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Similarities Between Frederick Douglass And Bich Minh Nguyen

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In today’s world education plays a vital role in everyone’s life. No matter what you do or what you intend to do, education is needed. It was clearly not the same in Frederick Douglas and Bich Minh Nguyen’s world. In both cases the author’s education wasn’t needed and took a back seat because of their race and other factors. Frederick Douglas the author of the article “Learning to Read and Write” shares his experience of how he educated himself but it didn’t bring any change in his life. Similarly Bich Minh Nguyen the author of the article “The Good Immigrant Student” shares her experience of how she wasn’t given importance based on the fact that she was a foreigner despite her being smart. Education maintains social hierarchies among minorities …show more content…

Frederick explains “When I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, ‘I don’t believe you. Let me see you try it.’ I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that” (Douglas 80). The fact that the white boy wasn’t ready to believe that the author being the slave could write portrays racism. Douglas had to show him to actually make him believe that he could write. It literally shows that your class and your social status just shows your learning and not actually your education. The boy just assumed the author wouldn’t know cause he was a slave. Somewhat on the same path was Bich Minh Nguyen saying “ My quantity of gold stars was neck and neck with that of my two competitors, Brenda and Jennifer,... Week after week, the lion perched on Brenda’s desk or Jennifer’s desk” (Bich Minh Nguyen). The lion was the sign who was doing the best. Despite putting all her effort and doing so well the lion never came on the author’s table because the teacher wasn’t ready to accept that an immigrant can do so well. The author’s teacher, being racist in this case, doesn’t give credit to the author as she is Vietnamese yet treats Jennifer and Brenda better than her due to the fact that they are White. Again the education is not playing the main role but the race is which shouldn’t be the main factor.
Frederick Douglas the author of the article “Learning to Read and Write” and Bich Minh Nguyen the author of the article “ The Good Immigrant student” share their personal experience to show how education takes a back seat when you are a slave or an immigrant student. No matter how smart or educated one is, you are degraded as humans. Deprived of their freedom and treated with racism

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