Audre Lorde The Fourth Of July Analysis

Douglass also in his speeches liberated what Americans in this economy would have done with blacks. In his speech “what the blacks want” he states, “I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief.” (Douglass). Society’s “America” has already put us in a category. Race we are not superior or equal to no other. Economically we don’t have the means to live out what we strive for. Education wise we have none, we are not sufficient enough to read or write for us to have a better life. Douglass in this speech stresses to leave us alone we are cable of doing bad or good on our own. His would view principle of self-ownership, which he understood to include both the racial and equality.

Specifically, she describes the irony behind the Fourth of July. In the beginning of the story, there was a happy and excited tone. As the story continues, the tone becomes angry. She was beginning to feel the injustice that she and her family faced during the trip.  The angry tone continues after she realizes the prejudice that she will continue to face while growing up. Then, at the end of the story, Lorde and her family go to the ice cream parlor. Once they realized the cause of the waitress’s strange behavior, the family became “straight-backed and indignant, one by one, her and her family got down from the counter stools and turned around and marched out of the store, quiet and outraged,” (16) and returned to their hotel. This shows the shame that she felt in this moment, but also the family’s lack of desire to cause a scene. During this time period, many black chose to stand up for their rights and retaliate against the injustice they face, but Lorde’s family rather stay quiet and respect the white people. By the end of the story, the tone changed to sympathetic tone. The reader could sympathize with Lorde on an inscrutable and piteous level because one could feel where the family was coming from. The reader was able to feel their pain of being shamed because of their skin

Audre sets the scene of her excited family getting ready for a vacation to Washington D.C. She makes it seem it's just the average family trip to America's capital city. However, she

In “The Fourth of July” written by Audre Lorde, an author and poet who took it upon herself to confront and address issues of racism, she describes the time she took a trip during the summer to Washington, D.C., where she obtained her own memory and meaning of independence. In her essay she shares with readers an account of experiencing racism on a day of the celebration of freedom. Lorde conveys her anger regarding her parents avoidance of racism and more specifically how she felt about the people and society surrounding her by her usage of specific tone, the repetition of words, and irony.

Lorde conveys the importance of her trip to D.C. both in her excitement beforehand, and its impact on her afterward. She first recreates the atmosphere of excitement by recounting the foods packed for the trip in extreme detail; her hyperfocus on unimportant details shows her youthful excitement for the trip. She recalls other minute details from her trip; for example she states, “We...did not stop until somewhere after Philadelphia. I remember it was Philadelphia because I was disappointed not to have passed by the Liberty Bell” (255). While this quickly-mentioned detail seems inconsequential on the surface, it serves a more profound purpose as it shows that she misses an influential and historical symbol of American freedom and equality. This ties into a thematic problem described in the essay -- as a new kind of interaction with racism, her trip brings to light her naivety about racism; the fact that her family skipped the Liberty Bell shows that this naivety stemmed from her parents’ inability to educate and prepare her. She states that they did not “approve of sunglasses”; their lack of “approval” indicates their inability to discuss racism with their daughters; this means that they are unable to prepare Lorde for her experiences with racism, and that when she finally does encounter it, they do

Tommie Shelby is an American philosopher and a professor of African American studies at Harvard University. In his article “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto” Shelby discusses poor, black neighborhoods that have persisted in America for decades due to few public policy efforts to make things better. In his article Shelby brings up two approaches to this dilemma that he opposes. The first is the personal responsibility approach which appeals to American values of hard work and ultimately places blame on the poor rather than the government or society. The Technocratic approach on the other hand does the opposite. It blames the government for failing to fix the social conditions of the poor and refuses to blame the poor themselves even if they have done actions that have not necessarily improved their well-being. Shelby’s approach is a mix between the two. He says that we cannot blame the poor if the injustice of our society has changed the content of their obligations and thus making their behavior reasonable due to the unfair conditions they were subjected to. In other words they are a product of their environment. Shelby wants to get his point across that the existence of ghettos today is evidence that our society impaired by structural injustices and that the ghetto is not only the problem of those living in it, but all of ours.

In the poem ,“America”, Claude McKay uses figurative language and diction to create a dark tone, a powerful empowering tone, and an optimistic tone. The theme of double consciousness of African-Americans is supported in the poem and the poem itself also connects to the purpose of the Harlem Renaissance which was to fight back racial hate and stereotypes with black empowerment.

