“I suppose it’s the same thing that almost all Negroes have in common, the fatback, chitterlings, and greens background. I suppose that regardless of what any Negro in America might do or how high he might rise in social status, he still has something in common with every other Negro” (Brown). Claude Brown’s life growing up in Harlem shows how an inexperienced young boy can have a rough start in life and still ultimately succeed through determination. Claude Brown broke many laws growing up in Harlem, but he did what he needed to do to endure life in a system that was designed to destroy any dreams he might have had. These blockades did not stop Claude Brown from eventually realizing that he could earn an education and succeed in life if he …show more content…
worked twice as hard as everyone else. Through his hardships as a young child and his many experiences in Harlem, he beat finally saw how to beat the system. “Manchild in the Promised Land” depicts the journeys of a generation of black families who traded one hard life for another in their move from the south. Throughout Claude Browns childhood was many sentences in youth detention centers, such as Warwick and Wiltwyck.
He enjoyed the majority of his time at these detention centers because he was away from his home and mainly his father and because he usually ended up running the place. He enjoyed being away from his home because every time he came home and he did something wrong his father would beat him over and over again hoping that these beatings would put some sense into his boy. Every time Claude Brown skipped school or was caught stealing his father would say “Nigger, you got a ass whippin’ comin” (Brown). These continued beatings gave Claude Brown a reason to not come home most nights and in turn he spent many nights out on the street causing trouble. His motivation to not come was not a bad decision in his mind because he enjoyed not going to school, stealing, learning how to survive on the street, and being with his friends. If it wasn’t for his father, Claude Brown would have ended up like many other kids who stayed home every night until they were in high school and then decided to go out onto the streets and try to act cool by becoming addicted to heroin and cocaine to fit in with the rest of the …show more content…
crowd. “I just want to do God’s will.
And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land” (Dictionary). Claude Browns family came from the south and many of his relatives thought that the north was a promised land of freedom, free of discrimination and hate, but they were mistaken. They were mistaken because the legal system was still against many black families, even in the north during this time. The school systems did not put an equal amount of effort into trying to help Claude Brown succeed in the school. One of the only mentors Claude Brown had was one of the administrators at the detention center Wiltwyck. The amount of resources available to him was very little compared to other children of the majority. He had to be sent to a detention center to find someone that actually cared about his future and believed he could achieve anything he put his mind to. “For where does one run when he’s already in the Promised Land” (Brown). Claude Brown did not have the resources he needed in the north, he definitely did not have the resources he needed in the south. His only choice was to make the best out of what he had available to him in Harlem and he did the best he could with what he had at the
time. “You don’t mess with a man’s money; you don’t mess with a man’s woman; you don’t mess with a man’s family or his manhood” (Brown). These traits were instilled into Claude Browns mind while he was learning and growing up in the streets of Harlem. These were basic and essential rules that helped Claude Brown survive in the streets. These traits are still the building blocks for raising young men today, Claude Brown just learned them in a different atmosphere than most young boys and teenagers of the time. He was exposed to many forms of life lessons in the streets of Harlem and even in the south after his mother sent him to live with family for a year to see if the south would straighten him out or become a waste of time. The time he spent in the south have Claude Brown a rest from the constant beating from his father and a break from not wanting to come home. This break from city life and life on the streets gave him a chance to experience a normal life with his grandfather teaching him how to raise crops and run a farm. He also was exposed to how his grandparents administered discipline, which started to give Claude Brown feeling of home sickness especially of his brother and sisters. His time in the south with is grandparents made him develop a deep hatred of the south and made him miss the city and street life he once had in Harlem. Overall, his experience in the south made him miss his old life to a certain extent that once he was back on the streets he went right back to his wrong ways, but with a vengeance. “The heart of the book, to many, was its evocation of an astonishing culture of violence that gripped Harlem's poor children almost from birth. The book also bore terrifying witness to the way drugs had affected Harlem starting in the nineteen fifties. Mr. Brown was lucky: his first experience with heroin, narrated vividly in the book, made him violently sick” (Race Matters). The continued easy access to hard drugs during this time made Harlem a very dangerous place to raise a child and a family. Claude Brown was lucky because he found out the hard way. He felt like he was dying and regretted his decision the minute after he decided to try heroin. This one mistake stayed with Claude Brown every day he was around heroin. He decided to never take it again and every time he was around people with the drug, he turned away. Since the period of this book, many aspects of life in Harlem have changed and have remained the same. For example, it is not as easy to obtain hard drugs in Harlem and in the city as it was in the nineteen fifties, but there are still ways to find the drugs. The education system in Harlem and the city has improved to an extent, but there are still many children who skip school and find ways of supporting themselves on the streets. I wish the justice system has improved, but they are still sending children to detention centers away from their families instead of trying to solve the children’s problems by acknowledging that maybe the children do not have the best parental care as the rest or the children. The fact is that as long as there is impoverished families in Harlem or in any city, there is going to be children who skip school, take drugs, start fights, steal from local stores, and come from abusive backgrounds. "Going to New York was goodbye to the cotton fields, goodbye to 'Massa Charlie,' goodbye to the chain gang, and, most of all, goodbye to those sunup-to- sundown working hours. One no longer had to wait to get to heaven to lay his burden down; burdens could be laid down in New York” (Race Matters). New York was a gateway for many black families to escape the hatred of the south and have a chance to build lives of their own. Claude Brown might have had a rough start, but even with a rough start he buckled down and decided to try and do something with his life. He started to attend night school and eventually moved on to college. Claude Brown’s life is an example of how there is always a way to succeed in life, but everyone has to find their own way.
