Julie's Story: Forced Acculturation On Native Americans

As a mixed race product of an African American mother and a Caucasian father, Vyry isn’t given much of a chance to establish her identity from the moment she is born. Being the child of an African American woman automatically labels her as the “other” within the society she lives in. At a younger age, Vyry loves to play with her half-sister, and she is still oblivious of the racial separations in existence on the Dutton plantation. Soon enough, Vyry comes to learn what it means to be, not only a girl, but a Negro girl living in a white dominated society; as she finds herself and her half-sister being treated more and more different. In Jubilee, Vyry’s stepmother, who is a Caucasian woman named Salina is the emblem of white, middle class womanhood.

Throughout the course of history there have been numerous accounts regarding Native American and European interaction. From first contact to Indian removal, the interaction was somewhat of a roller coaster ride, leading from times of peace to mini wars and rebellions staged by the Native American tribes. The first part of this essay will briefly discuss the pre-Columbian Indian civilizations in North America and provide simple awareness of their cultures, while the second part of this essay will explore all major Native American contact leading up to, and through, the American Revolution while emphasizing the impact of Spanish, French, and English explorers and colonies on Native American culture and vice versa. The third, and final, part of this essay will explore Native American interaction after the American Revolution with emphasis on westward expansion and the Jacksonian Era leading into Indian removal. Furthermore, this essay will attempt to provide insight into aspects of Native American/European interaction that are often ignored such as: gender relations between European men and Native American women, slavery and captivity of native peoples, trade between Native Americans and European colonists, and the effects of religion on Native American tribes.

Gerald Early, the author of the essay Life with Daughters, describes the hardships of being African American especially when trying to raise two daughters who don’t believe they are beautiful . Early’s purpose is to inform the reader of all the difficulties that black girls face growing up in a society who has defined beauty with the image of a white, skinny blonde. He adopts a bitter tone in order to point out all of the difficulties these girls face in order to appeal to similar feelings and experiences of other African American girls their parents.

For almost as long as European settlers have interacted with the native peoples of the Americas, they have had a notion: what many call ‘assimilation’. To Europeans, assimilation of native peoples meant for their culture, which they believed to be superior, to be accepted over time by the natives. And as they grew more and more European in language, religion, customs, organization, morals, and behavior, they would slowly shed off all of their old culture which the European culture would be replacing. The Europeans believed this process was for the best for the natives and that they would be happier living ‘civilized’ lives as opposed to practicing their own traditions.

The fourth chapter of "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”is about the identity development in adolescence. It is said that when black children are growing up, they engage in many of the white culture’s beliefs and values as it is all around them. It is not until a little later where they begin to recognize the impact of racism. This can happen around the early stages of adulthood. It might even happen around the junior high age. Gender also comes into play around this time as well. A black girl wouldn't be acknowledged for her beauty in a white setting as she is not in the society's standard for beautiful. Since the black girls aren’t considered beautiful, they begin to feel devalued. The black youth are beginning

"No study of acculturation in colonial America would be complete,"(272) exclaims James Axtell in his book the european and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America, "without giving equal thought to the question of how English culture was altered by its contacts with Native America." (272) during this anthropology and ethnohistory based work, James Axtell clearly lays on the table that this analysis inter-piled into a book wasn't meant to be simply a general assortment of Native american encounters and battles with the Europeans; but a real, real, and factual assessment of how they intermingled with one another. Showing how they were each able to interact as well as react to each others own beliefs and ways shows the

In the beginning of the novel, Black introduces the concept of beauty, or lack thereof, through Emma Jean’s childhood. Emma Jean’s mother, Mae Helen clearly has a set image of what a beautiful black child should look like. Mae Helen believes that two of her three daughters are beautiful, but believes that Emma Jean is not and wishes that she would have named Emma Jean “Nobody” (20). She calls Emma Jean ugly directly to her faces and proceeds to mentally and physically abuse her throughout her childhood. To add insult to the abuse, Emma Jean watches as her sisters, who her mother believes are more beautiful, get treated with love and respect. The root Mae Helen’s hatred for Emma Jean is her skin tone. Mae Helen chose her male suitors based on the lightness of their skin, and once Emma Jean was not as white as her father Mae Helen instantly disliked her. Black is commenting on the societal ideal that whiteness is equitable to beauty. This preference is displayed when Emma Jean is thinking about why her mother

Native Americans have had a long history of resistance to the social and cultural assimilation into white culture. By employing various creative strategies, Native Americans have attempted to cope with the changes stemming from the European colonial movement into the Americas. There are fundamental differences in world views and cultural and social orders between Indians and Europeans, which contributed to conservatism in Native American cultures. In this paper, two aspects of such cultural and institutional differences of Native American societies will be examined: holistic Native American beliefs versus dualistic world views and harmony versus domination. These two aspects are important in terms of explaining changes (or lack thereof) in

Historically, relationships between European colonists and Native American were extremely complex and complicated. Due to the violent European colonization of America, Native Americans became susceptible to oppressions and extinction for over five hundred years (Poupart, 2003). European colonists’ central focus were directed towards acquiring maximum profits by exploiting Native American’s vast resources and utilizing their physical performance toward enslavement. This created devastation among Native American families, movement of various fatal diseases, and destruction of the traditional lifestyle of Native Americans (Starkey, 1998). The elimination of Native American culture came with strong opposition and resistance through civil organizations, religious movements, and conflict revolutions.

