Brownies is a short story about 4th graders who go on a summer camping trip near the southern suburbs of Atlanta in Georgia. Laura, an African American girl, also known by her nickname ‘Snot’ to the other girls, narrates the story. The Narrator explains how her Brownie troop took a dislike on each and every girl in another Brownie troop, Troop 909, on the first day. The fact that girls from troop 909 were white was the main factor contributing to the dislike. This essay aims at showing how racism creates conflicts and hatred between people as evident in the short story.
Brownies has a lot of humor in it, but at the same time, it expresses a serious purpose and theme. It is clear, not only to individuals living in the United States, but also to everyone all over the world that relations between the black and the white people have been fraught with oppression and injustice in the past. The United States government came up with several policies and laws that sought the abolition of racism. However, racism still exists not only between adults, but also between the children, as it is evident in the short story. The narrator notes: “We had all been taught that adulthood was full of sorrow and pain, taxes and bills, dreaded work
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The hatred among these children is also evident where Arnetta, Laura’s troop leader compares the white girls to wet Chihuahuas. “They smell like Chihuahuas, wet chihuahuas.” This made everyone that heard this laugh very heard. In addition, by the second day of the camping trip, all the other girls in the narrator’s troop had made up their mind and decided to give each and every girl in troop 909 a thorough beating. This was to be a punishment of the alleged reports by Arnetta of an insult by a white girl. The girls got furious on hearing that one of the white girls had called them
2 Questions of “Brownies” 1. In the short story, “Brownies,” I would describe the narrator, whose name is Laurel, as a shy and timid girl, questioning the way people act. Most of the girls in her group do not take a liking to her, for she says, “[They] already decided their course of action, me being the only impediment” (Packer 847). Moreover, the narrator is very smart because she is skeptical, for she is the only one who questions the girls if they, in fact, heard troop 909 call one of the girls a nigger.
In this short story the Brownie troops at the summer camp appear either all black or all white, no mixed troop is present. This displays the constant segregation occurring and the influence it has on young children who are vulnerable to a racially segregated environment causing them to portray themselves a certain way. The black girls have little knowledge of people different than them, “When you lived in the south suburbs of Atlanta, it was easy to forget about whites. Whites were like those baby pigeons: real and existing, but rarely seen or thought about” (pg. 5), because of these girls have little contact with one another and the black girls are extremely conscious of the differences they posses. The feeling of differences comes from the world around them, what they hear and see affect their opinions tremendously.
The main idea of this entry is about the stereotypes that come along with racism. Also, Brent Staples wants his readers to realize how much colored people sacrifice from their normality in order to fit in with society, in hopes of not being attacked or offended. The author proves this in his entry by mentioning ‘innocent’ behaviors, such as singing Beethoven, that he did in public in order to relief those surrounding him from danger. Moreover, the author compared hikers to the country’s bears in order to provide readers with a valid connection between black and colored people. In addition to that, Brent Staples uses flashback as one of his techniques when sharing with us his encounters with white people, this gives readers an idea of how
Have you ever witnessed racial discrimination first hand in your school? In the story “Woodlan” by Todd Geralds, the author portrays racial discrimination that occurred in the late 60’s to the early 70’s while they attempted integration in the southern schools. Throughout the 1960’s-1970, there was plenty of racial derision and harassment that went on as school’s attempted integration. This happened to be a common conflict throughout the story, but ultimately leads up to the plot.
Have you ever been discriminated against? In the story “Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton, a young boy named Ponyboy plays as a victim of prejudice. Ponyboy is in middle school, and has an older brother named Dally, who robs gas stations and has been in jail. The area that Ponyboy lives in has two different gangs, The Greasers, and the Socs. Both gangs are different in many ways, which results in conflict.
Imagine getting up everyday before high school and preparing for war. For Melba Pattillo Beals this fear was a scary reality. In the beginning of “Warriors Don 't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock 's Central High” by Melba Pattillo Beals, she begins talking about what it’s like to come back to the haunted racist halls of Little Rock Central High School. This was a time when civil rights was a major issue and the color separation between white and black was about to be broken. Melba and nine other students entered Central High School becoming the first African American students to go to an all white school.
