about Shelby Steele's essay ‘On Being Black and Middle Class.' I find this piece interesting because Steele starts his piece with a contradiction his friend makes, and then he continues to unfold his view on the matter and how he started to change his mind over periods of time during his life. ‘If you were black, you were just black and that was that' (p. 687). Although I am not black, I have discovered that all of us change our views as we grow older. I love the examples Steele uses to describe his change of mind.

He comments that ‘race never fully explained our situation in American society' (p 687). Class also plays an important role on who you become in life. Steele explains that the middle-class blacks in the sixties were caught in a double-bind in life; the race which they belong to and also the class in which they were brought up in. I agree with him on this point. Class has a lot to do with who you......

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Approximate Word Count: 694
Approximate Pages: 3 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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