Justification Of Racism Analysis

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There are many justifications of racism throughout history. Religion is one of the many major factors in justification of racism. “To be black was to be demeaned by birth and, unlike original sin in the bible, it could not be completely redeemed: no absolution through sacrifice or prayer was available. Blackness was a stain beyond sin”(pg 2).
“Visual signs of racism were reinforced by representations of black dialectal language as an aspect of the complex visual/verbal representation of race. Black vernacular speech has been approximated and exaggerated in print media as means of identifying the speaker as black and indicating certain social characteristics that ensure the speaker’s status as an outsider who does not fit in” (pg 3).
Eighteenth and nineteenth century Enlightenment to categorize the natural world.
Double consciousness as defined by W.E.B Dubois is “ the negro is a sort of a seventh son born with a veil, and gifted with a second sight in this American world, a world …show more content…

“My mother refused to wear a red dress or smile broadly in photographs. The red dress would have suggested that she was a loose woman, a “hoochie mama” as another friend would say, and to bare one’s teeth was just not done. A mask of decorum was to be maintained...My mother-in-law recalled how she and her siblings in New Haven, Connecticut, were not allowed to eat watermelon on the steps of their home. It would be too easy for whites to see these dark children eating fruits as something else, something from their own imagination”(pg 14). This quote reinforces Dubois’ idea of double consciousness, that african americans constantly are aware of how they are perceived by others. Even when they know that these stereotypes of themselves are not true they know what the association is with these objects/actions and actively stray away from

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