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Brownies Short Story

830 Words4 Pages

Brownies is a short story about 4th graders who go on a summer camping trip near the southern suburbs of Atlanta in Georgia. Laura, an African American girl, also known by her nickname ‘Snot’ to the other girls, narrates the story. The Narrator explains how her Brownie troop took a dislike on each and every girl in another Brownie troop, Troop 909, on the first day. The fact that girls from troop 909 were white was the main factor contributing to the dislike. This essay aims at showing how racism creates conflicts and hatred between people as evident in the short story.
Brownies has a lot of humor in it, but at the same time, it expresses a serious purpose and theme. It is clear, not only to individuals living in the United States, but also to everyone all over the world that relations between the black and the white people have been fraught with oppression and injustice in the past. The United States government came up with several policies and laws that sought the abolition of racism. However, racism still exists not only between adults, but also between the children, as it is evident in the short story. The narrator notes: “We had all been taught that adulthood was full of sorrow and pain, taxes and bills, dreaded work …show more content…

The hatred among these children is also evident where Arnetta, Laura’s troop leader compares the white girls to wet Chihuahuas. “They smell like Chihuahuas, wet chihuahuas.” This made everyone that heard this laugh very heard. In addition, by the second day of the camping trip, all the other girls in the narrator’s troop had made up their mind and decided to give each and every girl in troop 909 a thorough beating. This was to be a punishment of the alleged reports by Arnetta of an insult by a white girl. The girls got furious on hearing that one of the white girls had called them

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