Testament to his resilience and determination in the face of angry segregationists, Ernest assumed the role of head of his family at the age of sixteen, after his father’s death in 1953. Ernest’s mother, an elementary school teacher, and his younger brother Scott both respected this new allotment Ernest assumed at such a young age. His mother knew it was useless attempting to persuade the headstrong Ernest to reconsider attendance at Little Rock Central High School after he had been selected as one of the nine Negro children to attend. Students were selected based ...
Coates wrote a 176 page long letter to his 14 years old son to explain what the African American society were going through at the time being. In the book, Coates used himself as an example to demonstrate the unjust treatment that had been cast upon him and many other African Americans. Readers can sense a feeling of pessimism towards African American’s future throughout the entire book although he did not pointed it out directly.
To depict the unfair daily lives of African Americans, Martin Luther King begins with an allegory, a boy and a girl representing faultless African Americans in the nation. The readers are able to visualize and smell the vermin-infested apartment houses and the “stench” of garbage in a place where African American kids live. The stench and vermin infested houses metaphorically portray our nation being infested with social injustice. Even the roofs of the houses are “patched-up” of bandages that were placed repeatedly in order to cover a damage. However, these roofs are not fixed completely since America has been pushing racial equality aside as seen in the Plessy v. Ferguson court case in which it ruled that African Americans were “separate but equal”. Ever since the introduction of African Americans into the nation for slavery purposes, the society
Coates’ article “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration” opens with the story of a man named Daniel Moynihan. Moynihan, born to a broken family in the great depression era, entered politics and developed to become an important political figure in the labor department during the 1960’s. The principal belief of Moynihan was that unemployment was destructive to the potential social mobility of the poor, a lynchpin of the American dream. Once the civil rights movement gained momentum, Moynihan gained interest on how his theory affects black families specifically and began to research this topic. The results of his research showed just how devastating the effects of three hundred of years of slavery and institutionalized racism were on black families and how much worse off they were than white families in general.
[and] reimposes limitations that can have the same oppressive effect” (610). Writing “On Being Black and Middle Class” was Steele’s way of working through this issue that society has.
Both 20th century examples of repugnant racism in the United States, the provocative stories of Richard Wright and Malcolm “Malcolm X” Little portray the same blatant disregard for African-Americans as less than human: Richard Wright as an African-American who grew up in the extremely racially tense Southern United States, and Malcolm X an Afro-American who grew up in the Northeastern section of the U.S., faced segregation and discrimination, and resorted to a life of crime for money and other pleasures. Both of their situations, direct effects of the prejudice-injected Jim Crow Era, changed each of them to become leaders in their own respects. Both of these men’s experiences and input on
Grant and Jefferson are on a journey. Though they have vastly different educational backgrounds, their commonality of being black men who have lost hope brings them together in the search for the meaning of their lives. In the 1940’s small Cajun town of Bayonne, Louisiana, blacks may have legally been emancipated, but they were still enslaved by the antebellum myth of the place of black people in society. Customs established during the years of slavery negated the laws meant to give black people equal rights and the chains of tradition prevailed leaving both Grant and Jefferson trapped in mental slavery in their communities.
