The readings were insightful and had interesting approaches to Negro mood. They had many emotional elements that were for the readers understanding of the different situations Negroes faced. When looking at the writings collectively they create a timeline. The timeline shows the various changes the Negroes mindset has gone through. The reader is exposed to three types of Negroes; one, the compliant Negro who knows his place, two, the Negro with will take his revenge and three, Negro who is conflicted between his desires and his responsibilities to his people. The poem, "We Wear the Mask”, by Paul Laurence Dunbar is about separating Blacks people from the masks they wear. When Blacks wear their masks they are not simply hiding from their oppressor they are also hiding from themselves. This type of deceit cannot be repaid with material things. This debt can only be repaid through repentance and self-realization. The second stanza of “We Wear the Mask” tells Blacks whites should not know about their troubles. It would only give them leverage over Blacks. Black peoples’ pain and insecurities ought to be kept amongst themselves. There is no need for anyone outside the black race to know what lies beneath their masks. The third stanza turns to a divine being. Blacks look to god because he made them and is the only one that can understand them. They must wear their mask proudly. The world should stay in the dark about who they are. This poem is about Blacks knowing their place and staying in it. This is the only way they could be safe. The poem “If We Must Die”, by Claude McKay, very different from Durbar’s poem, “We Wear the Mask”. The voice in this poem has strong and demanding tone. This poem was written for a black movement. ... ... middle of paper ... ... Negro mood, individual needs versus the race needs, right versus wrong and civilized verses primal instincts. In the end the Colonel was right. Negroes were born to serve and submit but not to an oppressor. Their serve and submit to their race and family needs. The two poems are two extreme sides of the Negro mentality. They do not leave opportunity for other Blacks to move. They are both required complete conformity. The short story was about Blacks weighting their options. It shows that Blacks can think logically about their action. In conclusion, I think these three writings gave a clear picture of Negro situation when they were written. As a collective the show the changes Blacks have gone through due to their experiences. Each one was well written and has literary worth. They forced me to think about their deeper meanings and the challenged how I saw Blacks.
The novel covered so much that high school history textbooks never went into why America has never fully recovered from slavery and why systems of oppression still exists. After reading this novel, I understand why African Americans are still racially profiled and face prejudice that does not compare to any race living in America. The novel left a mixture of frustration and anger because it is difficult to comprehend how heartless people can be. This book has increased my interests in politics as well and increased my interest to care about what will affect my generation around the world. Even today, inmates in Texas prisons are still forced to work without compensation because peonage is only illegal for convicts. Blackmon successfully emerged the audience in the book by sharing what the book will be like in the introduction. It was a strange method since most would have expected for this novel to be a narrative, but nevertheless, the topic of post Civil War slavery has never been discussed before. The false façade of America being the land of the free and not confronting their errors is what leads to the American people to question their integrity of their own
As I read "Rage of a Privileged Class," I could not help but feel saddened, angered, and shocked by what blacks have on their minds, let alone what they feel. It provides an insight of what they have gone through, and what they continue to go through. The Author, Ellis Cose, offers stories, experiences, and his own encounters to help picture the frustration blacks have endured for years. The chapters of the book enlighten on the way they have been mistreated, and continue to be mistreated. The book as a whole is amazing, however, three chapters stand out in my mind. The chapters I would like to discuss are three, five, and nine.
William Shakespeare once proclaimed that “the past is prologue.” Are we really bound by history? Is our present a mere continuation, a monomorphic continuation if you will, of the novel that is our existence, or can it be developed in a bifurcated fashion? Paul Lawrence Dunbar, prominently noted as the "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race" (p 905) is a prime example of how the past can be depicted in a multifold manner. His two works " We Wear the Mask" and "An Ante-Bellum Sermon" illustrate the double-consciousness that Dunbar was most notorious for. It must be noted, however, that these two works, despite differing in forms of dialect, are conflations of one source, through an intrinsic connection. One will evidently see both the apparent polarity and hidden exemplification associated with the implementation of duality within the aforementioned poems. Dunbar's ability to conflate the standard English verse and the "Negro" dialect not only enables him to illustrate yesterday's hardships but also tomorrow's promises, in which each poem in itself epitomizes the properties of bifurcation through juxtaposition and exemplification.
In the novel there were many events that showed how the African Americans were in this time period. One of them being the court case of Tom Robinson, who was put under arrest for raping a white girl. Even though the white girl was the one coming on to him this resulted in her father walking in on them and hitting his daughter. Know this should have ended with the girl getting in trouble, but that was not the case in this time period it was a white man word versus a black man word and in this time a black man’s word was worth less than a dime. This was also shared in some level in the poem, this mask that it says African Americans had to wear to hide there pain and sorrow is the same thing that Tom Robinson had to do when facing life in jail, blacks had no choice they knew their fate in the hands of the
... majority of the Black people to the atrocities, injustices and inequalities of their white masters, against which they make no organized protest at all, so she agrees with the reality that the next generations follow almost the same ways observed and adopted by the majority of their ancestors. It is therefore she is of the opinion that the Black people have accepted the slavery and atrocities as their fate. However, Butler’s comments, made through the mouth of her protagonist, serve as half truth in contemporary era, as the modern times witness the movements of liberty and freedom from the exploitations of the Blacks at the hands of the Whites. Somehow, it is also a reality that an overwhelming majority of the Blacks still look under the control and submission of the White population.
