In "An Appeal To The Women of the Nominally Free States", Angelina Grimke, an American abolitionist and women's rights advocate in the 1800s, talks passionately about the mistreatment of black women in the North and South. Grimke had a deep commitment to women’s moral equality and was unique because she was a white southerner who lived her life in the North and cared very much about women slavery and racism. In her appeal, she criticizes Southern women for oppressing black women, but she is especially critical of the Northern women due to the hypocrisy that they are guilty of. The Northern women say they are abolitionists, but in reality they are not sympathetic to the prejudice and cruelty of the black woman around them. Throughout her appeal, Grimke repeatedly states that all women “are our sisters”, because she wants everyone to realize that all women are women no matter what color they are.
Ever since Madame C.J. Walker became a millionaire selling hair and beauty products it became clear that black women felt the need to tweak themselves to feel attractive. Hair had to be straighter and skin lighter, blacks have been brainwashed by the images of Europeans and what they considered to be beautiful. After hundreds of years of being told they were inferior and being raped and beaten it’s hard not to believe it. The film, “The Soul of Black Girls”, candidly showed how these thoughts are still embedded in the minds of African-American women today.
That's exactly what Madonna attempts to do when she appropriates and commodifies aspects of black culture. Needless to say this kind of fascination is a threat. It endangers. Perhaps that is why so many of the grown black women I spoke with about Madonna had no interest in her as a cultural icon and said things like, "The bitch can't even sing." It was only among young black females that I could find die-hard Madonna fans.
Whites and blacks are not supposed to be friends because of a “line” that exists that separate them. But because of this “line” of separation, all the white ladies have black maids that help with the cleaning and caring of their children. Racial boundaries are manifestations in our own minds, like they are between Hilly and Aibileen. Therefore, relationships are formed by caring and having common interests for one another, like Aibileen and Skeeter do, while Hilly bases friendships on power and dominance. Aibileen works for Elizabeth, so Aibileen has to take care of her daughter, Mae Mobley.
Brainwashed by society’s standards and demeaned by the white race, the black population struggles to fit the stereotypical image of perfection. Pauline Breedlove, Pecola’s mother, gets caught up in leading her fantasy life. She envisions her ideal universe filled with “beauty, order, cleanliness, and praise” (127). Mrs. Breedlove uses her job as a housemaid to surround herself in the accepted world of whites. After being suffocated by the images of this absolute world, Mrs. Breedlove strives to acquire the white’s life style.
Moreover, this two women realized that his truly intention were to bring them together, to have each other, so they can show their true personality in other words who they really are. One of them, Isabel la Negra was a prostitute, the other, Isabel Luberza was a lady. They knew that in society there is a prostitute in every lady, and vice verse. Those two women wanted to be like the other one, and both of them hid that part very deep inside of their souls. Ferre develops a new personality of women through assigning each character with racial attributes that makes white women good and black women bad.
Like many southerners, they make “polite” comments that are actually insults. You can see this when Red Sam’s wife comments about wanting June Star as her little girl. When June rudely refuses, Red Sam’s wife repeats “Ain’t she cute” almost as if she wish she were dead. During the 1940s, there was a clear divide between race in society. This may explain why June’s reaction to Red Sam’s African American wife was so rude.
She went by this racist belief because when she was growing up, slavery was practiced. That society made it look okay to portray black people as trash and that whites are superior to them, and she still went that same principal to the day she died. "What are you doing in those overalls? You should be in a dress and camisole, young lady! You'll grow up waiting on tables if somebody doesn't
For over a century, women have been speaking about the double enslavement of black women and how not only are they handicapped on account of their sex, but they are mocked almost everywhere because of their race as well. In “Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black Feminist Ideology,” Deborah King illustrates how the dual discriminations of racism and sexism remain pervasive, and how class inequality compounds those oppressions. In the case of Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, this triple jeopardy of race, gender, and class ultimately leave her feeling socially powerless in society. Pecola must suffer all the burdens of prejudice of having dark skin, as well as bear the additional burden of having to cope with white and black men because of her sex. The beauty standards of white Western culture, the sexual abuse of Pecola by her father, and Pecola’s low economic status have multiplicative effects on Pecola and all aid in her progressive alienation from society as well as her fall towards insanity.
As they were on their way to find a better way of living they came across an old woman who was homeless and had lice in her hair. She then asked the first sister Camille to give her some bread, give her some water and comb her hair, then to go into her ruined home and take the rocks that were saying don’t take me. The old said to her that her reward will be like her nature. The next day the younger sister came across the old woman who then asked Paula to do the same but Paula refused to give her some bread, water and to comb her. When sent into the house she scorned the house and took the stones that were saying take me again disobeying the woman’s orders.