...unpleasant representation of racial minorities represented by media. This propaganda has created as well as increased the Americans’ aversion towards such groups. In his essay, DeMott discusses movies like “Pulp Fiction” and “White Men Can’t Jump” that portray African Americans as “ugly,” “enraged,” “terrifying,” and “aggressive” people in television shows (DeMott 31-31). Through the use of such intense words, DeMott creates an outraged tone that expresses to the reader how popular culture intentionally displays a dreadful image of the people of color. DeMott describes the “anguish” within the African Americans and how they feel “humiliated” when...
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...Brent Staples essay, “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space”, is a tremendous example of the systemic wariness that people of African-American descent must possess in their everyday lives. There are a plethora of stereotypes regarding African-American males that are detrimental to their societal image. Typically when one hears the word “stereotype” it is merely in reference to a harmless anecdote that is used as a source of comedic expression. However, for black males, these attributions of humor could be the subconscious beliefs that fuel their demise. A very large question is left to ponder; why do these stereotypes exist? Delving deep into research and statistical analysis there is one prominent factor: the false identity of African-Americans...
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...Quarter 1 American Dream Essay Charles B. Rangel once quoted “The promise of the American Dream requires that we are all provided an equal opportunity to participate in and contribute to our nation. The American Dream is the ideal that every U.S citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. The poems “I,Too,Sing America” by Langston Hughes, “America and I” by Anzia Yezierska, and the novel “The Colors of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His Mother” by James McBride all represent how race influences the pursuit of the American Dream. Race influences the pursuit of the American Dream because based on your race determines if you are treated as less than or above others. As stated from the poem “I,Too,Sing America” by Langston Hughes on page 13 in the Springboard book “I,Too,Sing America, I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, .... Tomorrow I’ll be at the table when company comes, Nobody’ll dare say to me, “Eat in the...
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...consciousness” discloses the divisions in American society and allows for a full understanding of those separations. The term "double consciousness" originated from an 1897 Atlantic Monthly article of Du Bois's titled Strivings of the Negro People. It was later republished and slightly revised under the title Of Our Spiritual Strivings in his assortment of essays, The Souls of Black Folk. This was a concept established by the American sociologist to describe the sensed contradiction between social values and day-to-day struggle confronted by blacks in the United States. Being a black as well as an American raised conflicts amongst American social ideals, which blacks shared. Nevertheless, DuBois saw blacks as secluded from the visible American life. The problem of African Americans double consciousness can be resolved. But, in order to permit Blacks to be fully American with equal rights and benefits as any other American, and yet still be African, and uphold the cultural traditions, there needs to be a separation from the thinking that there is a "bio-genetically or naturally determined character of the personality (DuBois).” Double consciousness is actually significant in today’s modern society. “While majority of people would like to debate that we live in a post-racial civilization, there are still many differences based upon race that make it challenging for black Americans to resolve their identity crisis as blacks and as Americans (Nuamah).” The media sells us images of...
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...In prose, it is said that content is more important than style. In the case of “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and “I Have a Dream”, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s prominent style creates a platform for the development of the context of his opinions. A stylistic device King uses in both essays in order to convey his message is the allusion. In “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, King references the Boston tea party, destruction that was then deemed gallant by the American public. King references this occurrence from the past to clarify that when he was arrested he was in fact doing the ethical thing, but it just happened to be illegal. Doing the moral thing, in Kings opinion, and doing the legal thing do not constantly have to correlate. This allusion also showcases that civil disobedience is not...
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...Afro-Americans in Germany The free-of- Jim-Crow ambience in Germany had influenced Afro-American soldiers so much that their “experiences in postwar and Cold War West Germany thus proved pivotal in the struggle against racial discrimination in America” (Hön and Klimke 1). America’s contradictory attitudes of leading the free world and at the same time hosting institutionalized racism was targeted by “the Soviet and Eastern German propagandists” (Hön and Klimke 2). What worsened matters, Jim Crow segregations were carried out in German communities. “The failure of African-American units thus were attributed to the African-Americans, and in the cases where black units achieved successes, credit went to the white officers leading them” (Schroer 47). However, “in May 1946, for the first time a majority of white Americans polled agreed that “Negroes are as intelligent as white people”” (Schroer 71). 1964 showed examples of the American government’s handling of the problem of racism producing “The President’s Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces, Final Report: Military Personnel Stationed Overseas” (Hön and Klimke 3). One of the most important examples of collaboration between GIs and civilians in fighting for racial equality was “the “Call for Justice” meeting...
