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Social Segregation In A Raisin In The Sun

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During the time period when “A Raisin in the Sun”, written by Lorraine Hansberry, was taken place, there was a great deal of social issues and problems with civil rights. There was segregation everywhere; in churches, schools, neighborhoods, public facilities, restaurants, anywhere one could think of there was segregation. Blacks, even though they were free, still had to endure conditions that they did not agree with. There was definitely a lot of racism in this play and one can see that from the blacks’ working for the whites, such as Walter Younger being a chauffeur, the whites trying to buy back the house the Younger family bought in their neighborhood, and everyone questioning Beneatha becoming a doctor because she is colored. The social …show more content…

One example being, when the Younger family was trying to buy the house in the white neighborhood with the insurance money that they had and the welcoming committee, as they called it, came and met with the Younger family and tried to talk to them friendly about them moving into the Clybourne Park Community. He offered them money to buy their house with a profit to them because the whites did not want colored people in their community. One can see this from Lindner saying, “What do you think you are going to gain by moving into a neighborhood where you just aren’t wanted and where some elements- well- people can get awful worked up when they feel that their whole way of life and everything they’ve ever worked for is threatened” (1503). Lindner is saying that the whites feel threatened by the Younger family moving into their community because they are black and that is inferred by Lindner offering the money for the house, saying “I am sure you people are aware of some of the incidents which have happened in various parts of the city when colored people have moved into certain areas-” (1501). This is saying that every time colored people move into a white neighborhood something happens within that community and the Clybourne Park community does not want that to happen. This is an immense segregation issue because the blacks cannot even live in certain parts of the city without feeling unwanted and so most of them do live in the ghetto because that is where most blacks felt like they fit in at was in the

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The play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry debuted on Broadway in 1959, and the movie was made in 2008. “A Raisin in the Sun” is about the Younger family, the fifth generation of lower-class African-Americans living in Chicago’s Southside. They are faced with problems such as racial discrimination, poverty, and conflicting dreams. As the family decides on how to spend the insurance check of $10,000 from Walter’s father’s death, these problems cause many conflicts to rise. Reading the 1959 play and the 2008 movie, I have realized certain similarities and differences in how the story plays out.

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In the play “A Raisin in the Sun,” the family explores many issues, both within their family and with outside conflicts. This play has a historical feel to it. In Chicago 's south side a black family is living in a run-down apartment. It takes the readers back to a time that many young people don’t know of, and a time that offers respect to older generations (1959). The play takes on a few social reforms.

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In the play Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry takes place on the southside of Chicago where Walter and his family are racially profiled and show us how the survive throughout their struggles. The central struggles for the younger family in their search for the American dream is mostly poverty and being racially profiled against for their actions. Hansberry challenges the traditional gender roles and issues of dominance throughout the play when Mama gives Walter lee the rest of the money at the end of the play. He becomes all excited and was supposed to save some for himself and put the rest of the money to Beneatha 's education. Instead, he gave all that money to Willy another character in the play which later on that he stole from him.

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The racism and sexism being shown in the Raisin in The Sun demonstrates that the matrix of domination is in play. In the book, Beneatha is an African-American woman who is battling not only racism, but also sexism. She battles racism by attending medical school during the civil right movement era and she battles sexism at home with her brother Walter, and being told to marry George Murchison. In the text Walter says “We one group of men are tied to a race of women with small minds” (Hansberry, 35). In this quote he not only degrades the woman, but he degrades the African American woman.

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“A Raisin in the Sun,” written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959, was the first play ever produced on Broadway by an African-American woman and was considered ground-breaking for it’s time. Titled after Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” sometimes known as “A Dream Deferred,” the play and the subsequent film adaptations are honest examinations of race, family, poverty, discrimination, oppression and even abortion in urban Chicago after WWII. The original play was met with critical praise, including a review by Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times where he wrote, “For A Raisin in the Sun is a play about human beings who want, on the one hand, to preserve their family pride and, on the other hand, to break out of the poverty that seems to be their fate. Not having any axe to grind, Miss Hansberry has a wide range of topics to write about-some of them hilarious, some of them painful in the extreme.” The original screen adaptation released in 1961 was highly acclaimed in its own right, and was chosen in 2005 for preservation in the United States of America National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for its cultural and historical significance.