Literary Analysis Essay William Howard The short story that I chose for my literary analysis essay is “Brownies” By ZZ Packer. This fictional short story had a powerful meaning because it focused on how racial stereotyping can cause a lot of problems even among young girls who were attending a Girl Scouts camp. “Brownies” also showed how stereotyping can actually be harmful and can sometimes lead to hurtful consequences for the person who is the victim of it and for the person is guilty of stereotyping someone. I decided to do my analysis of this short story using the historical context element because of the long history of problems between the Black and White races in this country according to our history books, including
The plot of the short story, “Brownies”, by ZZ Packer, is of a troop of young girl scouts who are of African American descent. The story depicts them attempting to brawl with another group due to the “brownie” troop assuming another called them a particular insult. Whether the other troop, Troop 909, in called the others a racial slur is left to ambiguity, although it is strongly suggested that they did not in fact refer to them in an invective manner. When the other troop is confronted about it, it is discovered that Troop 909 simply consisted of mentally disabled girls all in one group. Due to this, it is only fitting that the theme of the story was to indicate individuals with disadvantages in life should rejoice and unify rather than combat
In the book Warriors Don 't Cry, Melba and her friends integrate into Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Melba and her friends experiences troubles as she tries to survive integration. Beals reveals a lot of things that would gives hint to things that we see ahead. The book mainly focuses on the south, light has been shed on events in the north around the same time when the Little Rock Nine (Bars) integrated. This essay will make inferences that show how people in the southern schools will continue to be ruthless and slow acceptance for the nine and for the north schools how whites will except African-Americans more.
A pressing, socio-economic issue seen prevelantly in today’s society is racism. The term has been used for a long time, but has still found its way to stay in the current vocabulary of people in the twenty-first century. The timeless occurence of racism in society has been documented in a piece of literature that enables the horrors of this foulness to forever be known. “Brownies” by ZZ Packer made its way to the shelves in 2003 and has left many in awe of the in-depth perception of how people of the black race were mistreated. The story starts off when a group of black girls were mistreated by a group of white girls at a retreat known as Camp Crescendo (Packer 1).
Stereotypes have changed throughout history. Toni Cade Bambara’s short story “Blues Ain’t No Mockin Bird” uses stereotypes to develop characters and set a realistic setting. Bambara sets her story in the rural South in the United States of America. With a house near some woods, Granny, Granddaddy Cain, and a group of their relatives enjoy a private life away from white people. In this time period, during the civil right movement, there was a distrust between the African-American community and the white people.
In this society, many judgements are made about people from different backgrounds. This causes many problems between people of other races. Racism can be shown in multiple ways such as by using overt and covert racism. In the two stories “The Stolen Party” by Liliana Hecker and “So What Are You, Anyway?” by Lawrence Hill, there are many examples of racist stereotypes.
Humans live in a world where moral values are very clearly set determining what is good and what is bad. We know what scares us and how racism should be treated. Nevertheless, this was not the case back in Alabama during the 1950s. In the famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee narrates the lives of the people of Maycomb, Alabama, focusing on the story of Scout and Jem Finch, and the case of a said to be rape. In this emotion filled narrative, readers learn how life was back then not only in general, but for the separate social statuses that there was.
Amara Crook Harmon—L202 Major Paper 3 Clever Title Countee Cullen’s “Incident” explores the concept of unprovoked and unwarranted racism through the eyes of an eight-year-old boy. In his short yet powerful poem, Cullen uses a single incident in which a young boy “riding through old Baltimore” (1) is singled out and called the N-word by another very small child, despite having done or said nothing to offend the boy. Although this incident is clearly hurtful, why is this incident in particular so important?
Starr Carter, the protagonist of Angie Thomas’s young adult novel, The Hate U Give, epitomizes the subversion of cultural racial oppression through the development of an identity that encompasses multiple consciousnesses. As an African American teenage girl raised in a middle-class family attending a high school with primarily White upper-class students, Starr finds the need to prove her belongingness to both communities in Garden Heights and at Williamson Prep. Unlike her White upper-class counterparts at Williamson and African American middle-to-low-class counterparts in Garden Heights, Starr’s identity is multifaceted. She must act and interact with her peers with respect to her location, in other words, utilize double consciousness. However,