La Guma’s portrayal of the white group of people and the white leader are as inexorable and repressive characters throughout the short story, the author depicts the group of white men as a group of racist tormentors, who commits actions that highlights and presents a microcosm of the inhumanity of the apartheid. Their actions and attitudes towards the coloured man makes their character so intolerable yet compelling. In the beginning of the story, it is expressed by the author that the white group of men holds more power against the black man. The white leader is presented to be wearing “an old shooting jacket” (conjuring up an image of a hunter) and has his shotgun loaded -implying that he is prepared to kill-. The portrayal of the white …show more content…
A dramatic irony is displayed when La Guma further demonstartes how the coloured man is being treated inhumanly when the white leader offers the pricey sum of five pounds to Meneer Maris for the watchdog Jagter. He then says that he “would take great care of such a dog”. This is dramatically irony and indicates that the lantern-bearer probably treats a dog better than the coloured man, a human being. This further illustrates the values and attitudes of the white group of people (they think that it is perfectly acceptable to brutally treat people of colour). More crucially, when describing the white group of people, the author writes “they could not be seen in the dark” (signifying anonymity) this evokes a sense of horror and menace, as we cannot identify the perpetrators behind the beating and threatening, also because this suggests that the leader can easily be somebody else administering the beating, thereby indicating that racism is wide spread amongst the society and that large swathes of the white population hold racist view- the white leader is just a representative character of the white population-. The white leader is later described as having eyes which are “hard and blue like 2 frozen lakes” the use of the diction “frozen” suggests that he is
Worldshaker is a text about a city within a juggernaut. There are 12,000 people living in the Worldshaker, and they face the problem of inequality. Two young individuals decide they want to make a difference so they start a rebellion and everything starts changing significantly. There are many circumstances in real life where individuals decided to take a stand and revolt against inequality and injustice. The book Worldshaker mirrors real life because it shows how people can discriminate against one another leading to inequality and injustice, resulting in people wanting to make a difference and revolt.
In _The White Scourge_, Neil Foley uses a wealth of archival materials and oral histories to illuminate the construction and reconstruction of whiteness and the connection of this whiteness to power. Focusing largely on cotton culture in central Texas, Foley 's book deconstructs whiteness through a new and detailed analysis of race, class, and gender. The most intriguing aspect of this book is its comparison of the impact of whiteness on various ethno-racial classes and how each struggled in relation to the other to develop a meaningful existence. _
Character analysis essay of the short story “Sonny’s blues” by James Baldwin James Baldwin is considered as the most well-known writer of the 20th century. His writings were mainly concerned by the problem of racism in America since he was one of the figures of the civil rights movement. “Sonny’s blues” is one of his greatest literary works, where we will notice how the persistent racism the writer experienced has had a great impact on his devoted writings. “Sonny’s blues” takes place in Harlem, an Afro-American neighborhood in New York City. Harlem plays a crucial role in this short story, because it is depicted as place where the narrator and his brother must struggle to escape the hustle and bustle of their own reality.
anasegaram 214942338 GWST 1501 11/11/2016 Essay 2 : On Whiteness In bell hooks’ passage entitled “Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination” hooks describes whiteness as a privilege that coloured people do not have. In the passage hook mentions “whiteness” as purity but then also comes out with a past that changed how people view the white race. I personally knew that race had a huge impact on our society and has never changed from the past it has just continued on.
In the essay, “A Genealogy of Modern Racism”, the author Dr. Cornel West discusses racism in depth, while conveying why whites feel this sense of superiority. We learn through his discussion that whites have been forced to treat black harshly due to the knowledge that was given to them about the aesthetics of beauty and civility. This knowledge that was bestowed on the whites in the modern West, taught them that they were superior to all races tat did not emulate the norms of whites. According to Dr. West the very idea that blacks were even human beings is a concept that was a “relatively new discovery of the modern West”, and that equality of beauty, culture, and intellect in blacks remains problematic and controversial in intellectual circles
Critical Whiteness Studies responds to the invisible and normative nature of whiteness in predominantly white societies, criticizing racial and ethnic attribution of non-white subjects who have to grapple with their deviation from the set norm, and opening the discussion on white privilege that results from being the unmarked norm (Kerner: 278). As Conway and Steyn elaborate, Critical Whiteness Studies aims to “redirect[...] the scholarly gaze from the margins to the centre” (283) and, more specifically, to interrogat[e][...] the centre of power and privilege from which racialization emanates but which operates more or less invisibly as it constructs itself as both the norm and ideal of what it means to be human. (ibid.) Thus, Critical Whiteness
In this speech, Pontiac uses his anecdote to explain how he feels against the English who are destroying their people and way of life; however, it can also explain his sadness for his own culture because the English changed his people so easily. In his narrative, the Delaware Indian comes upon many obstacles on his journey in search of The Great Spirit. Two obstacles in particular are a “mountain of dazzling whiteness” (223 ¶ 1 line 23) and a woman in white. The color white in these two occasions is used with different meanings.
