America and dehumanization
The text “Tales of Simple: Coffee break” is written by Langston Hughes in 1965. The text was written a couple of years after that the conflict between black and white Americans peaked. Simple and “I” are two black men, who in their coffee break, is talking about how Simple’s boss comes with racial statements. Simple is tired of the fact that black people always is seen as a unit, and not as individuals. Simple’s boss claims that Simple represents the Negros, as Martin Luther King, and other famous Afro-Americans do. Simple then interrupts him, where he says that one man represents himself. In addition, they also come by the fact that the white only integrates them self with the black to a certain point, where they expect that the blacks should integrate with the white people at its fullest. Simple means that there should be a reintegration, whereas the white also should adjust after the black people’s culture and way of living. How should the integration take place?
In many years, even after the conflict between the black and the white, all the Negros were seen as one kind of people with the same interests and political preferences. This has been one of the main problems related to the segregation in the USA. “And being white and curious, my boss keeps asking me just what does THE Negro want. Yesterday he tackled me during the coffee break, talking about THE Negro. He always says ‘THE Negro’ as if there were not 50-11 different kinds of Negroes in the U.S.A”. The USA has always tried to dehumanize people with whom they are in war or even people living in The USA. By dehumanization they create difference in the mind of common people with the target. It`s easier for a soldier to kill an enemy who feels “less human” in his mind.
Here we can see that it was not easy for white people to understand black people because before that time there