“Culture for Sale” The book How to Rent a Negro by Damali Ayo is an instruction manual on how to use one’s culture, in this case black culture, as a means for income. Ayo contends that over many decades, black culture has been misappropriated by white individuals without permission, leaving blacks to feel exploited for their contributions to society. She points out that this practice, dating back to slavery, is still very much thriving in what is to be considered a post-racial society. Her solution to this problem is for blacks to start charging a fee for this misuse, also allowing whites to continue this behavior, as long as they are willing to foot the bill. She considers her concept of “renting” a person of color as a means to “bring these two groups together in the spirit of harmony and free enterprise” (Ayo 2).
The Willie Lynch letter brings a bought a lot of controversy surrounding the brain wash or the control of black slaves. I do believe this is effective and accurate account. Willie Lynch states “Take this simple little list of differences about them.” The separation of color, age, size, and intelligence still exist. The Willie Lynch letter has a lot of key points on Society today. Division is still among African Americans as an ethnic group.
Ethos can be seen in the first paragraph when she uses terminology like, “our love jones for hip-hop”, ”homeboy’s clearly got it like that” and “gangsta leans”(602). This use of slang clearly suggests the audience she is trying to connect with is the black community. It also feels like she is showing them that she speaks their language to put them at ease as well as to ask them to not tune her out. Even when Morgan does use logical appeals her overreliance on emotional appeals weaken her logic. This is evident when she describes a US Census Bureau comparison about two parent black homes from 1960 to the present(602); however, she immediately precedes and therefore undermines it with an appeal to Pathos when she says, “The stats usher in this reality like taps before the death march” (602).
From reading this story, I sensed a major theme of representing one’s self as an individual opposed to giving into what society wants you to do. This idea is obvious in the personality of the narrator along with the stripper who attends the battle royal. She is too a victim of lacking an identity to voice her own opinion. Ellison’s in-depth descriptions of his characters make this story a really genuine source of understanding one minority’s struggles through a time of discrimination and failure to establish identity. Ralph Ellison's nameless protagonist in "Battle Royal" is a young African American struggling to find his place in society in the early twentieth century American South.
The message that the author is trying to deliver is obviously related to the color-problem and could be seen in Kimberley‘s words during her conversation about race with Jordan : “White‘s a color, I‘m a person, a human being, not painted.“ Black and white can be considered almost as a paint that is applied to the skin, but should not affect the identity of the individual. While Jordan is worried about how society will accept him with a white women, Kimberley bears scars from her childhood because she was not black enough. She struggles with the fact that in a society dominated by blacks she must prove all the time that she is African American woman. Finally, this prejudice in society made damage for all her life as Kimberley explained, she said: “On the outside, it may look wrong, it may sound bad. But to understand what it did to a person, it had to be you.
His behavior and outlook on life are influenced by how his mother raises him. In Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Everything that Rises Must Converge”, Julian and his mother maintain conflicting personal views surrounding the status of African-Americans in 1960’s society. Mrs. Chestny closely associates herself with the time period of plantations and slaves but says that she “can be gracious to anybody” (O’Connor 1017). Julian, on the other hand, believes his mother is a flat-out racist and almost feels the need to apologize to African-Americans for his mother’s behavior and attitude. Despite these clashes of perspective, the main conflict between mother and son derives from Julian’s inability to put his pride aside, accept the sacrifices his mother made for him, and move on from his lack of success in the real world.
On the other hand, David White describes Mama as having an "inherent understanding of heritage," something less apparent among the two children (par. 3). Dee, Maggie, and Mama serve as artistic representations of the various aspects of African Americans culture and heritage. In addition, they are our creative guide to understanding the identity struggles that African Americans faced during that time period. Dee is a selfish and egotistical character with a superficial understanding of her inheritance.
Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister? bell hooks From 'Black Looks: Race and Representation' Subversion is contextual, historical, and above all social. No matter how exciting the "destabitizing" potential of texts, bodily or otherwise, whether those texts are subversive or recuperative or both or neither cannot be determined by abstraction from actual social practice. --Susan Bordo White women "stars" like Madonna, Sandra Bernhard, and many others publicly name their interest in, and appropriation of, black culture as yet another sign of their radical chic. Intimacy with that "nasty" blackness good white girls stay away from is what they seek.
Bradstreet also shows her insecurity when she says, “Nor can I, like that fluent sweet tongued Greek” (129). Lee Oser believes that she lingered over the Greek’s traditions on natural beauty (194). Although Bradstreet has great dreams, she knows her limits as a woman and is left only to dream. Bradstreet soon becomes depressed and grows angry at her state in society, because of envy and her continuous dreaming. John Winthrop says, “God Almighty hath so disposed of the condition of mankind” (107).
The American slavery relied heavily on the status of those of African descent equal to the status of chattel. This dehumanized these women and men, making them less than human and thereby justifying slavery. When Jacobs introduces Linda’s family, they are characterized in terms of humanity. Not only are they human but there are exceptional people with a bit of social standing. Her father is so skilled a carpenter that he is sent “long distances, to be head workman”, and her grandmother sold baked goods and gained a profit from her business.