“Breaking News, Police Officer Kills Man!” That headline has been in the news way too often recently. In Charlottesville North Carolina, citizens are protesting the police for killing a minority man in their community. In response to this, the white citizens of Charlottesville were protesting about it. Ms. Sophia Nelson wrote an article arguing about how “Charlottesville Is the Ugly Wake-Up Call America Needed”. Inside her article, she writes that she is of African descent. Ms. Nelson argues that America needs a wake up call, and supports her argument, more or less, with tone, implicit claims, and rhetorical appeals.…
“Between the World and Me” written by Ta-Nehisi Coates was written as a letter to his son about the painful realities of what it means to be black and living in America. He follows a historical timeline that highlights the flaws in America’s systems and challenges the standard when it comes to addressing race in America. The purpose of the references and the book in its entirety is to educate young black people. He refers back to his childhood, his college career at Howard University, the struggles of unemployment whilst trying to support his family and relates all of it the stigma of race in America.…
Mrs. Mary Rowlandson’s interpretation of her imprisonment by the Algonkian Indians is one of the earliest and most known narratives of captivity. Despite the extreme tragedy that Mary Rowlandson experienced when being taken captive by the Native Americans, she still remained strong and claimed that her captivity brought her closer in relationship to God. In “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson”, the reader is able to experience the accounts of Rowlandson’s diary, which recounts her capture that lasted around eleven weeks, and is described in twenty ‘removes’. The story of Rowlandson is closely related to the book of Job. Through both characters’ constant faith during loss of loved ones, health problems, and restoration the reader is able to see the similarities of the two stories.…
Author Peggy McIntosh shows an idea of white people having more privileges and advantages which make them become the dominant group in society. She uses a metaphor to describe these privileges and advantages as the “invisible knapsack” in her article “White Privilege: The Invisible Knapsack.” McIntosh concentrates on the white people’s unconsciousness of the effects of their privileges and describes how white privilege affects non-dominant groups. In another way of revealing the issues between different hierarchies, Gloria Anzaldua starts with issues of language hierarchy inside the race hierarchy in her article “How To Tame A Wild Tongue.” Anzaldua describes that Chicano people’s language is different from either English or Spanish and their language are accepted by neither the Anglo side nor the Hispanic side. She states how Chicano people could have different status in different groups and their ambivalent attitude toward their own language. In summary, Anzaldua would complicate the central metaphor of white privilege in McIntosh’s article by analyzing the how non-dominant groups of people get responses when they have privilege in non-dominant groups and how different kinds of privileges could raise ambivalent feelings among people who carry them, which McIntosh does not do.…
This memoir deals with civic participation, civil rights, justice and racism in a time in American society when segregation was in full force. The story makes the historical events realistic and relatable. The idea of segregation, the feelings of injustice and racism were all aspects of society that I will never get to experience. This book really brought me into the world of a young black teen in a segregated world. I felt…
In this paper, I will be reviewing Robert Jensen’s “The Heart of Whiteness. Confronting Race, Racism, and White privilege”, along with developing a critical analysis of this work. I will be comparing my analysis with the opinions of others that have reviewed this book along with utilizing concepts from James W. Neulieps textbook, Intercultural Communication.…
One Voice by Susan Madera is a story that I can very well relate to. Here we see how Madera struggles with her form of speech, because she speaks a language she calls “neighborhood” which she has acquired growing up. This does not affect the fact that she is an exemplary writer. “The language that I picked up on the streets was a part of me but as I grew up I wanted to get as far away from it as possible”(78); this shows that through various stages of her life, Madera has had experiences that have made her form of speech a burden to her. It is something that she is not proud of, and she considers it as a disadvantage in her life that she has to rid herself from. Her speech literacy was acquired involuntarily from her environment, her neighborhood.…
Ta-Nehisi Coates, in a letter to his teenage son titled Between the World and Me, illustrates a candid depiction of the struggles that African Americans encounter on a daily basis. These struggles are due to the negative social structures of subliminal oppression and systemic racism which reign in the American society. There are unsaid rules that marginalize blacks, causing them to navigate the world in fear of losing…
While the term ‘intersectionality’ was first coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, the idea had been employed in Black feminist texts decades before. This essay examines how African-American women experience intersections of gender and race. First, I briefly look at how the concept of intersectionality was conceived and its importance as a tool of analysis. Second, I examine the oppression Black women are subject to within both gender and race. Then, I employ different case studies to demonstrate how the intersectionality of identities shapes unique experiences of discrimination for Black women and their exclusion from both anti-sexist and anti-racist protection. I argue that African-American women are subject to multifaceted subordination due to their intersecting identities in gender and race, and as a result, experience sexism and racism differently to their counterparts in each social category.…
In the essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" Zora Neale Hurston recalls her upbringing in an all black town, and her move to a mostly white town in the heart of racist Alabama. The author is exposed to racism and through the interaction school of symbolic interaction; she feels above the ignorance of society and negotiates her sense of self as a woman rather than as a colored person. The interaction school describes how the author has an active role in deciding who she is. When colored people Hurston knows are shaping his or her sense of self around their perceived race identity, she doesn't follow their lead and shapes her own identity.…
Sometimes we know who and what we are, but it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what we pretend to be or bullied into silence allowing ourselves to be made a victim to oppression. In this essay I’m comparing the authors of “How it Feel to Be Colored Me by Zora Hurston, and How to Tame a Wild Tongue by Gloria Anzaldua. Gloria Anzaldua became a victim of oppression by accepting society expectations of the Chicano culture. Meanwhile, Zora Hurston accepted who she is despite who people perceived her as because of her skin color.…
For my ethnography report, I have chosen for analysis a song called “Lift Every Voice and Sing” written by James Weldon Johnson. This was originally written as a poem but was performed as a song by 500 children from a segregated school in Jacksonville Florida and Booker T. Washington as audience in 1899. I found this song as I did research for a book review I had hoped to do on the civil rights movement. The National Association of the Advancement of Colored People’s website first identifies it as “The Black National Anthem” making its importance clear to those not familiar with it. Although direct access to the handwritten version was not available the content of the song is remarkably extensive. Having been written in an era of segregation and oppression where Jim Crow laws were at their climax, this poem becomes far more than a piece of art turning into a significant part of African American culture.…
The Black Deaf Community seems silly to believe the existence of itself, but in reality based on surveys and observations, it seems rather smart. Going through the supplemental reading, I have noticed the Black Deaf community consists of strong and proud members of both, overcoming many issues thrown at them. This paper will discuss the issues and show how amazing the community really is.…
In the past couple months we have studied many articles that have brought up our attention. We read articles relating to gender equality, eating disorders, racism, and much more. In my opinion, the main two articles that have inspire me the most are Nancy Mairs’ essay “On Being a Cripple” and Zora Neale Hurston’s essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”. I have chosen these essays not only because of the ‘key concepts’ that can be found in each of these texts but also because of their similarities both stories share. They both discuss how they refused to be defined by how society sees them which makes both stories interesting and appealing to read.…
West, Cornel. Learning to Talk of Race. New York Times Magazine. New York: New York Times, 1992. 350-55. Print.…