The Tortilla Curtain: Racism And Discrimination

Racism/Discrimination: From Facts to Fiction

Racism has been a big epidemic since the early 1600’s and is still a problem throughout society today. According to Dictionary.com, racism is a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others. The Tortilla Curtain, by T.C. Boyle exemplifies racism and discrimination by the dividing of communities from the impoverished minorities and the superior majority. Boyle reveals how more fortunate people stereotype the way minorities and poverty live rather than acknowledging

The prestigious citizens throughout Arroyo Blanco look down on the immigrants and consider them as weak and useless. They perceived them as they are nothing and unhuman like creatures. The wealth believe minorities and immigrants cannot do anything such as read, write, work, or educate themselves. The majority considers the immigrants as wild animals that are dangerous to the community. “The ones coming in through the Tortilla Curtain down there, those are the one that are killing us. They’re peasants, my friend. No education, no resources, no skills - all they’ve got to offer is a strong back, and the irony is we need fewer and fewer strong backs every day because we’ve got robotics and computers and farm machinery that can do the labor of a hundred men at a fraction of the cost,” (Boyle, 101). Boyle describes how the superior group identifies different races. He uses this throughout the novel to keep a division between the two. The rich does not acknowledge the opposite race and pre- judges them before knowing who they actually are as a human being. Every horrific event that happens to them they put the blame on the immigrants for it. Boyle has his characters voice the frustration that they have throughout the story. Delaney uses his frustration and puts it in his writing in his short story called Pilgrim at Topanga Creek. The coyote is used to portray the

In the novel The Help, Stockett writes about the lives of the African American women working for the prominent white families and the trial and tribulations that they have encountered. The African American women are the people who are taking care of the white families home and children while being disrespected and unappreciated by their boss. “I’d like to write this showing the point of view of the help. The colored women down here.' I tried to picture Constantine's face, Aibileen's. 'They raise a white child and then twenty years later the child becomes the employer. It's that irony that we love them and they love us, yet...' I swallowed, my voice trembling. 'We don't even allow them to use the toilet in the house,'" (Stockett, 125). Even though everyone is different and have different ways of living, they still stick around and help even though they have to go through harsh treatment sometimes to be appreciated. These women in the story are basically raising the kids of the rich white families and they are still living in poverty, belittled, and called out of their names. Stockett exemplifies this throughout the story for the readers to understand how life was back then for the opposite