In the first section of Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie, “The World of Reality”, Frazier introduces his discussion of the interplay of class and race. He outlines the historical roots of the social place of most African-Americans in the U.S.A. and that of the black middle class. Frazier asserts the inconsequential place of middle class African-Americans and their resulting inferiority complex. He depicts the black middle class as living in a “no man’s land” in the dominant white culture of America.
The sympathetic humanist might bristle at first, but would eventually concur. For it's hard to argue with poverty. At the time the novel was published (1912), America held very few opportunities for the Negro population. Some of the more successful black men, men with money and street savvy, were often porters for the railroads. In other words the best a young black man might hope for was a position serving whites on trains. Our protagonist--while not adverse to hard work, as evidenced by his cigar rolling apprenticeship in Jacksonville--is an artist and a scholar. His ambitions are immense considering the situation. And thanks to his fair skinned complexion, he is able to realize many, if not all, of them.
Harlem soon became known as the “capital of black America” as the amount of blacks in this community was very substantial. Many of the inhabitants of this area were artists, entrepreneurs and black advocates with the urge to showcase their abilities and talents. The ...
Throughout Hughes’ Not Without Laughter, we see the long-term effect of generations of prejudice and abuse against blacks. Over time, this prejudice manifested itself through the development of several social classes within the black community. Hughes’, through the eyes of young Sandy, shows us how the color of one’s skin, the church they attend, the level of education an individual attained, and the type of employment someone could find impacted their standing within the community and dictated the social class they belonged to. Tragically, decades of slavery and abuse resulted in a class system within the black community that was not built around seeking happiness or fulfillment but, equality through gaining the approval of whites.
I was late for school, and my father had to walk me in to class so that my teacher would know the reason for my tardiness. My dad opened the door to my classroom, and there was a hush of silence. Everyone's eyes were fixed on my father and me. He told the teacher why I was late, gave me a kiss goodbye and left for work. As I sat down at my seat, all of my so-called friends called me names and teased me. The students teased me not because I was late, but because my father was black. They were too young to understand. All of this time, they thought that I was white, because I had fare skin like them, therefore I had to be white. Growing up having a white mother and a black father was tough. To some people, being black and white is a contradiction in itself. People thought that I had to be one or the other, but not both. I thought that I was fine the way I was. But like myself, Shelby Steele was stuck in between two opposite forces of his double bind. He was black and middle class, both having significant roles in his life. "Race, he insisted, blurred class distinctions among blacks. If you were black, you were just black and that was that" (Steele 211).
Nearly all of the problems the Black Panther Party attacked are the direct descendants of the system which enslaved Blacks for hundreds of years. Although they were given freedom roughly one hundred years before the arrival of the Party, Blacks remain victims of White racism in much the same way. They are still the target of White violence, regulated to indecent housing, remain highly uneducated and hold the lowest position of the economic ladder. The continuance of these problems has had a nearly catastrophic effect on Blacks and Black families. Brown remembers that she “had heard of Black men-men who were loving fathers and caring husbands and strong protectors.. but had not known any” until she was grown (105). The problems which disproportionatly affect Blacks were combatted by the Party in ways the White system had not. The Party “organized rallies around police brutality against Blacks, made speeches and circulated leaflets about every social and political issue affecting Black and poor people, locally, nationally, and internationally, organized support among Whites, opened a free clinic, started a busing-to prisons program which provided transport and expenses to Black families” (181). The Party’s goals were to strengthen Black communities through organization and education.
The image of African-American’s changed from rural, uneducated “peasants” to urban, sophisticated, cosmopolites. Literature and poetry are abounded. Jazz music and the clubs where it was performed at became social “hotspots”. Harlem is the epitome of the “New Negro”. However, things weren’t as sunny as they appeared.
Brent Staples focuses on his own experiences, which center around his perspective of racism and inequality. This perspective uniquely encapsulates the life of a black man with an outer image that directly affects how others perceive him as a person. Many readers, including myself, have never experienced the fear that Staples encounters so frequently. The severity of his experiences was highlighted for me when he wrote, “It also made it clear that I was indistinguishable from the muggers who occasionally seeped into the area from the surrounding ghetto.” (135) Having to accept that fact as a reality is something that many people will never understand. It is monumentally important that Staples was able to share this perspective of the world so others could begin to comprehend society from a viewpoint different from their