“I don’t know that they all end up OK, but i hope there’s something interesting for the reader in worrying about those outcomes,” Evans shares as she explains her reasoning for concluding most of her stories with cliffhangers (Young). Danielle Evans is an author of a collection of short stories that focus on issues pertaining to race and gender, and the struggles that surround a colored person's life. Evans goal in her writing is to give her characters more of an identity rather than just being identified as "black" (Perkins-Valdez). In her short story "Snakes," Danielle Evans, from the view of 25 year old Tara, shares the story of an interesting summer filled with racism. The story starts with the mixed character Tara, and her summer experience with her racist white grandmother, Lydia. Tara's parents are researchers that are taking a trip to Brazil for a summer, and Tara is able to now meet her mother's mother.
In the article The Politics of Black Women’s Studies by Akasha Hull and Barbara Smith, Hull and Smith studiously literate the politics and controversy around the fundamentals of black women’s studies in the past and modern day. Furthermore, the ideology of the article falls under the premise that racism and prejudice are still current and prominent factors that affect the development of black women’s studies in the way it is taught in universities, and the role it takes upon the lives of black women.
However, Grant’s family cautiously came to be accepting of Vivian when she refers to herself while explaining that not all people of mixed race hate African Americans. Evidence of racism towards African Americans in the mixed community is demonstrated when Vivian was outcasted by her family for marrying an African American man, “Her family had nothing to say to her husband and hardly anything to say to her” (112).
Feminist scholar Audre Lorde has thoroughly documented this phenomenon, having been on the receiving end of white feminist scapegoating more than once. In her speech "The Uses of Anger," which she delivered at a 1981 National Women's Studies Association Conference, Lorde recounts the the times she's been dismissed as "angry" for bringing critiques of racism into predominantly white feminist spaces.
The theoretical perspective for Hillary Potter in Battle Cries is calling the “Black feminist criminology”. Black feminist criminology is an extension of feminist criminology and racial-feminist criminology theories. It specifically discussed the issue in several aspects which include crime, deviance, violence and the criminal justice system for people with colors. The four themes that Black feminist criminology has delivered apprehension incorporate social structural oppression, the black community and culture, intimate and familial relations and the Black woman as individual that Hillary Potter will be mainly discussed in the
This week, the readings point the spotlight at the some of the depressing hardships that the African-American population frequently experience. In “Naughty by Nature”, Ann Ferguson covers the different perceptions that society has of colored boys. David Knight’s work “Don’t tell young black males that they are endangered” seeks to explain the differents outcomes of African-American youth that arise when society constantly oppresses them. The last article by Carla O’Connor, “The Culture of Black Femininity and School Success”, focuses on the image of African-American woman that is created as a result of them attempting to preserve in a system that opposes them.
Butler, Cheryl Nelson. "The Racial Roots Of Human Trafficking." UCLA Law Review 62.6 (2015): 1464-1514. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Dec. 2015.
Edith M. Stern and George E McMillan’s essays reveal comparisons, differences and reasons for these differences between housewives and African Americans during the 1950’s. Housewives and African Americans were both oppressed, controlled and unheard. They had opposite differences like level of household income, the dwellings they lived in and how they were treated in social environments. The main reason for these differences was race, but the parallel between these two groups of people is thought-provoking.
In Brent Staple “Black Men in Public Space” This story tells of a Black Man walking down the street late at night suffering from insomnia/ walking behind a white woman, who glanced back at him. Staples deal with the perceived aggression of black men, through the cultural misconceptions of white women. Staple’s article illuminated the ugly truths of human nature that resonated toward members of the African American community, In Staple’s excerpt he states “there seemed to be a discreet un-inflammatory distance between us”. The Caucasian woman looked back at him, no words were exchanged. The familiarity of this situation is uncanny. The majority of African Americans have experienced racism in one form or another.
The Chicana feminist is not widely accepted, or even recognized. At its best, Chicana writers and artists take to paper and other mediums to share the message. Writers, such as Andzaldua, comment on the necessity for writing. The Chicana expression of creative thought, otherwise unnoticed by the majority of people, is important in that it allows people to show the struggle, emotion, and wisdom surrounding personal experience (Andzaldua). Poetry, for instance, can be described as a political act, which enables further thought and understanding between people. Additionally, these stories reveal the great diversity among women.
Beyonce’s 2016 visual album, Lemonade, carries her audience through different emotional chapters of her life, presumably following the infidelity of her husband, Jay Z. Although Lemonade touches upon sensitive racial issues and the oppression of African-Americans, I decided to focus more on the sentimental aspect of the film. It is a consensus that women of all kinds are stereotyped as ‘frail’ or ‘hysterical,’ especially when their emotions are transparent, but why is it that the black woman is perceived as ‘angry’ when she does so? Beyonce’s third track on Lemonade, “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” features an excerpt of a speech given by Malcolm X that reads: “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman.” To dismiss and undermine the emotional traumas Beyonce discloses in Lemonade confirms the veracity of Malcolm X’s statement. Although critics claim that Beyonce’s album portrays the black woman as the ‘victim,’ Lemonade instead empowers black women to freely express themselves and their ‘anger’ because there is no greater oppression than suffering in silence.
Crenshaw presents us with many examples of why colored women are more apt to being the victim of a violent
The Help is set in Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960s. Skeeter, a southern society girl, interviews the black women who have spent their lives being servants for wealthy white Southern families. There are various scenes throughout the film that show social stratification, racial inequalities, gender inequalities, and class inequalities.
Afro-American women writers present how racism permeates the innermost recesses of the mind and heart of the blacks and affects even the most intimate human relationships. While depicting the corrosive impact of racism from social as well as psychological perspectives, they highlight the human cost black people have to pay in terms of their personal relationships, particularly the one between mother and daughter. Women novelists’ treatment of motherhood brings out black mothers’ pressures and challenges for survival and also reveals their different strategies and mechanisms to deal with these challenges. Along with this, the challenges black mothers have to face in dealing with their adolescent daughters, who suffer due to racism and are heavily influenced by the dominant value system, are also underlined by these writers. They portray how a black mother teaches her daughter to negotiate the hostile, wider world, and prepares her to face the problems and challenges boldly and confidently.
The book, “America Swastika: Inside the white power movement’s hidden spaces of hate” by Pete Simi and Robert Futrell, was written 2010. I chose this book because I am interested in learning about why these racist groups have so much hate towards another race or group. Personally, I do not condone racism because it does not make sense to me as to how one person can hate another one without knowing them. I wanted to learn about how people who are in groups such as, the Ku Klux Klan, live in our country which is identified as a melting pot. White power movements are talked about in our history books and are explained as if they are in the past, but they aren’t. We still deal with racism and hate in our country as stories about acts of hate crime