How to Live with Each Other

My grandfather’s eyes are this color. I’ve lived here mostly my whole life. I’m black. I’m black, I know” (148). Due to the complication of her racial identity she decides that it is easier to ignore it and suit what other people perceive her as. Rachel feels the need to find ways to hide the white aspects of her because other people believe she is simply black. She even hides her “whitest” physical characteristic when she says, “My grandfather’s eyes are this color.” She feels the need to hide the fact that she has a white mother because when people look at her all they can see is the color of her skin which provides her with a feeling of belonging to a societal category.

Rachel now sees people in two different ways, she says, "People who look like me and people who don't look like me” (Durrow 9). She also said, “I'm not the color of my skin. I'm a story. One with a past and a future unwritten.”

In “Letter to My Son,” Ta- Nehisi Coates portrays it is easy to destroy the black body through abuse and violence of one’s community to outline and create a feeling that America’s racist society created a government that oppresses and murders the black community. As an attempt to support his claim, Coates states,“—it is not so easy to get a human being to commit their body against its own elemental interest.” By explaining the difficulty someone would have to control another person, Coates is trying to

In The Color of Water, Rachel repeatedly felt the wrath of racism and prejudice. Rachel went to school in her hometown of Suffolk, Virginia. The elementary, middle, and high schools she attended was an all-white, Protestant school. At the time she was a devoted Jew, her father, Tateh, was a Rabbi. Judaism was the main focal point of the family’s everyday life. In this school, her fellow students always said, “ Hey, Ruth when did you start being a dirty Jew?” (pg. 80). Rachel’s original name was Ruth, but she changed it because it was too Jewish. She wanted a more American name. Rachel only had one friend in her school that would accept her for who she was, Francis. Another example of racism in Suffolk was the

Hatred for white society was a strong theme among the African American community during the 1950s. These emotions were conveyed through different platforms of the time, ranging from art and music, to articles and books. But James Baldwin, a popular African American writer during this time period, does not obsess over this subject that was so passionately conveyed by so many people like him. Instead of preaching about his hatred for white America, Baldwin utilizes his story of his childhood as well as his early adulthood to illustrate the destructive nature of the African Americans society’s hatred for white society in the very well known essay, “Notes of a Native Son.”

In the 1986 film adaption of Richard Wright’s novel Native Son, the director presents the following question: can those who suffer from Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome go insane after years of oppression? That is the question that must be answered in the case of 19-year-old Bigger Thompson, who is accused of murdering Ms. Mary Dalton. The purpose of this essay is to examine Richard Wright’s film adaptation of Native Son, and Bigger’s innocence regarding ethos, pathos, and logos.

Words like those above would engrave Malcolm X into the minds of Americans from all racial backgrounds and socio-economic classes. Malcolm X was certainly not one to mince words. America would come to remember him as “The Hate That Hate Produced”, the title of a 1959 CBS documentary narrated by Mike Wallace which focused on Malcolm’s involvement in what was perceived as the “rise of black racism” (Lord, Thornton, and Bodipo-Memba, 1992).

Richard Wright’s “Native Son” Bigger shows us the short end of the stick of how it feels to be seen as a second-class citizen for being black. His speech talking about how he feels like a prisoner in this world just because he is black. (Wright P.17) This prison pain of Bigger in Wright’s novel shows how the negative effects of fear and discrimination affect minorities in our society. This discrimination just for existence is mirrored in the “Diary of Anne Frank” and “The Color of Water”. In the Diary of Anne Frank, spends two years of her life in an attic with her family and other Jewish people, hiding from the government trying to capture them just because they are Jewish. In “The Color of Water” Ruth McBride describes how the KKK was a huge part of her hometown. That whenever a car full of white hoods drove past, any African Americans in the store would run home, Ruth did the same thing, knowing her family was also in danger. (McBride P.58)

Her arrogant tone and malapropistic diction show that she has no intention of learning the language of Kilanga or communicating with the people there. For example, when she is making fun of Mr. Axelroot she says the he may have forgotten “we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony” (Kingsolver 405). This along with many other times she uses incorrect syntax and malapropism shows that Rachel is trying to act older than she is and causing miscommunication between her and others. She also is arrogant and comes to the Congo with the belief that whites honestly are superior to other races.

Throughout the book Rachel maintained diction that was true to her birthplace. In the beginning of the book, when the Price family just arrived to the

James Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son” interweaves his own racial experiences with the ongoing chaos and claustrophobia in Harlem. Following the death of his father, a man “eaten up by paranoia,” the author embarks on an introspective journey, realizing how his identity is shaped by both the traits he inherits from his father and the experiences he has with racist attitudes and violence. Baldwin’s prose is as complex as the concepts he deals with, as he comes to the conclusion that hatred is a choice, not a fact of life.

Hatred for white society was a common sentiment among the black community during the 1950s. These feelings were expressed through different mediums, ranging from music and art, to the written word. But James Baldwin, a popular black writer during this time period, does not harp on this subject. Instead of preaching about his hatred for white America, Baldwin utilizes his narrative and analysis techniques to illustrate the destructive nature of the black society’s hatred for white society in “Notes of a Native Son”.

In Native Son, Richard Wright uses characterization and symbolism to underscore his theme of how American institutionalized oppression of blacks creates human tragedy for those oppressed. Yet, the novel is not an attempt to merit our sympathy or empathy for the condition of repressed blacks, it is to illustrate how the nihilistic attitude of blacks like Bigger Thomas is the direct result of white repression of differences in non-white cultures. In other words, Bigger's only option is death because the society which has created him has given him nothing else to care about, nothing he can call his own, no chance to explore any of his potential. Thus, he turns to violence as an expression of identity which is what his reaction to

Most parents dream of a peaceful home environment in which their children get along with one another. But, how do you accomplish that? You can help bring peace and cooperation to your home by implementing some key strategies. Start a dialogue that promotes cooperation by talking about household rules and family expectations. Then, help your children learn productive ways of managing conflict. Finally, do your part as a parent to discourage sibling rivalry.

Whiteness, blackness, and racism is a theme in the novel, Native Son, that is predominantly interesting. The novel, the Native Son, written by Wright, entails the story of Thomas Bigger as the protagonist who is living in the slum of Chicago in 1930s (Wright, p.19). Bigger is decorated as a twenty years old an American citizen, who lives in Chicago under stifling poverty. The environment where Bigger lived was fashioned with intractable racial prejudice. Wright indicated that Bigger and other family members lived in the one-room apartment in Chicago (Wright, p.19). For instance, wright explains that “The woman screamed, and the tiny, one-room apartment galvanized into violent action” (Wright, p.19).