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Racism in academic literature
Environmental effects on personality development
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We are born clean, with the best of the feelings "love," watching with a look of illusion, eventful life. Over time the society, culture and our own experiences pollute our life, influencing the way we think. In the short story “Going to Meet the Man” by James Baldwin, tells the story of Jesses an impotent white sheriff, whose one night his arousal awakened when he remembered the day his father took him to watch the torture and murder of a black man, at the age of eight. “Going to Meet the Man” demonstrates how humans are not born racist and evil, but it behavior and thought develops after significant childhood events. Jesses was an evil man, full of loathing and disgust against the blacks, but Jesses had not always felt that aversion for black. He used to have a black friend, Otis. When he commented the strange disappear of Otis, his father replied, “No, I reckon Otis’s folks was afraid to let him show himself this morning” (Baldwin, p. 1756) Jesses replied that Otis is too small to do something. When kids grow up, they learn the meaning of good and bad actions. As the father stat...
The life of Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright's Native Son is not one with which most of us can relate. It is marked by excessive violence, oppression, and a lack of hope for the future. Despite this difference from my own life and the lives of my privileged classmates, I would argue that Bigger's experience is somewhat universal, His is not a unique, individual experience, but rather one that is representative of the world of a young black man. If Bigger were alive today, perhaps he would be a “Gangsta Rapper” and express his rage through music instead of violence.
---. “White Man’s Guilt.” 1995 James Baldwin: Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998: 722-727.
The assumption that black people have lesser moral values and have a greater inclination towards violence is not new. According to Herman Gray, “Blackness was constructed along a continuum ranging from menace on one end to immortality on the other, with irresponsibility located somewhere in the middle.” (Gray) T...
This concept of hatred spreads past, even the bounds of individuality. Notably, this collective hatred shows in the moment the mob comes by the Jailhouse to lynch Tom Robinson, for a crime that he has not even been found guilty of by a court. This attitude and contempt stemming from the collective hatred of the mob. This proves itself to be more true when looking at the definition of the collective unconscious, which “is a level of unconscious shared with other members of the human species comprising latent memories from our ancestral and evolutionary past.”(McLeod). The men who are coming by to lynch Tom are doing so because he is not like them. He is black. In the end, it takes a little girl to calm them. Atticus says “That proves something—that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human.”(Lee 210). Their rage and anger directed collectively towards Tom Robinson is only quelled by remembering their own individual humanity. This scene incorporates the sense of bigotry that encompasses the whole mob, while having it quelled by the aspect of enlightenment through the understanding of an individual’s humanity. Ultimately this illustrates the inherent ability to grow out of groupthink and into an individual understanding and power for goodness.
Every child is born with innocence. During the flashback to Jesse's childhood, where he witnesses the mutilation and torture of a blackman, Jesse's innocence is apparent. Jesse has a black friend named Otis who he hasn't seen for a few days. When he asks his father where Otis is, the father replies, "I reckon Otis's folks was afrad to let him show himself this morning"(Baldwin, p. 2006). Jesse naturally responds, "But Otis ain't do nothing." His father explains, "We just wanna make sure Otis don't do nothing, and you tell him what your Daddy said"(Baldwin, p. 2006). This statement implies that because Otis is black, he is eventually going to do something wrong. The father has subconsciously put negative thoughts inside of Jesse's head. Baldwin's own father also acted in this way when he stereotyped all whites as being bad and claimed they would be punished by God.