...for equal rights. In some poems McKay even called for violent acts to change the laws, however, as an educated man, reason prevailed. As result he adopted religion, and his poetry, like himself became conflicted. Out of this confliction came some of the most powerful African American poetry in history. Claude McKay poured his soul onto to paper, and as a result, it seeps in to all who read it.
When it all comes down to it, one of the greatest intellectual battles U.S. history was the legendary disagreement between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. This intellectual debate sparked the interest of the Northerners as well as the racist whites that occupied the south. This debate was simply about how the blacks, who just gained freedom from slavery, should exist in America with the white majority. Even though Washington and DuBois stood on opposite sides of the fence they both agreed on one thing, that it was a time for a change in the treatment of African Americans. I chose his topic to write about because I strongly agree with both of the men’s ideas but there is some things about their views that I don’t agree with. Their ideas and views are the things that will be addressed in this essay.
Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” is a lyric poem in which the point of attraction, the mask, represents the oppression and sadness held by African Americans in the late 19th century, around the time of slavery. As the poem progresses, Dunbar reveals the façade of the mask, portrayed in the third stanza where the speaker states, “But let the dream otherwise” (13). The unreal character of the mask has played a significant role over the life of African Americans, whom pretend to put on a smile when they feel sad internally. This ocassion, according to Dunbar, is the “debt we pay to human guile," meaning that their sadness is related to them deceiving others. Unlike his other poems, with its prevalent use of black dialect, Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” acts as “an apologia (or justification) for the minstrel quality of some of his dialect poems” (Desmet, Hart and Miller 466). Through the utilization of iambic tetrameter, end rhyme, sound devices and figurative language, the speaker expresses the hidden pain and suffering African Americans possessed, as they were “tortured souls” behind their masks (10).
It shows the resilience and determination that enslaved African had to retain a vital piece of their identity, and not forcedly assimilate into the culture they were thrown into. This demonstrates their battle against “fixed-identity”, in that, they did not conform to the beliefs of their enslavers. Their ancestors exemplify the quest for complex subjectivity as well, in that they did not conform or accept the black religions that were made in response to slavery. They kept the religion that their ancestors started out with hundreds of years prior, when others left it and adopted their
The theme throughout the two poems "A Black Man Talks of Reaping" and "From the Dark Tower" is the idea that African American live in an unjust
In 1966 one of the greatest songwriters ever, Paul McCartney, wrote a song the would peak at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100, and was ranked as one of the 150 greatest songs of all time by the Rolling Stones. This song was Eleanor Rigby. 71 years before this one of the greatest American poets, Paul Laurence Dunbar, wrote We Wear the Mask, a poem that would become an embodiment of life lived by many African Americans of the time. Even though 71 years separates these two bodies of work they both explore a common theme. Society sets normalities of how people should feel emotionally and when a person doesn’t feel this way they will do whatever they need to do to appear to fit the societal norm. Though, both works explore this basic theme, they differ in the ways they go about it, whether that be showing a similar theme or how they present the theme.
... collective consciousness of the Black community in the nineteen hundreds were seen throughout the veil a physical and psychological and division of race. The veil is not seen as a simple cloth to Du Bois but instead a prison which prevents the blacks from improving, or gain equality or education and makes them see themselves as the negative biases through the eyes of the whites which helps us see the sacred as evil. The veil is also seen as a blindfold and a trap on the many thousands which live with the veil hiding their true identity, segregated from the whites and confused themselves in biases of themselves. Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folks had helped to life off the veil and show the true paid and sorry which the people of the South had witnessed. Du Bois inclines the people not to live behind the veil but to live above it to better themselves as well as others.
Paul Laurence Dunbar uses a lot of symbolism in his poems. In “We Wear the Mask” (1897), Dunbar is referring to the hard exterior the African Americans had to portray in order to make it through the tough times. When Dunbar writes, “Why should the world be overwise, In counting all our tears and sighs” (Dunbar, 1897, p. 1808). What Dunbar is saying is why give the people anything else to us against them. There has been enough suffering, there is no need to add fuel to the fire so to speak. They will remember and honor their families, but they will never let anyone see the pain they struggle with every day (Dunbar, 1897). In the poem “Sympathy” (1899) Dunbar writes about a caged bird (Dunbar, 1897). The caged bird represents how his people are
To conclude, the criticisms of the book The New Negro are mostly distributed by the experience of the author who did not get exposed enough to understand his own race even though he seems to show his
12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright is a photo and text book which poetically tells the tale of African Americans from the time they were taken from Africa to the time things started to improve for them in a 149 page reflection. Using interchanging series of texts and photographs, Richard Wright encompasses the voices of 12 Million African-Americans, and tells of their sufferings, their fears, the phases through which they have gone and their hopes. In this book, most of the photos used were from the FSA: Farm Security Administration and a few others not from them. They were selected to complement and show the points of the text. The African-Americans in the photos were depicted with dignity. In their eyes, even though clearly victims, exists strengths and hopes for the future. The photos indicated that they could and did create their own culture both in the past and present. From the same photos plus the texts, it could be gathered that they have done things to improve their lives of their own despite the many odds against them. The photographs showed their lives, their suffering, and their journey for better lives, their happy moments, and the places that were of importance to them. Despite the importance of the photographs they were not as effective as the text in showing the African-American lives and how the things happening in them had affected them, more specifically their complex feelings. 12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright represents the voice of African-Americans from their point of view of their long journey from Africa to America, and from there through their search for equality, the scars and prints of where they come from, their children born during these struggles, their journeys, their loss, and plight...