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...Personal Connections Essay part two Gerald Washington ENG496 /19/2014 Anegla Mullennix Personal Connections Essay part two The two themes that I chose was “Up from Slavery” by Booker T. Washington and The Souls of Blacks Folks” by W. E. B. DU Bois. In my essay I will tell how these two pieces talk to me and how these two pieces have an effect on the things that was going on during this era. In this essay I will analyze these two pieces and show their relation to the historical and societal context of the era in which they were written. In the first piece “Up from Slavery” by Booker T. Washington was the account of his life. This autobiography takes us through the traces of Washington life to find out where he came from and where he was born to an African American cook and having a white father. How this autobiography of Booker T Washington have effect on me is I could remember when I was a kid how my mother would tell me about her mother my grandmother the work that she had to do when they lived in Mississippi. How she did not finish school because she had to take care of her brothers and sisters and also work on the land. This story showed me how strong Washington was just like my mother and her mother was just living in Mississippi was hard enough. I can relate because this shows me Gerald Washington who I am the many things ancestors did for me to get to where I am at today. This piece in relation to the historical and societal context of the era is because it shows...
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...Worldview Analysis Essay Alton Dawson Liberty University Worldview Analysis Essay This essay will examine the world view analysis and prospective on race and racism. Race over the last century has evolved as a worldview, the body of prejudgments and of human differences and group behaviors that has distorted our way of thinking about the issues of race and race relations. Racism begins as myths or beliefs about diversity of human species and the abilities and behaviors of placing these people into homogenized categories. Race has always been a pervasive component of thoughts and experiences shared by Americans and the rest of the world. (Fredrickson, 2005). It has been intrinsic of how Americans and the rest of the world see and try to find explanations the overall functioning of the world, while the meaning or reality of racism has not been explained. The issue of race throughout the United States and the world has been used as placing a classification of social identity that has effected how we were influenced by others through interactions. Race can be determined as being a part of the so called “ natural order “ of things that we as humans think as mere variations ( physical ) often used as evidence of the human existence , that is justified in the mistreatment of the human family. Race and racism in the United States and the world is about inequality of worth and status. Racism is the ideas that are based on human inequality due to differences that becomes phenotypic...
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...African American literature is surprising, captivating, and spirited. Once you start reading a story it is easy to get caught up in the tale being told. The descriptive nature of the works makes it easy to relate to them. Throughout my readings thus far in the class I have noticed some common themes that reoccur in many of the stories and poems. Of course slavery was a very common topic but there were others such as inequality between the races and sexes, injustice and resentment, the black identity, and a strong faith and religion. Even though the words can be separated in the end they all come back together. There were many narratives written by fugitive slaves before the Civil War and by former slaves in the postbellum era. These narratives document slave life from the perspective of first-hand experience. The stories they tell are dark and ugly. The authors like Douglas and Jacobs reveal the struggles, sorrows, aspirations, and triumphs of slaves in absorbingly personal story-telling. Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was the first autobiography by a formerly enslaved African American woman. In it she describes her experience of the sexual exploitation that made slavery especially oppressive for black women. She also recounts her life in slavery in the context of family relationships with her escape and her struggle to free her children. Fredrick Douglas who wrote Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas, an American Slave, Written by Himself...
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...American Studies Name: Melinda Nares Cyrwus/Wolfe Abolitionist Feedback Loop Essay The system of slavery had caused southern slave owners to believe that without this system American progression would not be successful, they valued education, without slaves the whites would not have the time to learn and discover new hobbies. They also valued, making profit rather than seeing blacks as equals they believed blacks were inferior by the color of their skin, thus black people's only purpose in life is to do laborious tasks. One quote that supports this belief is the slave-owning president Thomas Jefferson (On Indians and Blacks (1784)) letter, in this letter he states "...as uniformly as in the preference of the Oran-Utan for the black woman over those of his species". This quote provides a perspective of...
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...Orientalism James Berardino Canon Formation 2B: Orientalism Final Copy Orientalism can be best defined as an ill-conceived notion that befalls the ignorant and misconstrues their perception of most, if not all, people belonging to a race or ethnic group that is different than their own. It does so in a manner that perpetuates the perception of individuals from different races, cultures or ethnicities as grotesque, frightening or somehow inferior in the eyes of individuals who have already completely assimilated themselves culturally into the pre-existing social strata of the region in which they inhabit. In other words, orientalism is a social “virus” that is often perpetuated, or “spread”, by fear of the unknown; a virus which insidiously promotes discrimination and segregation based off differences in both culture and appearance, flourishes amongst the ignorant and is prevalent throughout both America’s distant and recent history, as well as in the archives of world history. A parent to ignorance and the culprit to the divisive vices of racial prejudice of all creeds, a lack of sufficient education, along with blatant disregard for one’s global community, is the underlying reason why Orientalism is a recurring theme in history that has yet to be abolished entirely. However, there exist scholars and filmmakers, such as Le Espiritu, Sucheng Chan, Wakako Yamauchi, etcetera, who give hope to the fight against such ignorance by using their work to inform and...
