In The Wake Of Consciousness Analysis

It has been over one-hundred and fifty years since African-Americans have been liberated from the hardships of slavery. Even though the United States of America and its citizens have undergone many modern changes since slavery and its abolition, the effects of enslavement and oppression are still evident today. Many works such as Rituals of Blood: The Consequences of Slavery in Two American Cities, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, and Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy all explain a common conclusion; the chattel enslavement of African-Americans left a profound effect on former slaves and their descenders. In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois wrote in The Souls of Black Folk, “the problem of the Twentieth century is the color line”. The problem

There have been many to write about the struggles, misfortunates and traditions of those who were enslaved. There have also been scholars who argued that upon their arrival, the enslaves came to North America as blank slates and were complete submissive to authority. In this ideology, many scholars believed enslaves traditions, customs, folk stories all derived or mimic European culture. This ideology also implies that those who were enslaved lacked any social or structural guidance, religious beliefs, values and heritage. While there are many examples of slave traditions and customs that have similar attributes of the Euro-American culture, there are many elements of their West African culture that remained authentic and in practice when slaves were shipped to North America. These same traditions gave them strength and courage to resistant their oppressor and challenge their current social environment. In Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, he provides example of blacks exemplifying agency over their current situation as well as how these customs and traditions where they derived from. This paper will discuss how those enslaved exercised agency through music, spirituality, and folk tales to excerpt their independence and challenge the agreement of the tabula rasa slave and docility within slavery.

One of the most prominent components of the text is that the black body is constantly under threat. Coats argues that “the question of how one should live within a black body… is the question of life.” He shows how racism works through the control and exploitation of black bodies and the delicateness of black bodies that results within a racist society. Coats writes that racism is a natural experience. Throughout American history, black men and women were chained, beaten, labored, and killed. Now, they experience police brutality and nonsensical shootings. Arrested for trying to get into their own homes and shot because they look suspicious or their hood is up. Shot because they inhabit a black body. It is the subtle ways in which a black body must conduct itself in public. Violence is consistent in an America that is still divided by race.

There is so much damage happening in Douglass’ story that it is challenging to grasp how such an inhuman thing can happen not so long ago from today. Douglass illustrates how dehumanization of black slaves by the whites played a significant role in the timeline of slavery and the brutal occurrences that seemed to expand with it. Whether it was before, during, or after slavery, the slaves were dehumanized in many ways. Without dehumanizing the black slaves' society we would be unable to preserve the experience of violence in order to keep slaves thrive intact situated. But on top of that slaves were punished in extreme manners physically and mentally which this would have caused them to come to a sort of break and become a brute. Not only keeping

The history of black identity is commonly associated with slavery, violence, and segregation. While Coates brought these associations to the table aware of how unjust they were, he found that the more alarming correspondence lied within the reasons why. It is undeniable that history has given “blackness” various underlying connotations—impoverished, uneducated, and as being the “below of [the] country” (Coates 106). The influence began as early as the onset of the Civil War, when “stolen” black bodies were an accepted form of currency and even America’s finest leaders were experts of the trade (Coates 101). America became no stranger to destroying the black body in the

Nella Larsen, a luminary of the Harlem Renaissance, explores the nature of racial identity and double-consciousness in her novella Passing. W.E.B Du Bois’s theory of double-consciousness is characterized in The Souls of Black Folk as a sense of “twoness,-- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body” (Du Bois 2). Irene and Clare, Larsen’s novella’s primary characters, both lack a “dark body” which allows them to oscillate, by choice, between playing the part of the white “American” and the “Negro”. The appeal of racial passing lies in how it provides disenfranchised minorities access to otherwise unattainable

bell hooks, renowned black feminist and cultural critic criticizes the lack of racial awareness in her essay, Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination (1992). ‘bell hooks’ is written in lower case to convey that the substance of her work reigns more important than the writer. From a marginalized perspective, hooks argues that sites of dominance, not otherness is problematic and critiques the lack of attention that white scholars pay to the representation of whiteness in the black imagination. Critical feminist scholars Peggy McIntosh and Ruth Frankenberg identify their own whiteness as a dominant discourse, but share a critical departure from hooks with the notion of whiteness as terror. hooks aim is not to reverse racism, but discuss her position to authentically inform readers about how she experiences racism. Furthermore, systems of oppression are manufactured by human thought and thus the site of the Other is always produced as a site of difference. Gender, race, sex, class, disability, and geography are situated differently in social structure, but dominant groups assume they share the same reality though they cannot experience it. In consequence, the Other cannot hold a singularized identity of their own and the binary structure succeeds in containing racialized bodies in place. What happens to those bodies when they cross boundaries of the binary? hooks recounts being routinely disciplined back into place when crossing the border; however, dominant white

