Bleeding Ireland and Black America

Essay by Anonymous UserUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, December 1996

download word file, 18 pages 2.9

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Good term paper. Long. Some personal and regional points should be changed. Recomended reading "Introduction to the United States" by Noel Ignatiev Great. Check grammar, structure, usage more.

Bleeding Ireland and Black America

Fall Road is deserted. Only a few dirt-caked, barefoot, Irishmen can be seen

shivering in the adjacent park. We walk past the Catholic neighborhoods knowing, at any

moment, buildings might explode and automatic weapon fire could lacerate the air on

every side of us. Belfast is charming, apart from the harsh reality of guerrilla warfare and

terrorism being common occurrences. For the first time, throughout my three month tour

of seventeen different European countries, I feel truly threatened. The tension carries itself

into a nearby pub where an old man asks "Are you jus daft? Or do ya have relatives here?"

His words hinted at my grandfather's blunt, yet kindly, expression concerning his

birthplace in N. Ireland, "If you haven't been there yet, don't go there."

I can remember the lyrics of a Naughty by Nature song blaring over my car radio,

"If you have never been to the ghetto, don't ever come to the ghetto," as I put in a tape.

My thought stream continues as it takes me to another place where guerrilla warfare and

terrorism are a part of daily life.

The gunshots and unruly pitbull barking registers over the calm of the wet

playground. Trash strings the streets and every dwelling has an eight foot, black, metal

fence circuitously about it. Two white faces gape over the hood of a parked Cadillac.

Besides the police parked down the block, they are probably the only Caucasians in a five

mile square radius. Two companies of drug dealers fire at will scrambling for control of a

superior capital making outpost. Even at nine o'clock...