Comparing the Loss of Innocence in Cullen's Incident and Naylor’s Mommy, What Does Nigger Mean?

In the essay “Nigger: the meaning of a word” Gloria Naylor discusses the essence of a word and how it can mean different things to different people in a myriad of situations. Depending on race, gender, societal status and age Naylor outlines how a word like ‘nigger’ can have different meanings within one’s own environment. Naylor discusses how a word can go from having a positive to a negative connotation merely due to how it is spoken and by whom. Naylor shares a personal experience with her audience as she describes the first time she really “heard” the word ‘nigger’. A young white boy in her third grade class spit it in her

Negroes do not like it in any book or play whatsoever, be the book or play ever so sympathetic in its treatment of the basic problems of the race. Even [if] the book or play is written by a Negro, they still [would] not like it” (Henry). In addition, John Wallace believes that the word “nigger” is so offensive that he rewrote the novel without the word “nigger.”

Black. Nigger. Slave. All were common words in conversation before the end of slavery, and even until the Civil Rights movement 100 years later. Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” provides clear examples of racism present in the mid- to late-1800’s, but with a central focus on showing how attitudes can change.

This was not the only event that had occurred that day. Soon another tragedy struck the colored community. Virgil was on his way to the Birmingham Church when a he got a call calling him there as the novel states, “You need to get to Birmingham right away”(Lewis et al. 11; 5). On his way there Virgil was shot and killed by a young white man who was participating in a Klan Rally nearby. Virgil was 13 years old when he was murdered by two white teenagers that were active members of the Eagle Scouts and participants in a Klan rally. This shows that even white teenagers were taught to have a strong hate towards people of color. Not only is it a strong hate it has gotten to the paint that they are murdering people of color on sight without regard of who they are and what they are doing. Not long after this tragedy with Virgil, another Black teenager by the name of Johnny Robinson was shot and killed by a police officer

Race has been a sensitive topic in the United States of America since the founding of the country. The historical disparity between Blacks and their White counterparts can been seen through not only the South, but also throughout America. Flannery O’Connor, often considered one of the great Southern authors of her time, implemented an artistic writing style which gave her writing a unique Southern gothic appeal that previous novels and stories did not possess. Born in Savannah, Georgia, Flannery O’Connor grew up in a turbulent time regrading race relations. Living most of her life in predominantly white Georgia, it was not until later on in her life that race truly began to impact O’Connor’s life. In 1954, the Supreme Court Case Brown v. Board of Education altered the world that O’Connor lived in. Following the ruling, segregation was banned throughout the United States of America and integration programs were initiated. Suddenly, even extremely segregated states like Georgia were forced to integrate Blacks. This life-altering decision occurred towards the end of O’Connor’s short life, but is still evidenced throughout her writings. And while O’Connor never directly states her stances on race, segregation, and integration; her views can be inferred throughout her writing. Short stories such as “Everything That Rises Must Converge” and “An Artificial Nigger” give clues as to race relations of the time period and O’Connor’s perspectives on the matter.

This book is about a Black man's reading of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for the first time while in graduate school. The story captures his poignant occurrence with Twain's use of the racial label "nigger" more than 211 times throughout the book. The gut reaction to hearing the word verbalized by whites with Twain's consent, despite the consequences of sarcasm or spoof, is a essential premise of this personal history/memoir. The location is a colloquium in Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy, where the Civil War is still being fought on many levels. The story is the problem of race as a topic of public debate and the responsibility the word nigger plays in postmodern civilization particularly among Blacks

Following the first World War, mass migrations of African American from the south to the north, along with the economic boom during the 1920’s led to the Harlem Renaissance. This was a movement of black artists centered in Harlem focusing on African American culture. Though the main focus of most of the artists was to celebrate their culture, an underlying message was to show the injustice African Americans were still enduring. In Countee Cullen’s poem “Incident” he speaks of a time when he was a young child visiting Baltimore and was called a “nigger” by another child:

Naylor’s is a story of pride not shame The word that the young boy had tried to use to degrade her was a not a foreign one to her, she realizes “this could not have been the first the word had been used in [her] presence”(Naylor, 3). The word was commonplace in her home of Harlem, in use no longer as an insult but as something that had been incorporated into the African American lexicon, something to hold pride in. In Harlem the word “nigger”(Naylor, 5) had been given an empowering purpose. Naylor tells us it became a term applied to a man “whose strength, intelligence, and drive” (Naylor, 6) had distinguished him , for women it had become “a term of endearment for a [their] husbands and boyfriends” (Naylor, 9 ). It had become “the essence of manhood” (Naylor, 9 ), and now had more in common within the African American community with the word “girl” (Naylor, 11) than a racially charged slur. Through striking diction and a didactic tone, Naylor tells us a story of pride that contrast greatly with Gates’ humiliation, and sends a message, that although words can be destructive, it is the tongues that speak them that set their meanings, and the power and meaning of a word is smithed by those who use

