Examples Of Racism In A Gathering Old Men

Racism is one out of many important themes portrayed in the novel A Gathering Of Old Men written by Ernest J. Gaines 1983. The novel is set during the 1970”s on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation. Whites were threatened by the idea that blacks could one day be in power so they sought out other measures to uphold the absolute power of whites. In A Gathering Old Men, Gaines wants us to understand that the fight needs to keep going because racism still exist in recent times. Although it is usually connected somehow to violence, racism comes in many different forms in A Gathering Of Old Men. We might look at Gaines novel as just a book with racism in it but paying attention keenly you see that what Gaines showed us about racism in his novel is still

For example, Tucker, one of the old men in the story, tells how a white mob beat his brother after he defeated them in a contest between his mules and their tractor. Then tucker asked them “How can flesh and blood and nigger win against white man and machine?”(96) They beat him brutally with stalks of sugar cane. Another example of white supremacy in the novel was when they put Gabel’s mentally ill son in an electric chair all because he was accused of raping. He was not but sixteen years old, half out of his mind, but still they put him in the electric chair on the word of a poor white girl. Even the criminal justice system, whose practice consisted of upholding social control, deterring crime, and protecting individuals from those that intended to inflict harm, also endorsed racial inequality against blacks. Crimes such as lynching went unpunished. Gaines allows Tucker to reveal this when he questions Sheriff Mapes about the absence of law when his brother was brutally beaten to death: “Where was the law? He said, looking up at Mapes. He was crying now. Where was the law? Law said he cut in on the tractor, and he was the one who started the fight. That‘s law for a nigger” (139). In addition, Beulah recalls when Fix had a hand in the drowning of two children while Mapes had tried to forget such malicious activities ever took place. Beulah says “Now ain‘t that just like white people? Black

“Half of Americans say racism is a big problem in this country,” according to a fascinating new people poll released by the Washington Post. That is up an astonishing seventeen points since the last time pollsters asked this question in 2010. It represents the highest level of concern about racism in this country in at least twenty years. A forty eight year-old white woman from Sterling Heights, Michigan, says she did not expect racism to get worse: “It always seemed like it was getting better, like our generation was going to be better than previous generations," says Austin, who participated in the CNN/KFF poll. There is the other fifty percent that is delusional, thinking there is no such thing as