Sweat Racism Quotes

Generally, when we see people commit acts that include racism. We tend to think it's just because they are bad people. As that can be the case, racism can stem from other places as well. Even if these acts of racism are executed because of other things, this does not make it okay for a person to act this way, these are not excuses but more of reasons. In the play, Sweat by Lynn Nottage we can see a bunch of acts of racism stemming from people who come off to be, ignorant, jealous, & regular acts of people who are small minded and have old style ways.
The first interaction with racism we are able to see in the play Sweat is when Tracy, who is a white woman, is trying to get a job as a manager as Olsteads. Her supposed “best friend” Cynthia,

Now at this time we know that Jason has a white supremacist tattoo on his forehead. Chris however, is seen to be more of a kind hearted person. We discovered that Chris is not able to find a job when getting out of jail yet we see that Jason has found a job at a pretzel stand working near children. In these lines, Evan, the patrol officer, is asking Jason if he got a job. “So, you got a job?” (Nottage 7) and Jason goes on to reply with “Yeah.” (Nottage 7) Evan then says “So you're making pretzels?” (Nottage 7) and Jason says “Yea” (Nottage 7). What does this say about the town itself? This is saying that this town is conservative and has old style thinking habits. For a person with a white supremest tattoo to be able to find a job but a black man can't, is definitely saying

In this example, Tracy is talking with Oscar about Cynthia getting the manager position at Olsteads. Tracy says “It’s a fact. That’s how things are going. And I’m not prejudiced, I say, you are who you are, you know? I’m cool with everyone. But, I mean... C’mon...you guys coming over here, you can get a job faster than–” (Nottage 43) and then Oscar continues to say “I was born here” (Nottage 43) and Tracy says “Still you wasn't born here, Berks” (Nottage 43) and then one last time Oscar says “Yeah, I was” (Nottage 43). Tracy knows that Oscar was born here as stated many times but still continues to tell him that he wasn't. Tracy is ignorant as she won't listen to Oscar and what he has to say but instead goes on to say that he was not born here because her family was living there many years before Oscar which does not determine whether you were born somewhere or not. Not only can this racism stem from being ignorant but it can also stem from being small minded and only having old style thinking and having the mindset that you're better than other people just because you were there first. According to Human Rights Careers, one cause of racism can be due to failing to recognize racism in oneself, which we can definitely see in Tracy when she says “It’s a fact. That's how things are going. And I'm not prejudice” (Nottage 43) when telling Oscar that he was not born