Bring a light on how people had extremely little sympathy for African Americans, exposing racism and injustices, for instance lynching, discrimination, torment, abuse, or looking down upon as dirty animals are just a few. Discriminatory groups murdered numerous guiltless blacks with no repercussions for the horrific act, making many to consider this type of behavior appropriate. In turn teaching children to be racist and also significant amount being raised this way. An example, McKay shows are these two lines from his poem “The Lynching”, “And little lads, lynchers that were to be, Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.” (13-14) Children naturally grow up to be racist when they live in a racial civilization. Making it the duty of an adult to show right from wrong. Adults must teach children that people engaged in cruel acts are hateful and immoral, guiding them down a different path. Unfortunately, the time period of McKay’s writing took place when certain American’s thought that African American people had no value in life, making it so such manners of behavior in their specific cultural were natural and suitable.

Countee Cullen’s “Incident” shows the racial tension in America between whites and blacks. The speaker of the poem experiences racism for the first time. The Jim Crow Laws also played a part in the racial tension between whites and blacks, the only thing that the speaker of the poem remembers from his time in Baltimore is being called a “nigger”, and the persona of the boy that called him a “nigger” was from others who taught him to hate blacks.

The comparison of his presence in her room to an “animal smell” indicates that Son is somewhere he shouldn’t be, as though he is an animal that has accidentally found its way into a human’s home. His attempt to inject Jadine with his views of traditional black life through use of “the dream he had placed there” fails to break her fascination with European culture. Jadine’s view of herself epitomizes the disparity between their views. Jadine offers up the word “nigger” for a white woman to use when the woman recounts the moment she sees Son hiding in her closet, but the woman instead calls him a “gorilla.” Jadine feels sympathy for Son when the woman calls him this, but shields herself from guilt by rationalizing that “She had volunteered nigger—but not gorilla” (Morrison 129). In suggesting “nigger” to describe Son, Jadine disavows her blackness and shows how she doesn’t consider herself black. The fact that Son has dark skin is enough for her to not consider herself the same as him. Her shock at the use of “gorilla” proves she is not completely aloof from the fact she is black, but she cannot connect with Son because she considers herself more white than black. His failure to realize this dark truth derails his goals, and his ability to leave her becomes weaker the longer he stays with her.

The language used in the book could be criticized for its crudeness, but that’s not what keeps the reader engaged. It’s the excitement and unpredictability of the plot, and the heart felt story telling that keeps us reading. The dialect used in the book was accurate in portraying the people and culture of that time period, however the frank language and inclusion of the word “nigger” has led some to conclude that the book

Early in the text we are told that black and white people cannot be together: “We can’t have Jesse in our house because he’s a nigger”. The racial segregation does especially come to expression when Joy says: “I have never touched a black man before Jesse, and it surprise me the first he picks me up, that his hands feel just like Daddy’s” - she here begins establishing her own impression of the worker Jesse, despite the fact that her Grandmother undoubtedly has many racist opinions; she has brought Joy and her little sister up on stories about what nigger men do to little girls, if they get the chance. Granny had told a story “of turpentine niggers raping and strangling a poor little white girl who took a wrong path on her way home from school and stuffing her dead body in a hollow log” . But Joy does not care about the colour of another’s skin, but about the actions and personality of this person. Actually, it ends up that the narrator names her baby after

She starts off with her first encounter with the word “nigger” when she was in third grades and told the boy behind that he once again scored lower than her. Then suddenly he just spit out the word, Naylor had never the word. Therefor when she got home, she ask the question every black parents dread to answer. But then she realized words themselves are innocuous; it is the consensus that gives them true power.(naylor ) So she gives an example of how the word “nigger” was an endearment, adjective, and a racial slur. Naylor then proceeds to explain how the black community took the once malicious word and made it powerless to them. It would no longer provide a method of insolent for whites. This quote show how changing the meaning of the once ugly word had changed the control the word had over them “Meeting the word head-on, they proved it had absolutely nothing to do with the way

To begin, the children in these two passages have astrayed the power that once burned so bright within, loss of identity, all sourced by language Pursued by the greed of others these children were simultaneously pushed into something, yes they agreed to but to no avail, nor knowledge of true intentions. We explore how others have seized the trait of power from Wright, a young boy labled as a “bad boy” is drawn in to sell the community paper but what kind of paper does he really distribute? The Newspaper Wright holds “A bold sign reading: The only dream of a nigger is to be president and sleep with white woman.” ( Wright p-131) Here we witness Wright realizing that he had been tricked into selling this newspaper which had very explicit nasty racism towards African Americans when he himself is a African