1. As we can see on page 37, when Lewis was very young, his Uncle Otis had an important effect on his life. It was showed through his “devotion to schoolwork” and general action. In my opinion, Uncle Otis saw that young Lewis had some qualities of a preacher. His appearance was so serious; Lewis often wore a tie even though some grownups teased him about that. Clearly, he was quite earnest when beginning to grow
In the case of Bigsby, his isolated community contributed to his white supremacist view of the inferiority and contempt for the black race. Mostly filled with racists and bigots as noted by the Frontline reporter who ventured into Bigsby’s community, it’s a consequential fact that there is an overrepresentation of negative opinion that guided Clayton to the identity he possessed. Similar to his headmistress, his white peers took advantage of his blindness, acting as the only source of information regarding views on blackness. Evidently, these views were one that portrayed blackness in a negative light as Bigsby would go on to call blacks “big butt having [and] wide-nosed [who were] breathing all the white man’s air,” in a disapproving manner. Visibly , there is no way he could tell if blacks really did have big butts or wide noses without word of mouth and there is no way he could have really cared about the “negative” effects of these wide noses – because it really does not matter to him – without external influence. Hence, in growing up blind, Bigsby developed perpetual self-hate as the overrepresentation of negative black stereotypes left him with a skewed perspective of who he
Because of the thirst of superiority whites had, they wanted to restructure the behaviors of blacks in ways that would make them behave inferior. This was aided by the Jim Crow Laws enacted during the Jim Crow period. “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” in Uncle Tom’s Children explains how the natural behaviors of blacks were affected by Jim Crow laws. Wright explains how these laws affected him personally. Right from his childhood, blacks have been restricted from having anything to do with whites. Black children were brought up in ways that would make them scared of the whites. This continued even in his adulthood. Only few blacks were fortunate to work in places where whites were, but they were always treated badly. Wright got a job in an optical company, where he worked alongside two whites, Mr. Morrie and Mr. Pease. When Wright asked both of his coworkers Mr. Morrie and Mr. Pease to tell him about the work, they turned against him. One day Mr. Morrie told Mr. Pease that Richard referred to him as "Pease," so they queried him. Because he was trapped between calling one white man a liar and having referred to the other without saying "Mr." Wright promised that he would leave the factory. They warned him, while he was leaving, that he should not tell the boss about it. Blacks were made to live and grow up under conditions that made them regard whites as superior. Whites also used blacks’ natural behaviors against them by sexually abusing them. It is natural for people to have sex, but if they forced or abused sexually this means that their natural behavior is being used against them because sexual abuse is not natural. Sarah, in “Long Black Song,” is an example of a black female that was sexually abused by whites. Sarah was married and had a child but when the white man came to her house he did not hesitate to have sex with her. She resisted him initially
The trial of Tom Robinson opened many doors for Harper Lee to confront the issue of racial discrimination. Atticus makes it clear that Mr. Robinson has no chance of winning the trial because no man sitting on that jury has the courage to side with a Negro instead of a white man. “And so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity to ‘feel sorry’ for a white woman has had to put his word against two white people’s.” Harper Lee uses Atticus’s willingness to confront the elephant in the room to clarify the message she is trying to convey.
Prejudice is like a poison, it infects everything it touches. It can drive a white man and a black man to hate each other because their skins are different colours. In Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, the town of Maycomb is plagued with prejudice against Tom Robinson and Boo Radley. The evidence in the text shows and implies how this prejudice dominates the thoughts of Maycomb’s citizens.
In paragraph three of James Baldwin's 'Stranger in the Village' (1955), he alludes to emotions that are significant, dealing with conflicts that arise in the Swiss village. Of these emotions are two, astonishment and outrage, which represent the relevant feelings of Baldwin, an American black man. These two emotions, for Baldwin's ancestors, create arguments about the 'Negro' and their rights to be considered 'human beings' (Baldwin 131). Baldwin, an American Negro, feels undeniable rage toward the village because of the misconception of his complexion, a misconception that denies Baldwin human credibility and allows him to be perceived as a 'living wonder' (129).
The phenomenon of evil is a complicated and relative idea. Opinions vary regarding this topic. Evil can be attributes one is born with; perhaps interpreted as mental illness or a misunderstanding of acceptable behavior and reasoning resulting in an evil act or practice. It may also be traits learned or commonly accepted in a particular society that a third person perspective may not acknowledge or agree with. These ideas being considered may attribute to one carrying out or practicing acts of evil. Although there are many aspects on this subject to potentially debate, a couple in particular will be addressed utilizing what is known of two authors; Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, employing their literary works, “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Young Goodman Brown,” it can be concluded that people are susceptible to evil and/or evil acts for a myriad of reasons. This conclusion is based independently on these two stories as they were expressed during their time.
The short stories 'The Lottery' and 'The Possibility of Evil' by Shirley Jackson expose the wickedness of human nature. Shirley Jackson displays that human beings have immorality lurking within them, and that immorality is a driving force that causes people to find enjoyment and pleasure out of the evil and horrid things found in life. Shirley Jackson shows evil in a way that most readers wouldn't expect. The evil in her stories do not come from a super villain; the evil portrayed in her stories lie within all her characters. Her writing implies that everyone is capable of acting evil; it is a part of human nature.
There are many evil people in this world. They are evil because that is how we view them. The country that is being attacked by a terrorist views the terrorist as evil, whereas the country that the terrorist is from views the terrorist as a hero. There are few people that are truly evil. To be truly evil everyone must agree that the person is evil. In the novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Roger Chillingworth is truly evil.
Satan, is red, has a pitch fork, pointed tail and horns. Ask a child to represent evil and this is likely one answer received. Discussions of good and evil often revolve around highly honed perceptions of good versus evil. “Good and evil are not figments of the mind or the subjective creations of men; they are inherent in creation.” (Kinneging 256) Concepts of good and evil conform to absolute perception in western cultural philosophy. Buddhist philosophy has a different perception concerning good and evil.