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Dutchman Play Analysis

Decent Essays

Dutchman Dutchman written by Amiri Baraka is a perfect example of how race can play in important part in how you are perceived. In this story a powerful middle-aged white women tries to seduce a younger aged African-American man that presented himself as intelligent and well dressed. This play was written during a time when our world was very closed minded about race specifically with those who were of color. In the early 1960’s white was the major race and white americans were who were superior to those of color. Later on in the 1960’s is when African-Americans started to fight for full and equal rights. They wanted to not be used or treated as if they were not humans. Majority of African-American families were lower class and poor because that is how society viewed and valued them. If you were not white you did not mean anything or have anything of value. Usually they were slaves for white families and were told to do as they instructed. This provoked for the Civil Rights Movement. That eventually lead to African-Americans having the same privileges as Whites. Now many years later we would think racism and discrimination does not happen but it does daily. Tying all this together was a play called Dutchman. Which is a strong play that expresses race and how racism is the dominate trait in the story and also stereotyping african americans. The narrator through out the play in Dutchman deals with the issue of race by letting a white women talk and disrespect a black man.

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