Analysis Of Racism In ZZ Packer's Brownies

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). The story continues to unveil in a humorous way, while still keeping the main

Years may have passed since this was written, but the hostile attitudes towards people of a different race still exist.

Think about what it must feel like to have someone of a different race treating you as an invaluable human being. The fact of the matter is that people do feel this way, a lot of people. To get to the core of why racism still exist in America, we can refer back to “Brownies” and where racism is found frequently. First, we can take a look at schools. School is a place where students should feel accepted and embraced. This story exemplifies just the opposite. It starts off at a summer camp that is at a high school band field. The girls attending this camp are racially separated in their own “troops”. One Brownie group consists of black girls that attend Woodrow Wilson Elementary School. This is our first look at the seperation of races. At this elementary school, there is a large presence of black children. The students refer to Dennis, a particular young child, as “the only white kid in our school,” (Packer 4). When the group of white girls, also known as Brownie troop #909, arrive to the school, the black girls see them as being so different. They even compare

One remaining question is what does tomorrow hold? ZZ Packer used this book as a way to bring light to such a dark topic. While America is not where we used to be, we still have a lot of progress to make in the near future. “Revisiting the Rhetoric of Racism” by Mark Lawrence McPhail suggests that African-Americans have longed for a sense of identity that has long been denied by people of the white race. McPhail said that scholars have been working to understand racial rhetoric by examining the “social construction of identity and difference,” (McPhail 43). We can also examine the work of M.J. Maher in “Racism and Cultural Diversity : Cultivating Racial Harmony Through Counselling, Group Analysis, and Psychotherapy” as he goes through the steps of healing and prosperity of races. He describes how he used his knowledge gained from Manchester Metropolitan University to apply them in his everyday life as a counselor who specifically targeted people who were in need of finding themselves after being broken down due to racism. By doing so, he was also able to find his “sense of belonging” and has been using his skills to boost the confidence of those in need of some (Maher 324). When reflecting back to “Brownies”, we can see how the girls would encourage each other and they found comfort in being a group that was close and