“What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.” (Coates). This powerful quote exemplifies the mistreatment of blacks in America as something that has been prevalent throughout our nation’s history and is still present in our contemporary world. Our national founding document promised that “All men are created equal”. As a nation we have never achieved the goal of equality largely because of the institution of slavery and its continuing repercussions on American society.

Through his crafty use of rhetoric, Douglass delivered a scathing attack on the hypocrisy of America in his self-referential speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.” The speech articulated his passionate pursuit for liberty and equal rights. Douglass’s speech passionately argued that in the eyes of the slave and even the “free” black

Douglass continues to talk about how they all came to celebrate the fourth of July, but to remember that the nation is still young and has room for positive change. Douglass then asks this question, "Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?” (p.407) By us Douglas is meaning blacks. This is supported by when he states that, “This Fourth of July is yours not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” (p.408) Slaves and former slaves like Douglass are only saddened on Independence Day because they still have no independence to cheer for. They were lied to and taken for granted after all the work they did to earn equal rights. To ask black people to celebrate the White man’s freedom is only teasing and disrespectful irony.

He has shown that the “blessings in which you, this day rejoice, are not enjoyed in common” (124). With the purpose of his speech firmly defined, he now has the liberty to expound upon the true evil of slavery that lurks in the shadow of hypocrisy. He employs the satirical technique of ridicule to expose the ugly nature of enslavement with equally ugly diction. Douglass’ disapproval ranges from “hideous” to “revolting” to “an outrage”, and culminates in the assertion that slavery is the “greatest sin and shame of America” (125). A far cry from the almost reverent tone of his opening statements, Douglass led his audience from the throes of a Fourth of July celebration to an intense degradation of the freedom they so

Written in the first half of the 20th century, “Let America Be America” is a poem that documents and responds to the oppressed state of the United States, in both the past and present. The poem is a plea for a return to the original principles of freedom that our country has seemingly forgotten. Additionally, the speaker sees America as the broken home to oppressed people who have lost sight of the ultimate goal of freedom and happiness. Although America is often perceived as the “land of the free,” Langston Hughes’s poem contradicts this ideology by not only painting a vivid picture of oppression in America but also by providing a desperate hope for the future.

It was the first time Lorde was confronted with racism and her family’s reaction to it. They had to take a train to go to New York City and when it was time to eat, they were not allowed to enter the dining area so they had to eat in their seats. Her mother told her that it is better to eat home cooked food anyway. Audre Lorde did not question her mother since she knew her mother was right. Though her parents made the incident look okay, it deeply bothered Lorde. There was another incident when they arrived to D.C from New York City; when Audre’s family decided to get some ice cream treats from a drugstore, they were told to order their food and eat it outside because they were blacks. Her parents ignore the comment and left. Lorde was outrages by their reaction. She knew what was going on but she was not allowed to acknowledge this racism. She saw that her family was just as upset but they chose to ignore it and walk away, hoping for the racism to go away. These incidents were carved inside Lorde while growing up. It was a hard journey for her until she found a way to deal with it.

In the fight for equality, people of color often feel isolated and separated from those whose privilege reinforces their oppression. However, there are and always have been white people who see the inequalities that are practiced in society and speak out against them in hopes of reaching equality for all. Langston Hughes used his voice in poetry to express his experience as a black man in the United States during the Civil Rights Movement, and his is a household name. There is no doubt that his words have power. The reader expects to feel his experience and gain empathy and understanding through his poetry. In his poem, “Let America Be America Again,” Hughes presents his experience of American life in a powerful contrast to the experience

“They killed my son in cold blood,” lamented Eloise Armstead. Her husband, Add Armstead, was traveling to work with a companion on Saturday evening in the early 1970s. Thomas Shea and Walter Scott, responding to a call about a cabby that was robbed earlier that day, used this opportunity to rid the world of the wicked and gain a victory for the righteous. Walking along New York Blvd. in South Jamaica, Queens, Shea and his partner pulled alongside the two. Armstead says, as he recalls the incident, “We were walking, not saying anything to each other, and this car pulls up, and this white fella opens the door with a gun.” To him and his companion it looked like they were going to be robbed, so they ran. As the gunshots