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The Fourth Of July Analysis

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“Fourth of July” Essay
“Treat others how you want to be treated” (Golden Rule). “The Fourth of July”, by Audre Lorde, is about when a young girl (Lorde) experiences discrimination on her family’s vacation to Washington DC. Lorde encounters the obstacle of prejudice throughout the essay making her feel ashamed of who she was which shows that prejudice has a negative effect on everyone. To support this, the way people treated Lorde’s family made Lorde feel ashamed. To demonstrate, she explains, “The nuns had given her back her deposit in private, explaining to her class, all of whom were white, except Phyllis, would be staying in a hotel where Phyllis ‘would not be happy’, meaning, Daddy explained to her, also in private, that they did not rent rooms to Negroes” (240). Lorde shows through the flashback of her sister’s trip that the hotel staff had a prejudice against black people. This frustrates Lorde because her sister hadn’t done anything wrong and they had no right to deny her access to a room. Lorde, later on, shows signs of being ashamed because she couldn’t say or do anything to stop people from treating her family like how they did. …show more content…

An example of this being when she wanted to eat in the dining car with her mother, she explains further, “My mother reminded me for the umpteenth times that dining car food always cost too much money. My mother never mentioned that black people weren’t allowed into railroad dining cars headed south in 1947” (240). Lorde is ashamed that she was so naive to her family’s position which ironically belies Lorde’s mother explaining to her why they shouldn’t go into the dining car for lunch. She ultimately blames her family for not giving her the entire story on why they can’t go to certain places on the

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