Racial Discrimination in the books Snow Falling On Cedars and The Book of Negroes

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Recommended: Problems with racism in literature

Racial discrimination has been an issue among different cultural groups, ethnic races and many religions. It is an issue that has stopped people from becoming well diversitized and embracing multiculturalism, especially during the olden days where slavery and wars were a huge part of the world. Racism has created a separation between people, causing many dilemmas’ to arise. This problem has been seen and touched upon throughout many works of literature and verbal presentations. A discourse on racial discrimination will be used to exemplify how individuals abuse their rights, categorize humans and ill treat others through an exploration of the texts in, Snow Falling On Cedars and The Book of Negroes. These novels have given an insight of the discrimination between different classes of people and the unfavorability of one’s kind.
Firstly, abusing someone’s rights show that people do not respect other people’s nationality and background. In Snow Falling On Cedars , the white people did not allow the Japanese to own their own land. “The law said that they could not own land unless they became citizens; it also said they could not become citizens so long as they were Japanese” (pg 76). This quote is saying that the law does not allow Japanese people to own certain things because of who they are.
Looking at The Book of Negroes, these individuals did not have the right to speak out or act upon slavery and the slave trade. “To gaze into another person’s face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity, and to assert your own. As I began my long march from home, I discovered that there were people in the world who didn’t know me didn’t love me, and didn’t care whether I lived or died” (pg 29).
This quote is saying that...

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...peded from doing their own things and being free to do, as they like. To put this in one sentence, people treated other wrongfully and did brutal things to them. On a lighter note, this was put to an end when laws came out stopping this practice and allowed everyone to come together as one.
In conclusion, the journey throughout most of the texts in Snow Falling On Cedars and The Book of Negroes show how racial discrimination causes people to abuse other peoples rights, determine a person based on their human characteristics, and the treatment of people in different parts of the world. This issue, despite its negatively mixed vibes, has helped individuals in society. It has helped them to be become a stronger, well rounded person in their community with faith in themselves but, have also taught a person being that everyone is equally the same in their own way.

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