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Analysis Of The Book ' Romeo And Juliet ' And ' Great Expectations '

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Why Diversify?
Everyone knows the classics. Romeo and Juliet, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, the novels of white characters in Western settings commonly read in high school English classes. Lost in the backrooms of school libraries, The House on Mango Street and Uncle Tom’s Cabin are hidden away, stories of minorities boxed in by cardboard and majority rule. While America’s student body becomes increasingly diverse (and schools rush to adapt), some say curriculum has stayed monochromatic by regularly painting the story of the white majority while failing to represent minority backgrounds and experiences fairly and leaving minority students struggling to relate to texts presented in the classroom. Others say the American curriculum should …show more content…

Alexie remarks on his experience dealing with this standard, remarking that “a smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike” (Alexie). He faced the ‘ideal’ growing up and noticed those who thought against it, like himself, were viewed as “dangerous” — a threat to the majority’s power and capable of subverting the social order; he illustrates one method the majority uses to maintain their power: those who threatened the ‘ideal’ were mocked by both the majority and minorities who were manipulated into adopting the ‘ideal’ way of thinking to force ideological rebels to submit to the ‘ideal’.
A historical example of majorities defining the “right” way of thinking, the ‘ideal’, is the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. In those years, leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X rallied supporters to the cause of equal rights. These leaders carried ‘revolutionary’ ideas — they supported uprooting the social order by giving African-Americans equal status as other citizens, fighting the effects of Jim Crow and modern-day slavery — that would threaten the power and “security” of the white majority. As they marched and organized, protestors and supporters were confronted, often attacked, by white police and white citizens across the South with many jailed, bloodied, and silenced in the struggle for freedom. Viewpoints that antagonize the majority, like in the Civil Rights Movement, are

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