(366). the mere symbol of being black shows that they are somehow inferior to the whites. This common theme, often shown by Marlow, again shows the effects of imperialism toward “lower” cultures. Further creating the illusion that colors are reversed in
The bright colors and the deformed cartoonlike style in combination with the obvious history of racial mixing suggests the ugly past that is tied to biracial people who are both black and white. The painful and ugly history of rape and the mixing of blacks and whites within slavery is not only expressed through the figures but also through the use of bright colors that clash with each other and also through the cartoonlike distortion of the figures. The ‘ugly” style is meant to express the ugly and difficult history of biracial people. The style and color choice also addressed the subject of “passing” as another lighter race and the tendency of biracial people to choose their lighter skinned heritage over their black heritage. Robert Colescott was known for transgressively playing with themes of race and sex, he was very politically aware.
Fahad Albrahim Response 1: Review/Summary: “Whiteness as property” is an article written by Cheryl Harris, in which she addresses the subject of racial identity and property in the United States. Throughout the article, professor Harris attempts to explain how the concept of whiteness was initiated to become a form of racial identity, which evolved into a property widely protected in American law (page 1713). Harris tackles a number of facts that describe the roots of whiteness as property in American history at the expense of minorities such as Black and American natives (page 1709). Additionally, Harris describes how whiteness as property evolved to become seen as a racial privilege in which the whites gained more benefits, whether
Frankenburg (1993) argues that studying whiteness will put whiteness in the centre of the spotlight of intellectual inquiry. Frankenburg (1993) further questions why scholars need to explore whiteness, identifying that there is a risk of contributing to the process of re-centering, rather than de-centering it, while reifying the term and inhabitants of whiteness. Furthermore, re-centering whiteness may result in whiteness studies developing into a discourse of love, lending itself to narcissistic self-promotion. This in turn would see whiteness progressing into social and bodily models (Ahmed,
Beneath the literal brutal violence the narrator is forced into is an overwhelmingly obvious display of severe racism. It is a figurative violence between the rich and powerful whites and the struggling oppressed blacks. The violence is
And the novel repeatedly tells us that these crimes--not the casual brutalization of black men and women, not the denial of political and economic rights to the overwhelming majority of the population-are the big problems in South Africa” (AUTHOR NAME AND PAGE NUMBER?). This shows that Europeans are titling blacks as thieves, prostitutes, and murders. They are pretty much titling them as their downfall to society. They are blaming all of the bad stuff that happens in there everyday life on the Blacks of South Africa. They are not seeing the big picture which is that the white forced themselves into their land and caused them to become poor and are forcing them to scramble for money.
It’s an image in the third person. All around the body reigns an atmosphere of certain uncertainty” (Fanon 89). This notion of people of color is eerily similar to the relation between the migrant, who in recent times is usually a person of colors, and the people who resided in the place of
The story represents the culmination of Wright’s passionate desire to observe and reflect upon the racist world around him. Racism is so insidious that it prevents Richard from interacting normally, even with the whites who do treat him with a semblance of respect or with fellow blacks. For Richard, the true problem of racism is not simply that it exists, but that its roots in American culture are so deep it is doubtful whether these roots can be destroyed without destroying the culture itself. “It might have been that my tardiness in learning to sense white people as "white" people came from the fact that many of my relatives were "white"-looking people. My grandmother, who was white as any "white" person, had never looked "white" to me” (Wright 23).