Black And White Essay

I am writing my critical reaction journal based on my readings in regards to a two writings titled, “Seeing More Than Black and White” by Elizabeth Martinez (1998) in “Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology,” [edited by] Margaret L Andersen; Patricia Hill Collins, 2013, (8th Edition ed., pp. 85-90) and “Color-Blind Privilege” by Charles A. Gallagher (2003) in “Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology,” [edited by] Margaret L Andersen; Patricia Hill Collins, 2013, (8th Edition ed., pp. 91-95).

     Imagine yourself wrongly convicted of a crime. You spent years in jail awaiting your release date. It finally comes, and when they let you out, they slap handcuffs around your wrists and tell you every single action you do. In a nutshell, that’s how the Black Codes worked. The southerners wanted control over the blacks after the Civil War, and states created their own Black Codes.

Prior to beginning my readings on white racial identity, I did not pay much attention to my white race. If someone had asked me to describe my appearance I would have said short blond hair, blue eyes, average stature, etc. One of the last things I would have noted was the color of my skin. Growing up in overwhelmingly white communities, I never thought to use the color of my skin to differentiate myself from others. Over the course of this dialogue I have learned that my white racial identity is one of the most defining aspects of my appearance in this society. There is a certain level of privilege that I am afforded based solely on the color of my skin. According to Peggy McIntosh, “White privilege is like an invisible weightless

Trees and plants represent life in the novel which ties into the overarching theme of the dehumanization that comes from slavery. Many of the characters in Beloved have been subjected to awful events causing them to feel as if they were worse than animals. Because of this, many characters look to the beauty of nature and trees in particular, to help them heal from their time in slavery. For example, Baby Suggs decided to preach in a place called The Clearing, which is surrounded by tall trees. "In the Clearing, Sethe found Baby's old preaching rock and remembered the smell of leaves simmering in the sun, thunderous feet and the shouts that ripped pods off the limbs of chestnuts. With Baby Suggs' heart in charge, the people let go." (Morrison 94) Another example of trees bringing healing to the characters in the novel is the arrival of Beloved. “A fully dressed woman walked out of the water. She barely gained the dry bank of the stream before she sat down and leaned against a mulberry tree.”(Morrison 60) This tree represents a chance at a new life for Beloved and also offers Sethe a chance to heal. Ever since killing her child, Sethe has been haunted over her decision and she is finally able to confront her past with the appearance of

As I waited in line at a grocery store I noticed that the wait was unbearably long. It’s the first of the month a man snickered to me, confused I asked him what do you mean? He replied with people receive their welfare checks today, I know you are not one of them. I told him you never know what someone is going through or what their financial situation is so you can’t pass judgement. After I said that he told me to look around and see what type of people I see. I continued to look when I notice a large amount of Hispanics in line, even though that’s what I saw I told the man I see people waiting in line. He continued to tell me how illegal aliens are ruining our economy, taking our jobs, and taking advantage of our

The Strange Career of Jim Crow by Van Woodward is based on the time period surrounding the Civil Rights Movement. This book is an accurate account of events that occurred during this time. It shows how the 1896 US Supreme Court Ruling affected blacks and the obstacles they faced to overcome. This book shows how the rights of African Americans have evolved over time. Van Woodward did an excellent job illustrating the events of history with The Strange Career of Jim Crow and created a factual account of history that is still used in classrooms today.

In Anderson and Collins’, chapter on “Why race, class, and gender still maters” encourage readers to think about the world in their framework of race, class, and gender. They argued that even though society has change and there is a wide range of diversity; race, class and gender still matters. Anderson and Collins stated, “Race, class, and gender matter because they remain the foundation for system of power and inequality that, despite our nation’s diversity, continue to be among the most significant social facts of peoples lives.” (Anderson and Collins, 2010) When I was a little girl, I never knew that people were classified in to groups such as race, class, gender. I knew there were people that had a different color of skin than

