Misinterpreted It is rare that there is ever only one meaning to a word. In the story “Mommy, What Does ‘Nigger’ Mean?” Gloria Naylor, writes about her life growing up in a time where the word ‘nigger’ was used often. She believed that the word has many different connotations, and began to question what the word had meant when she had been on the receiving end of the word. The first time she got called ‘nigger’ was in third grade when she was handing papers back, and she states, “he snatched his test from me and spit out that word” (Naylor 1). She was confused by the word because she had heard it before, but not in this context. The meaning of words back then and even today have different connotations and we have to learn how to interpret their …show more content…
Although some of the words we say are negative, we have to look at the context the person presented it in and we have to learn to be mature about their perspective. My goal is to try and influence the readers of this paper to understand how words are used, the person who states the word is not always trying to offend you. Naylor tells us after, “The dynamics were the exact opposite: the people in my grandmother's living room took a word that whites used to signify worthlessness or degradation and rendered it impotent” (Naylor 2). This signifies how the African-American people during her time chose not to be offended by the word ‘nigger,’ but turned around and made something positive out of it. Her essay also relates to me because I understand that different words have different meanings. When I hang out with my friends we use words the incorrect way almost all of the time, but we do understand that we are not using them correctly and choose not to be offended. For other people though it is easy for them to get offended because they are not sure which context you’re using the words in and can mistake you for harassing them. This is why we have a sort of filter in our minds to not say these words to people we are not closely associated
It is through his clever word choice that Tim Wise attempts to provoke an emotional response from the reader. Wise’s essay immediately opens up with a statement that grabs the readers attention. Wise says “white folk need to pull our heads out of our collective ass,” which not only calls the white race in particular, including himself, but also includes profanity which grabs the readers attention (69). Wise goes on to say that these students are using their teachers and fellow classmates as “target practice” and it is through phrases like this that he intends to invoke shock into the reader which will hopefully make them consider the argument he is making (69). Perhaps Wise’s best effort to produce emotion is when he tries to cause anger.
Through illustrating the sadness brought to his young daughter as he saw “the tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky”, he is equipped with the ammunition of parenthood. Calling on other parents in the community to envision their child coming to that realization; having to face the world at large when they are barely competent enough to tie their own shoes. Shifting focus on to formalities and the usage of the meaning in a name,”when your first name becomes ‘nigger’, your middle name becomes ‘boy’ (however old you are) and your last name becomes ‘John’”. Here, much emphasis is placed on the suggestion that African-Americans are nameless, faceless, and do not deserve acknowledgement of being productive citizens. Dr. King fashions a tension between the extremists who use these lexicons, and the ‘average’ American who feels slightly uncomfortable with the terms, yet takes no action to aid blacks.
After the narrator tells his mom that the white boys at school started calling him a “nigger”, his mom tells him, “you are as good as anybody; if anyone calls you a nigger, don’t notice them” (Johnson 799). She says this to him because now that he is considered “Black” she doesn’t want him to think any less of himself as a person. It is only
This little kid in a school uniform no older than seven years old, he was crying his eyes out as he walked down the sidewalk with his mother. I 'm going to be honest here, she turned to him, and she said ‘I 'm sick of you. You act like an old ass man, stop all that crying, nigger.’” This goes to show how the word is used often, but it is not used in its original
The grandmother’s bigoted self-elevation quickly taints her moral reputation. While common in her environment, the grandmother does not resist racial slurs. In fact, she wields them as an integrated part of her vocabulary to undermine her supposed inferiors. She first exemplifies her instinctive racism when she calls a black child a
Race is one the most sensitive and controversial topics of our time. As kids, we were taught that racism has gotten better as times has passed. However, the author, Michelle Alexander, of The New Jim Crow proposes the argument that racism has not gotten better, but the form of racism that we known in textbooks is not the racism we experience today. Michelle Alexander has countless amounts of plausible arguments, but she has failed to be a credible author, since she doesn’t give enough citations or evidence for her argument to convince people who may not have prior agreement with her agreement.. Alexander’s biggest mistake when it came to being a credible author was starting off the book with a countless number of claims without any evidence in her Introduction.
If I’m here on TV in front of millions of american adults, it means I have something really important to tell you. Did you ever say, implicitly or explicitly, that the lyrics of African-American songs are inappropriate, especially those of rappers such as N.W.A? Statistics say that 90 percent of our population have, and most of the time it was explicitly in front of black people. Now, did you ask yourself why is the language of African-Americans inappropriate? Statistics say that 70 percent of the american population doesn’t know the reason and thinks that because we are born black, we should be bad.
The use of the N word has brought many situations upon readers when coming across it, Rawls describes the idea that there was reasoning behind Twain’s writing. Peter Salwen says, “The great black novelist Ralph Ellison noted how Twain
Gloria Naylor, in her essay, “The meaning of a word” describes language as a subject. We know subject is anything that is generally discussed or dealt with. So Naylor wants to say the language is a thing where it has lots of meaning and perceptions. She writes her own personal experience clarifying how a language could be misleading and misinterpreted. She writes her own experience and tries to convince the readers about different forms of a word.
The novel “To Kill A Mockingbird” was written in 1960 by Harper Lee in the point of view of a young innocent girl named Scout. One of the main messages that Lee has (need a new word than – indicated or set out) is racism, it plays an important role which strongly impacts many character’s lives unfairly and changes the relationship between two. Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird” shows that it is wrong to hurt someone who does no harm to you, for example, black people are innocent but no way did they have as many rights as white people did. Black people lived hard lives because society was judgemental, irrational and most importantly, racist. As Scout and Jem grow older they learn to cope, take responsibility and are introduced to new aspects of life, one of which is racism.
Another way to combat prejudice is by teaching against it to the upcoming generation. Atticus teaches Scout and Jem that demoralizing vocabulary should not be used, especially against black people. He says to them, nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don 't mean anythinglike snot-nose. It 's hard to explainignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody 's favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It 's slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody.
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?
However if I hear someone saying nigger to demean, it would make me incredibly uncomfortable and offended. The word nigger needs to be used today. If people stop using it, its oppressive past will be forgotten and neglected which is ignoring the problem. There is still lots of subconscious racism in our society and the solution to fixing that problem is not ignoring race, it is acknowledging that race exist and then realizing that it does not matter.
Words have the power to create great things just like they have the power to destroy them. Claudia Rankine uses her book, Citizen: An American Lyric, to illustrate the idea that racism has become an everyday component of our society. This book expresses the idea that language normalizes the existence of racism. This particular
Language comes naturally, and as time as passed, we have been more inclined to say whatever we want. Unfortunately, recently we have seen more offense being taken to words we say. This is because language can affect people in different ways. In other words, some