...by Alice Walker / what it's like to be a black girl by Patricia Smith represent African American women who have faced challenges of sexism, racism and stereotypes in American life. Racism and Sexism are questions that I will discuss and examine. I will compare tand contrast similarities of both poems. I will explain and give examples to show how these two poems exhibit different scenarios but similar views about how race and ethnicity can affect women of color based on prejudice and stereotypes. The main character is a nearly blind, old black woman with a lean build and a grayish tone to her skin. She wears a mildewed black dress with missing buttons and a grease-stained head rag covering her pigtails. She has blue-brown eyes, is ashen in appearance and much wrinkled. She is perspiring from her walk and is shivering from the cold. She enters the white Church and sits, singing in her head. She is physically thrown out of the church. After the woman is turned away she begins to feel a sense of loneliness, and an outcast. “She sees Jesus walking down the highway and is giddy with joy. Jesus tells her to follow him and she does, walking alongside him. He looks just like she thought he would, and he listens to her sing and talk to him. She feels great beside him and can walk as long as he wants. (Smith,).The women in my opinion feel that God will reward her in the end. Not because she is black but because she knows who she is through...
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... It can be also described as a frame that shapes how people behave in society or interacting with diversity people, and how we are categorized in various ways, such as children and adults, women and men, the rich and poor. Each of people is supposed to do different affairs in their lives as it matches them. And one of the sociological theories is called conflict approach, meaning that explains about inequality between such as women and men and black and white, so on. For instance, in the past of South Korea or other many of countries as well, there was intense inequality of between women and men in getting a job. Women used to be only in charge of doing house work, and they were not able to do anything else without permit from a head of family, which is why many of people still regard women to do more house work than men do. This representative example can be conflict approach in social perspective of how we look at women in our society. And although it seems to be non-changeable the society perspective, there are a lot of factors that changes the sociological perspective of how people behave in our society. Particularly, when it comes to recession, it seem to be more remarkable changes in the behavior of people life, For example, if it happened to come recession into country, it can also change of the social perspective that people become more pessimistic for an uncertain future, and they try to change their behavior to be more cautious in the economic activity of their lives...
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...In early times, women were viewed inferior to men and were not given equal opportunities in the household, workplace and society. However throughout time, women have led to a change in traditional gender roles and fought for equality. The 1950s were viewed as a period of conformity, where men and women recognized gender roles and followed society’s views. The 1960s were a period of uncertainty, disturbance and social revolution. After the turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s, the 1980s were represented as a period of optimism and vision. In the past decades, women began to find their voice and drastically change their position in society, politics, education and leadership. During these times, the racial divide and unfair treatment of women were...
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...sacred and dear. Their fear of a power shift from the dominant to the subordinate or the majority to the minority continues to guide them in enforcing ideas and laws within society that a particular gender or race has little or no value. Resilience is the ability of those oppressed to continue surviving after being compressed by such a powerful force. It is the oppressive forces of the majority group that have smothered minority groups (women and people of color) for hundreds of years and it is the resilience of those oppressed who continue to inspire change throughout history. Historical Oppressive Forces The Noel Hypothesis is a social learning theory that explains the development of a minority group. It suggest that if two or more groups come together characterized by a differential in power, ethnocentrism, and competition the result will be ethnic/racial stratification (Guadalupe lecture notes, 2008). This theory can also be used to explain the development of gender stratification as well. The majority group in relationship to this paper would be white males especially those who are wealthy and the minority groups, women and people of color. The act of oppressing a particular group begins with pointing out what is different and labeling those differences with negative attributes. Women and people of color were viewed as childlike and needing protection from the world and themselves. They were powerless and uneducated, and keeping...
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...both criticized the society of phenomenon such as how the elite in society dominate and control; the inequality between of race, class, gender, sexuality and nation. In this paper, I will refer to three theorists: Michel Foucault, Audre Lorde and Patrica Hill Collins to analyze their vision of the ideal society and what should it be like. Also, I will also mention what we should need to do to get there. Michel Foucault is the French philosopher and one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th Century. He wrote different kinds of books and the most special one is about a new way to view the prison system. In this book, he used discipline and punishment to lay out his thoughts on how the elite in society dominate and control the society. Foucault is an anarchist and dislike societal rules. He thought these rules affected on the human spirit. Foucault’s theories mentioned the nature of power and its functions. It means power controls knowledge and how it is used as a form of social control. He analyzed the word of power is easy to cause some misunderstandings with a mode of subjugation, violence or form of the rule. In his theory, he does not agree to use a general system of domination produced by other groups which affected the society. In his discussions on power and dissertation, they have influenced many theorists. Those theorists believe that Foucault’s analysis of power structures could help the strove against inequality. In Foucault’s society should not be constantly...