take the fruit from the tree and rest in it's shade. Every day he would make

Although I can articulate it better now, I knew when I was ten years old why Carrot Wilkins and I would not always be as close as we were then. He was white, and I was black. I lived on the outskirts of Winston-Salem, North Carolina in a predominately black neighborhood. Carrot lived about a fifteen minutes' walk away in a largely white rural town called Walkertown. We met in the third grade on a school bus that took us both to Thomas Cash Elementary School. Being country boys at heart, we shared a lot of interests. We fished together -- a lot -- hunted squirrels, and played Robin Hood in the woods that separated our neighborhoods. But like kittens and puppies, we were being raised with very different perspectives of the world. And we

The article that I have chosen to write is that of the authors Ajay B. Satpute, Erik C. Nook, Sandhya Narayanan, Jocelyn Shu, Jochen Weber, and Kevin N. Ochsner. The article is entitled “Emotions in ‘Black and White’ or Shades of Gray? How We Think About Emotion Shapes Our Perception and Neural Representation of Emotion.” This article speaks on how social life and interactions of social life forms categorized judging of different emotions one deals with in life and throughout the day. This article also takes a look into the internal mechanisms of emotions and how they also affect different expressions and reactions to different situations and stimuli. Proceeding further, researchers observe whether or not the emotion being expressed is either “calm”, or “fear” affects how the individual will categorize the particular, emotion. This will cause varying responses of different emotions being affected when coming across these emotions again further on in life. After these brief snippets of information, the article progresses onto the hypothesis of the article, which will be tested throughout the article as it proceeds. The hypothesis basically states, “The continuous black and white thinking of varying emotions cause the mental representations of these cues to be on par with the categorical term used for it” (Sapute et al.,2016). The authors of this article used multiple tests involving several participants to help view if

As one leaf withers and falls from the tree, a new one grows in its place and the tree is complete again. However, Didion’s tree is still incomplete as the new leaf, the ‘house’ she shares with her husband and daughter in Los Angeles, is loosely attached to her tree and hasn’t replaced the former leaf, her childhood home in Central Valley of California. This “troublesome distinction” between her old and new home disturbs Didion deeply

The many points that Twain made throughout his life surrounded the flaws found in the 19th century society. Early in Twain’s childhood, he witnessed the foul nature of slavery. When Twain was ten years old, he watched as a white man crushed a slave with a chunk of iron ore. The man’s reason for killing the slave was simply because the slave was working in an awkward manner. To Twain’s astonishment, the only sympathy from the incident was directed toward the slave’s owner who was never reimbursed (Ward and Duncan 12). Being the young boy that Twain was, he could not comprehend how such an occurrence could be acceptable in society. Shocking cases such as this compelled Twain to expose the crude sides of society.

Dorothy Parker’s “Arrangement in Black and White” is set during a dinner party for the host’s friend, Walter Williams, an African American musician. Though the party is celebrated in his name, most of the conversation takes place between the host and the main character, the woman with pink velvet poppies. From the conversation, the audience can deduce that though this woman admires Walter Williams’s musical talent, she is unable to let go of the racist sentiment against his African American heritage. The author adds a flavor of sophisticated cynicism as she makes this point clear by having the main characters ironically make frequent references concerning how “untroubled” she is about the color of his skin. This argument is further

The hot summer sun shone through the window of the car and it pierced Michael's eyes. Sweat dripped down his dark forehead and he brushed it away. He looked across at Mrs White. She had a beautiful sky blue hat with yellow flowers that shone in the sun. Her long cream dress moved in the breeze blowing through the car window.

Should we go green or black? It is high times that we have to decide upon to which color we cling on to –green or black. Before that, we have to decide on about ourselves and our future generations. Are we expecting to see our sons and daughters to prosper or perish? I hope no parents will like to see their children perish, but to see them having more comfortable life than they had. So, we have to be green, not only for us, but also for our future generations and thus to save our mother planet. In this era of technology green energy forms one of the corner stone which helps us to rescue our planet from being destroyed.