Black No More By George Schuyler

For the greater part of the nineteenth century, black people were slaves for white men. The Fourteenth Amendment was placed into effect to protect the rights of the black community after emancipation. It stated that, “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” would be supported under the doctrine. However, this article failed to uphold the rights of the newly freed slaves. The blacks, ridiculed and scorned by the public, were greatly suppressed by the white backlash. The states put into effect laws that would suppress the blacks even further, even though they were protected under the Amendment. The states made stipulations on rights the African Americans were granted, like the right to own land, vote, and even hold certain jobs. Voting was a major controversy for the newly freed slaves, they wanted the chance to be heard through politics. Nevertheless, they were still denied the simple right to vote in many of the states if they could not meet the prerequisites for reading or could not pay a voting tax. They made contracts for them to work for white men, just as if they were slaves and nothing changed. Black people were still waiting for their salvation under this new piece of legislation, but were unable to grasp it through the government. African Americans stood for their newly given rights under the Constitution and were denied by the people who put

The quote "Character is what you are in the dark" - Dwight Lyman Moody has a few meanings. Mostly it means that you're different when you're alone. When you're around people they are influences of some sort. If you get into a situation when you're with people you might react differently than if you were alone, resulting in a different outcome. A lot of the time people aren't their true self around friends, or family, or whoever it may be for many reasons. A big reason is they don't want to be judged. Maybe they wanna look "cool" or get popular for something. Maybe they think they'll be looked at differently for being who they truly are. So basically fear of what others think keeps us from being who we really are. Fear can make us act different,

White, male, New York Times writer, Michael Ian Black in his article, “The Boys Are Not All Right” (Feb. 21 2018), claims that toxic masculinity and the lack of meninism to change old stereotypes of masculinity causes men to commit mass shootings. He supports his claim by first states that women are “redefining” what it means to be a woman while men have not, then by saying that there has not been a movement to help men “toward a full expression of their gender”, next by stating that men are “trapped “in “outdated… masculinity”, and finally by stating that men only have two options to “preserve” his masculinity: “withdrawal or rage”. Black’s purpose is to illuminate another causation of mass shooting that is being ignored in order to show a

Has America ever been great, of the 239 years this influential country has been a country has it ever been truly great and free? As Langston Hughes exclaimed, "America never was America to me”. Learned Hand and Langston Hughes had differences on their thought on the topic of Liberty and whether America is great. Hughes and Hands opinion of Liberty has changed the way the common man reacts to racism and the way we perceive America's greatness.

Darkness at Noon, written by British novelist Arthur Koestler in 1940, is a criticism of Stalinism and the methods used by the Communist Party in the USSR. The novel was set in 1938 during the Stalinist Great Purge and Moscow show trials. Even though the story depicts actual occurrences, it does not specifically name either Russia or the USSR, but the characters do have Russian names while other generic terms are used to depict individuals and associations. For instance, the Soviet government is alluded to as "the Party" and Nazi Germany is alluded to as "the Dictatorship." Joseph Stalin, a terrorizing dictator, is represented by "Number One." The novel is a strong and moving picture of a Communist revolutionary caught up in the terror

Many Americans live with the idea that the days of racism are far behind us; however, the film The House I Live In, directed by Eugene Jarecki 's, and the book The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, state otherwise. Although the United States holds five percent of the world’s population, it is responsible for a fourth of the world’s prisoners. More than the majority of these prisoners are of color. (Jarecki 2012; Alexander 2012, 189) Therefore, the statistics contradict the U.S.’s long-held ideal of freedom and equality. This large prisoner population has been a consequence of the War on Drugs—a war that has not only locked up millions of African Americans but also given them a permanent second-class status. Both the video and the book

The poem “No Country for Black Boys” by Joy Priest represents the sorrowful incident which happened on February 26, 2012 for Trayvon Martin in Florida. Trayvon Martin was an innocent African-American young boy who bought iced tea and some skittles. On the way back to his father’s home, he got shot by the neighborhood watch and treated as a victim because of his skin color. Guilt was not defined by what Martin did but by what he said, also it determined something deep-rooted in the young age. No weapon was needed to identify him as a victim. He is a young black boy, so he is already guilty enough to be killed. Black people have the same rights as the other people, however in reality, America’s society discriminates against them compared to other nationalities.

