Discrimination In Tkam

This shows they are treated like animals and not as equals. TJ is considered disposable by the white men as they do not care what happens to him. Also the fact that there was no legal intervention displays how racist the community really was towards black people. In my opinion, I think Mildred Taylor included this in the novel to show that no one stood up to it even though it was unjust and unfair.

There are many more examples of un-equality as you near the end of the book. The three main characters spend the whole book trying to get to a “Refugee Camp” for survivors and those who are scared and need the safety it promises. Once there it becomes apparent that it is no safer or nicer in the Camp as it is anywhere else. In my opinion, reading this back from cover to cover will definitely change you, the main idea and several other smaller themes of this story are… surprising. You will never know the unfairity of living like that until you have either been put through it (something I would not want to do) or read about it, it shows how horrible the world can be if you are different and how terrible it can be, even to those whose innocence is greater than most others.

As it is pointing towards a racist view, that may not be the case as we must always double check and look into these points. I, in this essay will try to create an open view on both sides of the argument. Although I will depict both sides, I do have a perforation to one argument, which is the fact that it is a statement which was created from people over thinking the book. I am not saying it is a wrong statement, just that I do not agree with it.

Racism is a big part of this book. It shows the absurdity of what people thought back then, which is an important lesson. It is important for us to learn what people’s views used to be, and how important it is not to go back to that mindset.

In my opinion I found it crucial to break away from this way of thinking, by trying to understand race as and social meanings that were constantly being distorted and misrepresented. After completing this reading, I really wanted to understand why some felt that they should be free and that others should be enslaved. Why some people should have rights to land, voting privileges, and employment while others did not. Race and the understanding of racial differences were fundamental influences in the worldview.

Reading the content in this book made me get a picture of what it was like to be a colored person in this time. My eyes were opened to the meaning of the word “nigga”. Nigga is such a derogatory term, yet now-a-days it is used by people so much. Kids in this generation use it as a term of endearment when they see their friends, or they say it when they are shocked by something. Frankly, I don’t believe they know how serious it really is. The fact that white people could look at a person and see less than a human being when they did nothing wrong distresses me. They (white people) treated them as if they were property and below them. Even though we don’t have racism to this extent

Imagine a person being labeled as inferior because of a complexion they cannot control. African Americans have been treated unfairly solely because of the color of their skin throughout history. The idea behind this is what is defined as colorism, which is the prejudice or discrimination against individual with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic group (Oxford Dictionary). Colorism has been prominent throughout history, allowing discrimination and hatred towards people with darker skin, more specifically African Americans. In a world filled with racism, prejudice, discrimination, colorism is another factor that has similar effects when it comes to the treatment of African Americans. Martin Luther Kings Jr.’s, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man both connect to the role that colorism plays in the lives of African Americans. Martin Luther King’s letter explicitly explains how society influences colorism and how it creates injustices. Ellison’s novel gives further insight on the more psychological and personal affect colorism has on Black people by using lots of symbolism in the novel throughout the novel to portray it. Constantly being put down because of how dark someone is will eventually lower an individual’s confidence, knowing that they will miss out on opportunities simply because they have darker skin. Colorism negatively affects how people treat African Americans and also how African Americans feel about themselves.

A story that still sticks with me from the book was when a young girl pinched the man and he responded with, “Ouch, have you lost your mind?” The girl responded, “That did not hurt you, you can’t feel” (Thurman). She looked at him as if he was not human, like he was not capable of feeling pain. I wonder if it was from so many stories like this that African Americans didn’t think whites were capable of love. This girl’s worldview effected on how she treated a person. Multiple factors play into worldview and how one defines a human.

There are many racial components in this novel that are easy to point out. These take place in the American South and also in Africa. It starts with the way that all the black men and women are treated at the start of the book. The main character’s real father was a successful store owner who was black. This man was hanged for a reason that is known only as him being a successful black man. All the characters that we are introduced to in this book by Celie are exploited by the fact that they are black. Sophia is beat up and jailed for her refusal to want to work for a white women. Of course she stood up for herself and the white element tried to tell her where her place was. There is also an intra racial theme that starts at the beginning

My final takeaway from the book is the idea that race is simply an artificial construct devised to divide the people of the world. The color of a person’s skin does not define their capabilities or who they are as a person. In fact, no true differences exist between white people and people of color. Race simply gives the dominant group in society a sense of superiority and power over the group they seek to

Throughout the novel it is apparent that everyday instances of racism occur, causing people of color to feel outcasted. There are two very obvious occasions where this happened. In the first instance two African American woman are in a workspace of primarily all white co-workers. When a woman they worked with got these two names mixed up, it was stated that she had a “fifty-fifty chance of getting it right” insinuating that these two women are the only black ones working here. Later, the woman who had the mix-up with the names wrote an apology note; however, in the note she stated it was “our mistake” and seemingly put part of the blame on the to women. This is a primary example of how African Americans can be thrown against a white background making them seem different than everyone else.

The authors are somewhat unbiased yet they are quite harsh when it comes to the idea of equality. They believe that the whites and the blacks were quite equal when it came to living in society and interacting with everyone. There was not as much racism as people would like to think. They believe that the blacks were able to have just as good of a living as any white man in early America. They were not looked down on because of the color of their skin but were seen as equals and treated like it.

From past to present there’s not much of a difference. The idea is that all men are equal, but in reality there are boundaries and hardships that prevent other races from being included in equality, next to the white man. The absence of diversity in the United States, interferes with the ability for black men to transition into manhood. Thus, continues this interminable cycle of a black man fighting for his identity, power, respect, and trying to understand who he is as an individual. Black men are portrayed to be lazy,

In his favor however, it is helpful to note that “…whiteness is not really a color at all, but a set of power relations.” Here, Mills acknowledges that race is more than a war on skin tones; it is the unequal distribution of power amongst two groups divided by one physical characteristic. The labels black and white are simplistic. However, by using this simple definition of Whiteness, black men would fall into that category with respect to black women. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2013), black men earned nearly 20% more than women (relative to one another). This unequal distribution of wealth in society is symbolic of the unequal distribution of power in the same society. This unequal distribution in the text is not presented as a major concern. Mills refers to white women as philosophers (2) while black women are written here as wanting to adhere to beauty standards (52). Women also had to overcome “hegemonic classes”, not just blacks. This parallel of having to overcome an obstacle set by oppressors should be presented, especially since it leads to an unequal distribution of power and that is what the text addresses.

The book’s character’s main problem is finding individuality in racism. For the duration of the book, the narrator is constantly fighting racism and stereotypes. Ellison put many examples in the book to help show the character’s fight to be seen equal. Ellison shows that, through the character himself, that you can not tell people who to be. However, Ellison throws curves at the narrator that challenges