Summary of “Social Demarcation and the Forms of Psychological Fracture in Book One of Richard Wright’s Native Son” Matthew Elder says that in Wright’s insight in Native Son defines the psychological and sociological problems that damage African-Americans in a world that “whites work to maintain and blacks are forced to accept” (31). Book one, “Fear”, in the novel Native Son by Richard Wright takes the reader through the rough life of Bigger, an African-American trying to make it in a white world. The actions and mental state of Bigger in the first book play a large part in determining his fate. Bigger’s psychological state is influenced by the social fractionalization displayed within the novel. Bigger’s actions and thoughts were driven by a fear that was established by psychological and sociological damage.
Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” contains many different underlying themes, one of which includes the evils of slavery. Melville shows this in Cereno as he “ attempts to strike a balance between people divided by race and class, thus speaking to the new multiracial readership of popular works on slavery” ( Melville 18). Slavery can bring out the evil in individuals when they try to gain dominate control over someone. The same can be said about the slaves about the San Dominick merchant ship. Babo, acting as the leader of the revolt, ordered the brutal slaying of any non useful sailors.
According to Davis, slaves and peasants were perceived and subjected to common stereotypes regarding the color of their skin, the customs many of the enslaved peoples had before they were conquered, and how the elite upper classes and literate people looked down on them as a dehumanized object. To support this theory, he looked into the role that color symbolism and how physical appearance had a large impact on this misconception. (Davis 50, 57) Another sample he looked and discussed was Islamic and Christian geographic expansions and conflicts that led to the creation of the term Racism that is linked to historic events involving slavery. (Davis 54, 60) Winthrop argues that Slavery and Racism was created at the same time. He supports this argument by looking closely at the meaning of the symbolism behind the color black.
I thought this was a very interesting article. I don’t really know much about our economy or the technical workings of the government sponsored diversity programs Webb is talking about, but my gut reaction is to think that he is pretty off base. Webb writes that he is dedicated to bringing fairness to America’s economy and work force, but how can he do this if he is against the programs that are working towards that fairness? My basic understanding of his point of view is that he believes that today, government-directed diversity programs that favor people of color are unfair because they give an unnecessary and unfair advantage to certain groups, while ignoring whites who might need just as much help. I disagree; I think that these programs are necessary to balance out the unfair advantage whites automatically get just by being white.
As seen in many poems wrote during the Black Art Movement, Armiri Baraka directly states his audience in lines “Let Black people understand/that they are the lovers and the sons/of warriors and sons/of warriors” While Claude McKay notes “If we must die—let it not be like hogs/Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,/While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,” McKay 's indirectly indicates that his audience are African Americans. Those lines 1-3 refers to the way African Americans were hunted after by their white counter parts during slavery. The poems also share a common use of words that in many ways can be viewed as a protest. Each poem makes you feel like you are in a setting with a black leader who is inspiring you with a speech to take action. For example, Claude McKay’s poem states “If we must die, O let us nobly die/So that our precious blood may not be shed in vain” ( 5-7, “If We Must Die”) .Likewise Armiri Baraka writes “Let Black people understand/that they are the lovers and the sons /of warriors and sons/of warriors” The authors are urging their black audience to stand up for themselves.
Martin Luther King Jr’s main perspective during the fight on racism was equality. At the time in which he fought the crisis of racial inequality a main concern was to address that "white America must assume the guilt for the black man's inferior status" (King, 9) as stated in the reading Racism and the White Backlash. Also Dr. Martin Luther King from my understanding believes reparation in this nation at that time was not the top priority. He could not stress enough about how essential racial equality was for the nation to become solve mainstream crisis during the peak of
This novel is a great novel to give an example on how reality is to people even the high class. Through the discussion of the passage, poem and scholarly article will show how the path towards the American Dream can turn into a negative or positive outcome in a person’s life. Theme When Mr. Fitzgerald wrote “The Great Gatsby,” he described the actions of the human society. In a certain way, not only did he describe and critic the high class but also the lower class, which ended up critiquing the American Dream. The American Dream was a idea give to believe that a human being should pursue being happy, wealthy, and loved which has cause any human being to go in search for this idea.
Blacks at the time liked the idea because it gave them an opportunity to serve their country and have perfect unity with the whites as well as patriotic unity for themselves (doc1). With the blacks, imperialists also had government officials on their side as well. William McKinley saw imperialism as a positive thing. He said that with gaining the Philippines he had no clue what to do with them. Then he came to conclusion that they must take them over and govern over them because they where unfit for self government, trading them would be bad for business, and giving them back would cause the same problem again.
Bigger, however, was not like many typical blacks. He was very intelligent and knew how to work his way around a white person. He wanted to, mainly for his family, go against the mainstream and make something of himself. In the novel Native Son by Richard Wright, racism is very prevalent and Bigger’s goal was to set the whites’ mindsets straight. In book one, Bigger is in the theatre watching a film.
A modern and subtle form of racism is believed to be creating an image that is politically correct. This is what makes discrimination to be perceived as a “polite” form of racism. Previously, it was easier to define and institutionalize racism (Sherman, 2000). A school of thoughts holds that modern racism maintains prejudiced attitudes even though is acts without apparent prejudice. This is because prejudice has become more subtle.