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Racism in the united states
Racism in the united states
Racism in the united states
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Racism in the united states
Racism in the united states
Racism in the united states
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
“Prelude to a Revolution,” by Traci Brimhall is a short poem about a group of men currently in prison. They pass around items that will ease their nerves. They talk about rumors of a revolution, and other rumors of the city. They have spent a lot of time in prison and some of them are starting to lose their minds. Parts of the poem, I believe, give details of the prisoners past lives.
This simple nine word quotation from Matshona Dhliwayo summarizes much of what Jane Elliot has spent her entire career trying to get people to understand. Watching the film, The Essential Blue Eyed, gave me an entirely new perspective on racism and in truth, showed how ignorant I had been. Jane Elliot is able to give study participants and viewers a completely new perspective on the social construction of race. According to the University of Minnesota, race refers to a category of people that share physical characteristics such as facial features and skin color (UMN 1).
Dwight Okita and Sandra Cisneros were greatly influenced by American culture. Both authors explain the topic of American identity, in Okita’s poem American identity has more to do with how you experience the culture of a country than with where your family came from. Both Okita’s poem and Cisneros’s short story however, show that cultural heritage and physical appearances do not determine what it means to be “American.” Okita’s Letter “in response to executive order 9066” is the description of a little girl who is overwhelmed by the American Culture. In the letter, we can see how the narrator is affected as she states that her best friend is a white girl named Denise.
Richard Rodriguez’s claim about a person's identity is the using race as a basis for identifying Americans is not valid; culture should be what defines a identity. Richard Rodriguez says that newcomers were being “welcomed within a new community for reasons of culture. “ (136-137). Richard Rodriguez says that newcomers were welcomed when they were identified by their culture. Richard Rodriguez also says “I am Chinese, and that is because I live in a Chinese city and I want to be Chinese.“
Within Greg Sarris essay, he had to endure many things; the loss of his parents, binging in and out of home, unware and unable to find his true self. However, always feeling that he was, what he said he was, Indian. He faced quite a few stereotypes growing up, one of them is when he and a group of friends where mistakenly placed in the category of being Mexican (Sarris Pacifically a “White Beaner“) , because of their “dark hair and skin” – ( pg.106) when in fact the group he was with were Pomo-Indians.
Culture is one of the main factors that allow people to be different from one another. When immigrants come to America, they realize that it can be hard to adapt to the American culture. Dr. Rose Ihedigbo’s “Sandals in the Snow” and Amparo B Ojeda’s “Growing Up American: Doing the Right Thing” are both stories that tell how their adjustment from their homeland to America was different. In reading both stories, I noticed they were similar, but have a few contrasts I 'd like to address.
Although appearance is based on genetics (with some limited environmental influences), our categorization of physical features that are not Euro-centric (such as darker skin, mono-lid eyes, etc.) as outside of the mainstream contributes to discrimination against individuals having them. The essay anthology Mixed: Multiracial College Students Tell Their Life Stories highlights the issues that multiracial individuals face in trying to come terms with their identities
With Ruiz, the melting pot did not welcome him for his outer appearance comparing to his friend Valdes. Their “friendship was cemented through school and sport. They stood up for each other against troublemakers” (Ojito, 2000), but they now hold two different lives due to the color of their skin. Although sharing the same ethnicity, the colors of their appearance separate the two best friends. In other words, by biological mean, they are “differentiated by physical characteristics”
This provides information about his/her past and allows them to understand what makes them who they are. For the majority, culture and race becomes a part of a person and they take great pride in that. Certain aspects of a person’s life contains traces of their culture such as traditions, festivals, family gatherings and lifestyle. These traditions become the positive side of the term ‘race’. If one takes the time to look past a race’s stereotypes they may discover that these people are simply trying to enjoy their own life and culture.
In the non-fiction short story “Barrio Boy” by Ernesto Galarza, is about a boy who is a Mexican immigrant, and his journey through the public school system. First, Galarza proves this when Ernesto enters Mrs. Hopleys office and has to pull out his last report card from his old school in Mexico, he also mentions his mother's name Henriqueta which is a Mexican name. The writer also articulates Ernesto learning english with Mrs. Ryan and how he struggles to enunciate words in english. In addition, he points out that on the playground the children spoke their indigenous language, saying insults like womp, chink, dago, or a greaser. Moreover, he emphasizes that he graduated the first grade with honors and continued to do so, he astounded his third
My own father made jokes about me having to choose ‘sides;’ he even called me a ghetto valley girl. It’s a horrible feeling when you’re handed an information inquiry and when they ask “what’s your ethnicity?” You have to pause and think about it, because you’re not sure if you should circle black or other. I’ve notice how other black people act all the time; from when I go to school or the grocery store. More importantly, I’ve noticed I don’t act like them.
Not to mention, that the amount of toxins that young children get exposed to in the inner city is very alarming. One serious toxin is lead, which is affecting the behavior of youths in low-income areas of cities. Lead is a real threat and has been proven to severely damaging the prefrontal lobes while children are developing. Robert Brochin a researcher at Georgetown University states that “Lead exposure during this period can lead to severe neurological and developmental problems that may manifest themselves later in the affected child ‘s life,” (Brochin, pp.3, 2008). Even health clinics put children in these settings at risk because 68 percent of Philadelphia inner-city pediatric clinics had 10 milliliters of lead (Ruboca, pp.655, 1998).
Everyone defines and identifies themselves in different ways. Whether it’s by our names, our religion, or our sexuality, we all have something different that make us unique and that we identify ourselves as. In Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use,” an African American woman tells the story of her daughter Dee’s long awaited visit. Upon her arrival the mother and her other daughter, Maggie, discover some drastic changes in Dee: she has changed her name to Wangero, she has also arrived with a mysterious man who calls himself Asalamalakim, and has adopted an African style of dress; all of this in an effort to depict what she sees as her heritage. During the course of her visit, Dee tries to take several items important to her family’s heritage.
Throughout history social scientists have been trying to examine the different parameters of race in terms of phenotypic characteristics, and cultural behaviors regarding the different groups that society construct’s. legally judges have had different rulings regarding the categorization of different ethnicities and groups within the United States. Many philosophers such as Kwame Appiah, and Scientists such as Dr. James Watson have had opposing arguments on the topic of race and whether it exists or not. In order to do so we need to examine the different definitions of race, and analyze them in order to see how race is a social construct, where people’s notions of race and their interactions with different races determine the way they perceive
Opening people’s eyes to hybridity can also get rid of stereotypes that are involved with the certain kind of race. It is important to understand hybridity because being mixed in a culture is becoming a more common