Critical Thinking Question: How does this text make you think about justice in the world?

In a typical day, you don't really think so hard about how fair or unfair this world is. You usually think about what you are going to do the next day, or in my case, all of the things I have left to do before I leave on Friday. It usually takes a while to discover all of the problems on the inside, when all you see is the good on the outside. The book Lunch-Box Dream by Tony Abbott deals with justice and racial issues. In this book, the main character Bobby and his brother are called "chocolate" because of their race. These charters' deal with a lot because of their race, and that lead me to think about how it related to justice in our world today.

One way Tony Abbott shows how this book deals with justice in the world, is the theme of racism. Bobby and his brother are called names because of their skin color. "They called them chocolate men, Bobby and his brother"(Abbott 7). This shows that people of the opposite race don't want to accept the fact that they are a different color and they are not like them.  Another example of racism in this book is when Bobby asked if a black person dug graves for people. "Did chocolate men dig graves?"(Abbott 17). This shows racism in a not so obvious way. Bobby asked this question to see if a white or black man dug his grandfathers grave. He was wondering if a white man would dig a grave for a black man, and the other way around. He wanted to know that a black man would provide a resting place no matter what color they were. This relates to the world today for many reasons. A lot of the time, people don't accept people for who they truly are because they are different. In this case, the characters in the book are dealing with race because the whites and the black are different. People need to think of everyone the same because we are all different in our own way, but that doesn't make us anymore  different than anybody else. These are the reasons that racism in this book makes me think about justice in the world in the present day.

Another way this book makes me think about justice in the world is segregation. "As long as we don't have to take the bus. Chocolate people always sit behind you"(Abbott 24). Bobby and his brother Ricky were talking about how they didn't want to sit on the bus. They were happy when their mother revealed that they were going to take the plane back. They didn't want to deal with the drama of having to sit in the back of the bus for a long time with a lot of whites in the front. To him it wasn't fair. Another example of segregation is when Louisa is explaining how Jacob and her husband are going to their grandmothers house. "Hershel sat on the inside of him. Then the white passengers got on, then the driver" (Abbott 27) This shows segregation in more ways than one.  One way this shows segregation is that the whites didn't want to get on the bus at the same tike black people did because they didn't want to mix. Another reason is that during that time period, there was a lot of segregation going on, and there was very minimal mixing of races. To me, this shows that justice in that time period was very little. I think today, we take it for granted that we have come so far.

 All of the people who acted during the civil rights act were very brave, and did an amazing job of helping our country unite as one. Now, there is a surplus of justice. Segregation was a very difficult and bad time. Now we have so much more and a lot more to be thankful for. During the time when there was a lot of chaos there was also a lot of people doing as much as they could to have change. Segregation and racism are problems that people wanted fixed. Although there is some of this left, we are almost to where we want to be. In perfect harmony.