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...fastest growing crime in America. Women are the targets of rape, the most underreported violent crime. 60% of rapes go unreported to the police; cases that are reported and end up going to trial have a low rate of punishment for perpetrators (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, 2008). Rape is a powerful tool of sexual violence because women are forced to assume the position of powerless victim, one who has no control over what is happening to her body. The ability to silence its victims also erases evidence of the crime, thus leading to a higher incidence of underreporting. Rape is part of a system of male dominance. This system has lead to opinions that the female body, especially the black female body, is available for men at their leisure, thus leading to a society tolerant of prostitution and sexual violence against low-income black women. Race is one of the predicting factors of sexual violence. Although 80% of all victims are white, minorities are more likely to be attacked (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, 2008). Since the black female body is hypersexualized, due to negative media images, black women face injustices when trying to pursue justice for an unjust attack on their bodies. Societal male dominance has created an environment where sexual violence is tolerated; this environment combined with the social position of low-income black women in the United States has lead to disproportionate sexual victimization of black women, which is exacerbated by injustices...
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...various types of university reforms and protested against the Vietnam war. A radical leftists political movement was active especially during the 1960s and 70s, composed largely of college students and young intellecuals whose goals included equality, de-escalation of the arms race nonintervention in foreign affairs, and other big changes in the political, economic, social, and educational systems. The 1960s was a time of people around the world struggling for more of a say in the decisions of their society. The emergence of the personal computer in the late 70s and early 80s and the longer gestation of the new forms of people-controlled communication facilitated by the Internet and Usenet in the late 80s and today are the direct descendents of 1960s.The era of the 1960s was a special time in America. Masses of people realized their own potential to affect how the world around them worked. People rose up to protest the ways of society which were out of their control, whether to fight against racial segregation, or to gain more power for students in the university setting. The "Port Huron Statement" created by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a document which helped set the mood for the decade. The antiwar movement actually consisted of a number of independent interests, often only vaguely allied and contesting each other on many issues, united only in opposition to the Vietnam War. Attracting members from college campuses, middle-class suburbs, labor unions...
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...clearly racialised and portrayed differently for different targeted audience. Sanger’s (2009) article discusses the ways in which these constructions of heterosexual femininities are racialised, mainly through advertisements, in three different magazines, namely, Fair lady, Femina and True love. In his article, Sangers makes use of the term ‘hypersexuality’ to refer to black female sexuality as well as white female sexuality. Magazines have much influence on a person’s socialisation, whereby we learn how we are expected to behave . We will thus see the ways in which white and black femininity is portrayed in those magazines as well as the difference between the two types of femininity. While True love represents their models and celebrities as black African, Fair lady represents white models and celebrities. Despite the fact that the criteria of the women in both magazines are...
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...Lober and Patricia Martin noted that members of a society have constructed their bodies as ways to comply with their gender status and conform to their racial ethnic group’s expectations of how a body should look like. However, others would say that bodies are utilized as a form of self-expression. Over time, the term “body” has evidently been altered to fit different culture beliefs. Specifically, In Western societies, medical discourse is regarded as the source of knowledge about the human body, however, the introduction to medicine brought a series of consequences for women who were once healers, surgeons, or midwives. The new profound knowledge on medicine identified the bodily functions, menstruation and menopause, as pathologies...
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... In today’s society racism is still a problem just like it was in the past. It is not publicized as before but it is still alive and well in society. With America being a melting pot of race and ethnicity one would think this issue should not exist. I chose the two poems What it’s like to be a black girl by Patricia Smith and Child of the Americas by Aurora Levins Morales. These two poems are written from a women’s perspective about how racial discrimination is perceived in America. Racism is no longer just a black and white my paper will show how these two pieces showed how cultures are subjected to discrimination. The title of these two poems catch my attention one being I am a black girl and two I am a child of America. I too have faced some challenges that are discussed in these poems. In a country that was founded and built on immigrants society makes a big deal about a person’s race and culture. Why does race matter? Does it make you a better person? Does it make you prettier? Sadly our society has placed into the heads of young women that pretty means lighter skin. That being pretty gives you an easier life. The authors of these two poems are African American and Puerto Rican and they have both faced forms of racial discrimination. In America girls were raised that Caucasian was the accepted race. “It’s dropping food coloring in your eyes to make them blue and suffering their burn in silence (Smith)”. A line for What it’s like to be a black girl is a clear example...
