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The Day I Became Black Textual Analysis

1497 Words6 Pages

Task 1
I found the texts about people confronting others with their ethnicity very interesting. I thought the text “The day I Became Black” was very interesting. This person from the Netherlands was looked upon as white and sometimes teased because his name was spelt in another way than it usually is. When he said that he was partly black, the students treated him in a different manor . They did not know that he was black because their school was located by the beach and everyone had a deep tan. I thought that this was an interesting text, because it shows us the differences between how people treat black people, and how people treat white people. I think that it portraits that white people still think of themselves as superior even though the civil rights movement is over and people should …show more content…

In some cultures, your name has a meaning. What I mean by this is that your name explains something about you, or maybe something the family saw when you were conceived. In some Native American cultures names will be decided the moment you have been conceived. An example can be that if the mother or father sees a wolf walking alone without its pack, the child might be named “Lone Wolf”. These names are starting to get more popular at the time especially among Native American tribes. I know that these names are very important to some Native Americans. I know that a family from the Kiowa tribe think that this is very important. They give the newborn child a Native American name and an American name. A Native American Kiowa woman is called “Ahaun Tone Gope”, which means “Struck across the forehead with a hatchet by the enemy”. The name describes an incident the grandmother witnessed during a battle with the “Sioux” tribe. Her American name is Randi Sunray. She has also given her children Native American names. The names are filled with meaning and they powerfully send out a message about their Native American

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It shows how race and other social factors can have a huge impact on your life. Using a real life example was more beneficial than reading from textbooks. It shows readers that these things do happen and also gives them a chance to visualize it. The only issue I had with his writing and telling of the story was when Hobbs refers to himself as an “honorary black man” (page 130). I found it a bit problematic because he has privilege that black people are not afforded.

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Black Like Me is an incredible journey into what life was like in the Deep South during the late 1950s. John Griffin performed a social experiment to see what was life really like for blacks in the Southern States. John Griffin transformed himself into a black man and recorded his experiences into a book, Black Like Me. I was fascinated that 1950s science and medicine had advanced enough to allow someone to change the pigment of their skin. The procedure that Griffin underwent was simply taking pills and exposing himself to ultra violet rays (6).

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During the time of the Great Depression, African Americans struggled the most already being the poorest people in America, but this changed with The Second World War which brought jobs and more rights to African Americans. In Chapters 10 and 11 of the book Creating Black Americans: African-American History and its meanings, 1619 to the present by Nell Irvin Painter, the author outlines the struggle for African Americans during the Great Depression, and even after during the New Deal era, then shows how they came out of it and became more successful and powerful during The Second World War. The Great Depression started with the crash of the stock market, and led to 25% of all American workers losing their jobs, most of which were African Americans.

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There were a number of problematic themes throughout Dr. Mary Pattillo’s book, Black on the Block, but the most taxing was the criminalization of the poor from the black middle class and majority of the “actors” working towards the revitalization of North Kenwood-Oakland. Dr. Pattillo addressed these issues to the reader, however my quandary was connected specifically to the responses from the black brokers and outside participants in repairing NKO. Throughout the reading, there was little to no deeper analysis of the conditions, which caused the decline of the neighborhood from the black gentrifiers and decision makers. Instead, there were numerous mentions of the ill behavior, influx of drugs and crime as well as lack of community pride

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In the article “We’re Sick of Racism, Literally,” Douglas Jacobs argued that those who “experienced racism were more likely to have blood pressure”, thus meaning discrimination can affect physical health(Jacobs). He expatiates on how discrimination is leading to health problems by sharing medical records of people who were discriminated against. Jacobs criticizes how racist people in the United States are “[adding] injury to insult and magnifies the suffering of these times” which leads him to assert that racism should be eliminated. Jacobs believes that racism does not belong in this world due to its malicious nature and how it affects the human body which is why he wants to remove it. Jacobs uses a cautionary tone to emphasize how important

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Although one’s name might seem menial in the grand scheme of things, it is a crucial part of one’s identity. By choosing to take her first husband’s last name, she was choosing to be her own person, without the obvious connection to her family that followed her wherever she went. Choosing which name she wanted to go by gave her the power to define her relationships, both with her parents and her second husband. By separating herself from the Cibber name, she was allowing herself to make her career, as well as her identity, her own, without the overbearing influence of her

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In the book, Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin was about a man who went on a journey to experience discrimination and racism first hand. I believe just because he changed his skin color for only 6 weeks he did truly experience racism first hand. Now most people’s realization of racism and discrimination from back in the 1800’s with slavery and blacks being used and sold like tools. John Griffin experience someone being lynched to death, white people taking all the good jobs and gave the Negros little to no jobs to work at, and, Negroes weren’t aloud to have or use the same things that whites got to 2 U.S. Code § 1311- states that anyone of any race has the right to be employed, and the civil rights act which means anyone of any race has the same rights. In the book, Griffin was looking for three days

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Throughout the month of February, Black History Month is celebrated. What was originally negro week, founded by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, and then later changed to Black History Month in 1976, by President Nixon, celebrates the lives and discoveries and impacts African-Americans have had on the U.S throughout history. Shukree Hassan Tilghman, the director of the documentary “More Than a Month,” explores the importance of black history and tries to get rid of Black History Month. The director’s message in “More Than a Month,” is that black history goes so much deeper than just a month of celebration, and to show true respect, Black history should be American history.

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The book challenges Americans and how they treat American Values. The book exposed the truth of the white race and how they treated the black race. Throughout the novel white Americans did not value equality or progress and change. In Black Like Me whites did not believe in having a society the ideally treats everyone equally. When John Howard Griffin gets a ride from a white hunter, he tells him “I’ll tell you how it is here.

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Throughout chapter three of The Myth of the Negro Past, Melville Herkovits writes about the African culture back before slaves were brought to the Americas. He refutes many previously thought ideas that African Americans have no past or shared culture which the myth in the title of the book. In chapter three entitled, “The African Cultural Heritage,” Herskovits argued that African Americans descended from a people with a rich series of cultural traditions (Willaims 3). One of the aspects that Herkovits looks into is death in the African family and funerals rites. The ties between ancestors and gods are extremely close in Dahomey and the Yoruba cultures, he even says the power of man doesn’t end when that person dies,

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