Blackness Essays

I didn’t know that I was Black until the fifth grade. I mean, I always knew that I was Black as in the Black slash African American box I poorly shaded in every year on the CST and free lunch applications; but, I didn’t know know that I was Black. It was during a passing period I had between Physical Education and Science to pee that I realized what my race was. Like hundreds of times before, I entered the dimply sunlit restroom connected to the cafeteria of my elementary school; but, this time

Themes in Alice Walker the Color Purple Introduction Alice walker is the author of the color purple; the novel was released in 1982 and has won two major awards, which are, best fiction from the national book award and the Pulitzer award for best fiction (Alsen, 45). The book has since been adopted into musical and film while retaining the same name. The book focuses on African American women’s lives in the southern state of Georgia (LaGrone, 53). Moreover, the book paints a picture of how low the

African American literature, which has its origin in the 18th century, has helped African Americans to find their voice in a country where laws were set against them. The position of African Americans in the dominant society of the United States of America has not been an easy one. African Americans needed to find a new identity in the New World and were considered an underclass for a long time. In literature, African American writers have been telling the story of their complex experience and history

Racism is a problem that people of every race around the world still faces today. In the film adaptation of The Help and the text version of Lorraine Hansberry's “A Raisin in The Sun”, racial discrimination is a major theme explored. Racial discrimination is a major theme that both sources portray. There are laws that make discrimination illegal in The United States but it people still suffer from it, however, The Help and “A Raisin if The Sun” portray more ways in which this problem can be eliminated

Slavery in America created an upsurge of racial discrimination. This demoralizing practice forced many generations of black “slave” Americans to endure, or more specifically suffer the extortions of white people. They were dehumanized as the very essential criteria for survival in society was eliminated from their lives or even from their dreams. Their identity, their self respect suffered for they were viewed as the “properties” of white people. America gradually became a powerful country but they

The idea that all men are created equal was ignored in South Africa as the country experienced a gruesome period of apartheid from 1948 to 1991. The novel Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton was published in 1948, the same year apartheid was adopted as the official system. The release of the novel caused outrage across the world, and was banned in South Africa. The context of the novel’s production and reception plays a large role in the understanding of the novel. The message that Paton tried

Growing hair and freedom again. In the short story “Growing My Hair Again”, the author, Chika Unigwe, brings us into the world of one family, where people has to be strong and survive through all trouble to get rewarded by their desired wishes. The central theme of the story is to describe how a weak person can become strong to get his freedom back to his hands. The hobby of the main character has its part in telling us that if the individual is interested in doing something that he likes, this

June Jordan, a poet who is famous for her positive blaze of justice, writes poetry while advocating a command for universal equity, which appeals to people from various areas of the world. Jordan’s poetry speaks of American issues as well as international issues, such as African countries that are oppressed by their neighbouring countries. One of Jordans poems, ‘A Poem About My Rights’ serves as a resentment against the world’s oppression, however it also serves as a mandate for change. This essay

Analysis of ’The Silver Bell’ All around the world, there is racial discrimination. You see it as a big deal in the United States, and even in Denmark. Mostly it involves blacks, who are being discriminated or treated unfairly. This is something that is today, and something that was once. In David Evans’s short story ‘The Silver Bell’ from 2006, this topic of racism and apartheid is in the spotlight, as some of the whites in South Africa cannot accept the reality of the blacks having equal rights

his ability to scan back and forth across the broad array of positive and negative influences. Muhammad described all the many factors during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries since the abolition of slavery and also gave many examples of how blackness was condemned in American society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Professor Muhammad was able to display how on one hand, initial limitations made blacks seem inferior, and various forms of white prejudice made things worse. But on the

Throughout history Whiteness and the White Aesthetic has defined Blackness and the Black Aesthetic. The White Aesthetic defines blackness as a negative, though the Black Aesthetic is the assimilation of the White Aesthetic. The White Aesthetic is viewed as superior to the Black Aesthetic. This ideology has been shown in society and literature. The ideology is analyzed in literature by Addison Gayle Jr. in “Cultural Strangulation”. The ideology is also analyzed through its social and physiological

Difference: Deconstructing Race and Blackness What is difference? Difference as defied by the Merriam Webster Dictionary as the quality that makes one person or thing unlike another. Difference is also a construction. It is a central deficit of the systems of oppression that determine how, power, privilege, wealth, and opportunity are distributed. Difference is responsible for sexism, racism, and other forms discrimination and of oppression. In society, people who hold the power use the differences

Anti-Blackness in the Media Lester D. Emanuel III Department of Communication, University of Connecticut AFRA-3898-Variable Topics: Global Anti-Black Racism Instructor David Embrick 5/3/2023 Introduction We live in a society where there is a plethora of information right by our fingertips. It’s a time where you can just wake up and look at the news directly from your phone, but the information is not depicted to the same standard. For black communities, the media has historically played

consideration into coining the term ‘post-blackness’ when trying to push the notion of a ‘post-black’ America. Black is a race. Toure’s book explains to us that there are different ways to be black but if we are being honest, its not black and white as the book paints it to be. There are things we can do which differ from the norm of what majority of black people do, but it is not necessarily a different way to be black. I feel like the term post-blackness is used to divert attention

In the short story “Blackness” by Jamaica Kincaid, the narrator’s consciousness develops through a process of realization that she does not have to choose between the culture imposed on her and her authentic heritage. First, the narrator explains the metaphor “blackness” for the colonization her country that fills her own being and eventually becomes one with it. Unaware of her own nature, in isolation she is “all purpose and industry… as if [she] were the single survivor of a species” (472).

This use of power by white people over black individuals has caused numerous black individuals to view themselves as trapped in their own skin, which is a concept Fanon defines as “blackness”. In Frantz Fanon’s article, The Fact of Blackness, he speaks about how black people do not feel the weight of their “blackness” until they are under the scrutiny of white counterparts and viewed as objects. Fanon states, “A feeling of inferiority? No, a feeling of nonexistence. Sin is Negro as virtue is white

Darieck Scott argues in Extravagant Abjection: Blackeness, Power, and Sexuuality in the African American Literary Imagination that Blackness is code and functions like any other language (95). Language bridges the gap between the thoughts and feelings of individuals and the rest of the world. While people usually think of languages as something that is spoken or read, language extends beyond the verbal and textual. One frequently overlooked example is body language. While each individual has

Everlena Goddard Latin Anti-Blackness is a very real and extremely under discussed topic that is affecting millions of Latin people today. This disguised and rarely talked about topic is the practice of discrimination and prejudice against dark skinned, mixed race or non predominantly white Latinxs by other Latinx people. This distressing treatment of Latin(o)(a)s is not only a national issue, it is a global one as well. This issue is ongoing and was and has always been apparent yet unidentified

According to Tina M. Campt, in “Blackness, Diaspora, and the Afro-German Subject”, “Photography offers the promise of apprehending who we are, not only as private individuals but as members of social and cultural groups”(Fusco, 13). Tina M. Campt exemplifies the atmosphere surrounding Blackness and the African Diaspora in Europe because people of African descent are fanatically different but more importantly exhibits the overwhelming presence of migration to Europe. Armenia is the main country being

of hundreds of years of vicious anti-black sentiment in the United States. While she can partake in à la carte blackness, and she surely does to some degree, her desire to be victimized for being black signifies that Dolezal craves the complexities and pains of blackness – she does not want to cast them aside. In fact, it is in Dolezal’s best interests to adopt all aspects of blackness, beyond only appearance. Victimization is only one facet; she also attended a historically black university, essentially