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...must change their language when communicating publicly, thus, their ideas are often overlooked; e.g., women” (Kramarae, Cheris, 461). Kramarae say because women are often a muted group in the public sphere, they’ve developed back-channel routes to openly share their experiences with other women. According to Oregon State University, “Muted Group Theory is a critical theory because it is concerned with power and how it is used against people. While critical theories can separate the powerful and the powerless any number of ways, this theory chooses to bifurcate the power spectrum into men and women.” Women are the people with little power who have trouble giving the voice to their perceptions because they must re-encode their thoughts to make them understand in the public sphere. Men and Women perform different tasks in society. The movie that can relate to muted theory is ‘The Help.” Men dominated the political sphere, and women dominated at...
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...oppress women?(20 marks) Feminism is what culture is like for women just because they are women compared to what life is like for men. In society women get treated differently to men as men are seen as more superior, however this only happens in some cultures and these cultures are prejudice towards women. There are 4 key theories that I will talk about in this essay, they all argue different beliefs about feminism and how the family allows men to control and oppress women. Firstly, Radical feminism, they believe that a patriarchal society is the cause of conflict. They also promote lesbianism and separatism. Theorists like Rich, Brownmiller and Firestone all believe differently about Radical feminism. Rich believes in heterosexual relationships however he also thinks that they don’t satisfy the women. Brownmiller believes that women are secluded by society as they fear violence and rape. Lastly Firestone believes that women are unequal due to the factor of child birth. This shows that men are the decision makers and are the ones who have the power within the family. Patriarchy seems to divide rights, privileges and power by gender. Resulting in oppressing women and privileging men. The limitations of this theory are that it assumes all women are the same and men are evil, however this may not be the case as some women may have a more dominant role. Lesbianism is not a good family type to raise children, nuclear is better. Also, not all religions subordinate women, for example...
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...Andrew Papis 1 May, 2012 Perspectives on the Individual Final Course Paper The Struggle for Freedom Human beings are emotional individuals. Their feelings direct them in one direction or the next, and brutally establish who they are, and what they do. It is the human environment that activates these emotions, and these emotions that in turn impact the human environment. They can be either positive or negative in nature, and are centered with government and society. When life is attained from a human being, their outlook on life becomes devious. Having a positive on life conceives comfort in many people’s lives. When an outside fury comes along and changes someone’s life, his or her attitude is going to change drastically. In three books I’ve read, “Night”, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, each struggle with the society they are dealt with. To be more specific, each main character has to struggle for freedom in the society that is surrounding them. ...
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...Tiera Walker Walker1 Professor Dione Sibley English 106 16, September, 2014 Hip Hop’s Betrayal of Black Women Hip-hop has been around since the 1970s and has been listen to by many but some see it as a burden to society. Hip-hop is criticized for its content and the “appearance” artists but also on the conspiracy of black women. Women today are being degraded in hip hop songs that lyrically distinguish women through the lyrics of rappers. In Jennifer’s Mclune article “Hip Hop’s Betrayal of Black Women”, she addresses an audience with the different sexism opinions towards women in our society, though many men feel that some of their statements or opinions are not affecting women. Mclune uses ethos, pathos, and logos by giving the audience multiple reasons why hip-hop has become so negative over the years and also explains how some women do not make the situation any better by being ignorant. Within the reasons, the article begins to give very descriptive issues. Mclune’s article, “Hip-Hop’s Betrayal of Black Women”, which appeared in Z magazine in the July 2006 issue, is a response to Kevin Powell’s opinion in “Notes of a hip-hop head”, “socio-economic” explanation for the sexism in hip-hop. Powell states “just as it was unfair to demonize men of color in the 60’s solely as wild-eyed radicals when what they wanted, amidst their fury, was a little...
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...Patterson English 102-Z2 Professor Lila Joy 1 September 2015 In the article “Hip-Hop’s Betrayal of Black Women” the author, Jennifer McLune responds to Kevin Powell’s article “Notes of Hip Hop Head.” McLune voices her opinion toward hip- hop male singers who disrespect black women in today’s society. The author states those who chose not to sing about ideology of women work harder. McLune then talks about how majority of hip-hop singers are sexist, materialistic, and speak negatively between the sexes. She provides examples on how lyrics are being expressed and how hip-hop artists do not seem to be concerned. They are apologetic for the words they say, but show no remorse. For example, she presented a lyric written by Jay-Z, a famous hip –hop artist which states, “I pump hard on a trick, look F*** if your leg is broke b****, hop up on your good leg.” Even women singers have turned to these ways of singing to keep themselves from being targeted and some even encourage this type of ignorant behavior. For the ones who stand up for themselves risk being disrespected. McLune states hip-hop will fail, as long as sexism is involved. Although, Kevin Powell excuses sexism because poverty, she feels any man, wealthy or flat broke, can be sexist toward a women. The author makes it very clear, by letting theses hip-hop artists continuously degrade and humiliated our black women, society is accepting this type of behavior to exist and to grow strong. Title: The title gives the reader...
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