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As a civil rights activist, Stokely Carmichael once said, “We are told,” If you work hard, you’ll succeed”- but if that were true, black people would own the country. We are oppressed because we are black- not because we are ignorant, not because we are lazy, not because we are stupid, but because we are black!” This quote is still relevant even to this day, blacks are still considered a minority and they get treated differently simply because of the color of their skin. People continue to treat others by the color of their skin rather than their character. In Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun, the interaction between the themes of race and dreams demonstrates that your race can affect the dreams that you have and what you choose to do about it.

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Segregation is the source of many problems in this world. Mainly people from the black community are segregated and forcefully separated from the rest of the world just because of their race. During the year 1950,the south was segregated, which was where the Youngers resided, by racist Jim Crow Laws. The law has set many racial tensions between the black community and the white community, the law has caused the Youngers to feel unaccepted or ashamed of their race because the white community always degrades them. This is how segregation affected the Younger’s in the play, A Raisin In The Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry.

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Reader Response: 3 “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, is a play about a black families experience in 1950s South Side Chicago. The story revolves around what happens to the family when Lena Younger, the matriarch of the family, receives a ten thousand dollar life insurance check upon the death of her husband. Everyone from the family has different plans for what they want to do with the money. Lena Younger serves as the head of the family. She is Walter and Beneatha’s caring mother so they and Ruth call her Mama.

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Throughout the 1950s, people of color have struggled with achieving their dreams due to the lack of equality that is portrayed in that specific time era. It has been a constant battle for equality for all races and genders over the course of time. In Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin In the Sun the character Beneatha struggles with her racial inequality, education, and gender stereotyping. These specific struggles are the blocks she deals with trying to achieve her dream.

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She further argues how difficult it is for Blacks to integrate themselves into White neighborhoods. The author also suggests that Blacks face poverty issues as a result of Whites not allowing them to live around them. Race is a factor that causes segregation

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The setting of the Raisin in the Sun is the ghetto of Chicago, where most black families lived and most of these black families had dreams of moving to a better neighbourhood, because of crime, but the housing industry causes segregated housing and manipulates communities with white fears of black integration. When Lorraine Hansberry was a child, her family also experienced the results of a government unconcerned with blacks leaving segregation. Lorraine used her play to tell people about her own struggle with racism, her play shows us that her problems were handled with determination. Linder speaks to the Younger family and offers them money to buy their house, because they, the white people feel that a community should share a common background and that negro families are happier when they live in their own communities. This is an example of how the Younger family has experienced racism, while it is true that people with the same background will be happier together, it is also their right to live where they feel they are progressing.

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Through the use of the historical lens, looking specifically at the economic struggles, the struggle of unequal opportunity, and the housing covenant that African-American’s faced in the 1950’s, Hansberry’s message of A Raisin in the Sun is revealed: the perseverance of an ethnic minority in a time of racial discrimination. A Raisin in the Sun is set in a time of great racial discrimination, the 1950’s in the united States. This featured racism towards those of color or non-caucasians, and the struggles commonly faced by the African-American family is shown through the eyes of the Younger family through the writing and experiences of Lorraine Hansberry. Of the three major struggles the Younger family faced, the most prominent in Act one is that of financial disability. This is best shown through the working lives of the family.

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A Raisin in the Sun addresses major social issues such as racism and feminism which were common in the twentieth century. The author, Lorraine Hansberry, was the first playwright to produce a play that portrayed problematic social issues. Racism and gender equality are heavily addressed throughout the play. Even though we still have these issues today, in the 1950’s and 60’s the issues had a greater part in society. Racism and gender have always been an issue in society, A Raisin in the Sun is an important piece of American history during that time period.

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Before reading the play, a raisin in the sun, racial discrimination came to me as an unfamiliar topic that didn’t hold much importance and interest to me. In my mind, it was a practice that didn’t have much effect, a practice that would come up in my history exam, and a practice that “other” group of people, specifically African American, would experience. Without knowing, ignorance and prejudice grew inside me. I think that my education, personal experience, and most importantly, mass media have resulted in such narrow and biased perspective.

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Just within the recent decades, men and women started to fight against the gender stereotypes and started to challenge their roles in a family and in the society. The play, A Raisin in the Sun, portrays the lives of African–Americans during the 1950s. Lorraine Hansberry, a writer and a social activist, reinforced the traditional gender roles, especially female’s, by depicting how the Youngers interact and how they act in an economical struggle. Throughout the play, A Raisin in the Sun, she uses Walter Lee Younger, Ruth Younger and Lena Younger to reinforce the traditional role of fathers, wives and mothers within a family.

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