Short Story Essay On Discrimination

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Discrimination “Discrimination is a hellbound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as the truth in the society dominating them.” (Martin Luther King Jr. speech, Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967) Martin Luther King Jr. was one of many African Americans who endured discrimination throughout their lifetime in America, and later on had his life taken away from him because of it. There are numerous types of discriminations that people make in nearly every part of the world whether it’s racially discriminating or discriminating someone’s sexual preference. It’s been around as long as we have walked this earth and chances are people will still make judgmental generalizations about other human beings until the day the sun burns out. The short stories The Lemon Orchard by Alex La Guma, The Loons by Margaret Laurence, The Day They Burned the Books by Jean Rhys, and The Creation by Maxine Clair, all deal with discrimination in different ways. Racial, and sexual discrimination has been and still is a problem throughout the world whether its considered fair or not, unjust or not, chances are it will be around as long as the human existence. The Lemon Orchard by Alex La Guma was written about the oppression of the blacks in South Africa during the mid 1900’s. A black Englishmen is taken captive by a small group of white town folk who are outraged at the black Englishmen for “being cheeky and uncivilized towards the minister of their church” (La Guma 333). Even though Africa is predominantly inhabited by Negroes, South Africa is run primarily by the white Englishmen making it much like the United States at the time, where black’s rights were unclear and at times unexistent. La Guma makes it clear through the context of the captors toward the black man and toward each other that racism
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