“Black bodies are considered dispensable within the “free world” but as a major source of profit in the prison world” (Davis 2003). This quote is the primary reason I registered for UTSA African-American Studies. In 2016, I wrote an essay for my Freshman Composition Course title, “The New Jim Crow: People of Color New Reality in 21st Century America”. The Angela Davis quote was so powerful it inspired me to continue filling in the blanks that I learned over the years about American History at the courtesy of White America’s educational system, which left me feeling disenfranchised as a young boy. I always wanted to learn American History sequentially with the inclusion of African-American History. From B.C. to A.D., I wanted to learn everything about our American

This was the period of post-slavery, early twentieth century, in southern United States where blacks were still treated by whites inhumanly and cruelly, even after the abolition laws of slavery of 1863. They were still named as ‘color’. Nothing much changed in African-American’s lives, though the laws of abolition of slavery were made, because now the slavery system became a way of life. The system was accepted as destiny. So the whites also got license to take disadvantages and started exploiting them sexually, racially, physically, and economically. During slavery, they were sold in the slave markets to different owners of plantation and were bound to be separated from each other. Thus they lost their nation, their dignity, and were dehumanized and exploited by whites.

Ta-Nehisi Coates starts off this section of the book by explaining the history of blacks in America to his son during the Civil War era. He describes how essentially an entire war began over slavery. African American bodies were the richest resource in America at the time, even more than American industry, and thus, the valued resource was the main dispute and motive for the Civil War. Coates writes, “In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body- it is heritage” (103). The reason why blacks are terrified to live in their bodies today is primarily due to the treatment of black individuals in the past. American history is rooted in us all, and continues to influence society. Coates further describes how slavery was extremely bloody

Imagine yourself, a proud American starting another chapter in life where your desires and aspirations ahead of you. Then all of sudden undergo dizziness and then wakes up to a time in your ancestry encompassing not a pleasing sight. You walk around the new surroundings, seeking for a form of life to tell you where you are. When revealed to you where and WHEN you landed, your heart races and plummets to the floor at the same time. The one word and time where evil stands necessary and idea of dehumanization is afoot. Slavery: a segment in time surrounding bondage of African slaves under the societal and political supremacy of European America. Yet you pull yourself together, try to adapt to the ways of living hoping to go back to the present. As you learn to know your place in race and gender, you start to realize that your life can be at stake. The gender roles for white and black made an impact distinctively to function in a society on the matter assuring right and just. In the 19th century, America’s antebellum slave society considered toward white Americans as a way of life, but clearly an inhumane society in absolute existence. The existence of the antebellum south.

He traces the body’s historical ill-treatment back to the days of slavery and colonialism, a time period when black bodies were shamelessly objectified. He discusses the way that black bodies were commodified during this time, imploring Samori never to forget “how they transfigured our very bodies into sugar, tobacco, cotton and gold” (Coates 71). This idea of dehumanization aids in explaining how the black body came to be treated with such egregious barbarity, both during the colonial era and onward. The black bodies were considered expendable sources of profit, rather that human beings. They were not regarded as people with thoughts, feelings, and rights, but merely products to be bought and sold.

Since slavery, the lore of the predacious Black individual has been used to fear Whites and to justify their brutality and violence done against Black individuals, communities and continents. “The enslavement of Africans resulted in a plethora of uprisings, from the Haitian Rebellion to Nat Turner’s rebellion. Since then, whites have developed a pathological fear that oppressed Blacks will one day rise up and inflict vengeance upon their oppressors” .

In Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ writes a powerful novel that details the struggles that black people face in America, especially in contrast to those faced by white Americans. One of the main messages (as well as the most powerful) that is detailed in the book is the idea of black bodies and how they are perceived and treated in America. This was not only just in the physical sense, but also how they are treated in everyone’s minds. He describes how throughout the creation of America, black bodies were used and abused to create agricultural and textile empires that enriched countless white settlers (and later, American citizens). They were not valued as humans, only seen as bodies that will produce a profit.

In addition, the author also intends to emphasize his concern of the physical mistreatment of blacks in the period of slavery. This is done mainly through his presentation of the symbolism of the whip used to exert pain and brutality on the population of