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Segregation And Discrimination In The Secret Life Of Bees

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This past summer I read the novel the Secret Life of Bees. Set in 1964, around the time the Civil Rights Act was passed. The Civil Rights Act is basically like an embellishment upon The Jim Crow law. The law was enacted to pursue segregation between people of color and whites. When the Civil Rights Act was legislated it changed the law, giving civil rights to anyone and everyone regardless of their skin color. Which in this book you see an excellent portrayal of the acts of segregation and discrimination going on around this time. The author showed the struggles of Lily with an abusive father, but at the same time kept her white privilege protected. While her housekeeper, Rosaleen, a strong bold woman keeping herself in tact throughout the obstacles of oppression she faced as a black woman in this time of history, was a representation of what blacks across the country dealt with day by day. A good example of oppression now vs. then is …show more content…

I am going with the second, just my opinion. Think about it, we only just got rid of the confederate flag, and Americans know this is no flag of “Southern Pride”, this flag is a representation of slavery and oppression, blacks very own ancestors went through. Southern Americans want to keep this because of what? their ancestors apart of the KKK? What I find even more alarming is that there are still to this day organizations across the country like the Ku Klux Klan. Let that sink in. There are real people out there getting away with something like that, whilst a person of color can’t walk alone down the street without “looking suspicious”. Racism is not something to be ignored until it goes away, because that will never happen until we address

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