Soul by Soul by Walter Johnson centers on the internal slave business in New Orleans as well as the slave market as a place of portrayal and oblique connotations built around the commoditization of the physique of slaves .A significant interest in Soul by Soul relates to the slave pen, where slave bodies as commodities determined the identities of black and white persons. Slave transactions were typically about show and filled with meaning-making, which was itself characterized by cost and worth. The paternalism ideology employed the black persons’ physique and slave transactions to imply that white persons were assisting powerless black people in the slave markets. In essence, the ideology suggests that, contrary to common perceptions, white persons were not separating slave families .The slave market history discussed in Soul by Soul relates to that of the antebellum in the South where slave trade was basically about purchases and sales. Those who owned slaves were consumers in the marketplace. Consumer way of life had structured individual identities. Slave bodies were regarded as items to be rated and assessed and were usually the subject of discussions. Every slave was given a made-up and decorated past. The market culture of slavery in that era was based on fantasy just like the ideology of paternalism. Succinctly, the slave market stimulated the self-definition of white persons from the South.

As you can see from the amendments, African Americans and other minorities were treated differently from whites. As whites were proclaimed to be superior than them. This was very true in the South. The Jim Crow laws were laws that prohibited blacks from doing things like not using the same public facilities, busses, and even attending the same schools. Many people believed that these laws were unjust. But it wasn’t until the 1890’s until they were changed in court. Homer Plessy wouldn’t give up his seat on a train to a white man in New

The two poems “White Lies” by Natasha Trethewey and “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes were written to express racial dilemmas that the authors went through. Thematically, they represent the American Dream. In “White Lies” we see that Trethewey went through some racial identity issues. She felt as if she had to lie to blend in with the rest of the whites, which was easy for her because she was mixed. To understand the full meaning of this poem, one assumes that Trethewey was the product of an interracial marriage. This type of thing was frowned upon during the time she grew up. In the poem “Theme for English B” Hughes seems to accept the fact that he is different. Hughes does not seem to have a problem with expressing his difference. He looks at as his individuality and strives to let everyone know that he is proud of who he is. The two poems have many similarities and differences.

Often times, people say "you can 't understand another person 's experience until you walk a mile in their shoes.” When I first opened the nonfiction book Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin, I had high hopes, however it did not live up to my expectations. Griffin went through doing blackface for while, and claimed that he knew what it was like to be black, however he still does not understand what it is truly like to be a minority. Minorities are not allowed to switch their color on or off. There aren’t days where we are allowed to decide if we want to be White or Black, Mexican, or Asian. Although yes, he did experience racial discrimination and was involved in incidents that were clearly unjust, he still does not know what it 's like to be truly black. It is wrong for Griffin to be viewed as a hero for doing this, when all he did was use blackface and put paint on his face for 6 weeks. Although yes, he did bring to light what was hapening to black people at the time, giving someone a pat on the back for being a decent human being is wrong. Why isn’t a black scholar, or a black person who showed the injusticies of the time being celebrated and widely read about like Griffin? Why is that white people only listen to other white people?

“Black Skin, White Masks,” by Frantz Fanon is a book that explains the psychology of racism. Fanon studied medicine in France. He specialized in psychiatry. The novel looks at the minds of blacks under white rule, and the effects race has on French society. Throughout the book Fanon discusses his experience with racism in 1950’s France. He discusses many concepts like language barriers, race, dependency complexes, and other controversies between blacks and whites. The book talks of events that were dated in the 1950’s, but these concepts can help us to understand racism in America today.

“In a Dark time” by Theodore Roethke gives a retrospect into the inner turmoil’s of finding oneself through a haze of doubts in till reaching a moment of clarity. Each section of the poem describes a different emotion, or inner thought that spirals from fear of death, to emotions of desire. The use of imagery between nature and uncertainties of the narrator give a glimpse into Roethke’s own mind during the time he wrote this poem. Without hundreds of pages Roethke created a poem that connects readers to their own self-doubts and struggles of finding ones way again.

Desmond Tutu once said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” In People of the Book, all of the character’s experience some sort of darkness or hard time, but they inundate themselves with hope, family, which shows them that there is light even in the darkest of times. Each of these families had a different view of society, from their experiences within society, which was either passed down to them from their parents or passed down to their own children; and each one took different stances on different partitions in society. Even today, parents are extremely influential over their children. Children grow up believing what their parents do because it is what they are used to.

Ronald Reagan once said, “We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.” I read the book, Dancing in the dark by Morris Dickstein. This book was about the great depression, and the impacts it had on American life. The traditional thought of poverty, people dying of hunger and people lying in the roads, has been erased. America has abolished poverty by the traditional standards but the thought of poverty and what it is has changed. In America we consider poverty to be spending all your money on bills, so you have no money left for food to feed your family. We consider poverty to be just being poor. One-Third of our population makes less than $38,000. This is not enough to be able to be above the poverty line. Anything below this