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...Teaching Guide The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin The Novel at a Glance SUMMARY The book opens with the essay “My Dungeon Shook,” written as a letter to Baldwin’s nephew on the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Baldwin says that the celebration is a hundred years too early, because black people in America are still not free. He exhorts his nephew to approach life with love, even though he lives in a racist world. In the second essay, “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind,” Baldwin describes his visit to the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad. Baldwin concludes that he does not agree with the Nation of Islam’s bitter beliefs about white people. In closing, Baldwin says that if Americans stop thinking of the United States as a white nation, it can transform the world. MORE ABOUT THE WRITER When James Baldwin was sixteen, he began one of the most important friendships of his life. As a confused and self-doubting teenager, he needed a mentor, and he found one in Beauford Delaney, a painter who lived in Greenwich Village in New York City. A black man and an artist, Delaney provided Baldwin with a model of how to respond to experience and transform it into works of art. Virtually taking the place of a father, Delaney introduced his young protégé not only to music and art, but also to a wide circle of friends, and Baldwin began to recognize new possibilities for himself. Through Beauford Delaney and his scratchy phonograph...
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...prescription drugs such as, promethazine, codeine, and all the violence and crime that ensues. Although it is a considered an eye opening dark side to rap with very explicit content, what is most appealing about this type of music is the very well produced trap beats, and lyrics. Trap has once again risen the bar to another level. The evolution of hip-hop has taken many directions, but what always stays the same is the art of lyricism, its delivery, and musical composition. “The Culture of Hip-Hop” by Michael Eric Dyson opens up the understanding of the original style of hip-hop and gives context to the then misunderstood genre. I recommend his essay to anyone not familiar with why people enjoy listening the hip hop, and even to people that like it. There is nothing to lose with a little extra knowledge about rap and how it came to be. Dysons essay gives us insight on the reasons why hip-hop was met with resistance in the music industry, and how it overcame those obstacles. Dyson also explains the culture of the community involved in rap, and how rap was used to express the everyday experiences of these...
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...Trauma, Development, and Spirituality According to the American Association of Children’s Residential Centers (AACRC), trauma is considered to be the result of occurrences of mental or physical injury such as sexual or physical abuse sexual abuse, seeing brutality, or natural tragedy (AACRC, 2014). But trauma is not limited to events per se; alternatively, trauma can also be brought about by occurrences of daily living that are emotional in nature and not quite as obvious. Traumatic stress can be evoked by trials surrounding relationships, physical issues, severe neglect, or by circumstances that overpower a person’s ability to adjust (American Association of Children’s Residential Centers, 2014). This essay will discuss how culture can influence traumatic experiences, the impact of trauma on neurobiological development, and how spiritual development can counter the effects of trauma. Cross Cultural View of Trauma Research conducted in Western countries has typically revealed a disproportionately large percentage of accounts of abuse of children among ethnic minority groups. However, mistreatment is not primarily connected to any particular ethnic group, but has been regarded as a global issue (World Health Organization [WHO], 2002 as cited by Cyr, Michel, & Dumais, 2013). The intricacy of examining child abuse from a culturally diverse viewpoint can be made clear by a number of components impeding the progress of awareness about this issue. Specifically, despite the fact...
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...Overview Imagine a city of perfection, where excitement fills the streets and happiness is present within every household. In the short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin, this is exactly what is described. LeGuin starts the story by introducing us to the utopian city of Omelas. However, the survival of Omelas’ happiness depends on the mistreatment of one forsaken child. Although all of the citizens know about the child, most choose to accept that “all the prosperity and beauty and delight would wither and be destroyed” if the child were treated fairly. Some, on the other hand, after seeing the child and the horrible conditions it lives in, decide to walk away from it all and leave Omelas forever. LeGuin’s fantasy utopia is much like the world we live in today. There are many who suffer at the expense of those who prosper every day. Symbolism People in the world today undergo an immense amount of suffering just for the happiness of others. One example that I can think of off the top of my head would be slavery. For over two hundred years, Africans were the property of others (usually wealthy White men). They were bought, sold and held against their will. In a sense, slavery reminds me a lot of the child that was locked away in Omelas. People knew about it but there was very little that they could do. Much like the child in Omelas, slaves had horrible living conditions. They lived in cramped huts that they built themselves and sometimes shared with as...
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