The media stereotypes all cultures and races in some way. The Native American race has been most widely stereotyped negatively since the first explorers arrived in America and has only increased as the media has improved. Native Americans are and have been presented in an unfavorable manner in basically all forms of media all throughout America’s history. When the Europeans arrived in America and discovered the Indians, the stereotyping of their culture began. The majority of the accounts made by the Europeans exploring the New World described the Native Americans as an undeveloped and uneducated race.

There is a new girl in local school named Maureen. She has light-skinned of African-American. She is a kind of pretty and rich. For example, the teachers and students in school consider that Maureen is pretty and perfect. In fact, Maureen is not really pretty, according to Claudia, Maureen has yellowish skin, dark and slanted green eyes and a dog tooth exposed when she smiles. People assume that she has great personality and intellect such as white people. She accepts everyone's assumption that she is in upper-class, prettier, smarter than black people. For instance, she never had to search for anybody to eat with in cafeteria; she liked and bought white milk. Maureen who represents for a different kind of black people has light-skin of African-Americans people and disregards darker-skin black people. Just because her skin is lighter than other black children, so she is assessed highly by white people.

(pg.508) Keep in mind that this pressure to be like the glamorous celebrities was especially difficult for women to emulate because unlike the starlets, the common woman does not a have a professional team to tend to every facet of her fashion, styling, and makeup. This was hard on all women, but it was especially difficult for the African American women who had celebrities such as jazz singer, Ethel Waters, endorsing incredibly insulting beauty products such as skin-lightening cream and hair-straightening processes, that essentially pressured them to “emulate white notions of beauty”, instead of embracing their natural beauty. (pg.510) Ultimately, with social stress, a male dominated corporate defining beauty, and the pressure of living up to starlets of the silver screen, women were faced with an impossible single standard of

The idea of the ideals of whiteness reigns on these couple pages and shows the superiority that these citizens felt during this time, and there is no black standard of beauty. While Claudia describing Maureen as “High-yellow”, which translates into cultural background of one eighth’s black, and seven eighth’s, one may say that this is considered too dark-skinned to pass as white, and her eyes are “sloe” which means dark in colour or almond in shape, although not holding qualities of a perfect Anglo child with fair skin and round blue eyes she is still deeming to be more beautiful then a full African American, thus why she considers her to be a “dream child”. (Morrison, 62) Being of mixed race allows Maureen to be represented by both the white

I was mistaken because when I asked her the next question, the tears came down. She said for a while, she was sad and depressed the way her body was built and the way she looked. If I was to describe her, I would say she’s about 6 feet 10 inches. She said, “I didn’t want to finish the story from earlier because it makes me cry every time because it reminds me how far I’ve come with myself confidence, but since I’m already crying, there is no point in hold the story back now.” She told me how the boy that asked for her number at the lunch line shamed her in from of the people they were in line with about her physical appearance. She explained how he called her names, including how he told her that she has a little boy’s body. This even sadden me as she’s saying these things because that was just so mean. To know that a person is so wicked enough to bring the other person down by oppressing them with words. She went on by saying after he said this, she began to notice how women were portrayed in the media. She said she became sad and depressed for a couple months after this. She noticed how the women on TV and movies have “nice breasts and ass.” While she has a “little boy’s body” according to the boy from the lunch line. She wanted to change the way she looked and looked into plastic surgeries for days and days. Even tried to convince her parents into buy her a whole new set of wardrobe because she looks like a boy the way she dresses, but she wants to fit in and look like a girl. She said her mom wasn’t buying it and wouldn’t take her to the store to by new outfits. Elizabeth feels like all the hardship she’s been through has shaped her into the person she is today and has made her stronger. She said this has brought nothing but positive things to her life.

Precious’s struggle with her sense of self can be attributed to both a general identity struggle that the black community faces as well as an upbringing that left her lost. As a black female Precious was at predisposition to deal with an identity crisis. Black women face the stereotypes of having to be overtly strong, sexual, or mother like. They are critiqued about everything from their hair to the way they choose to speak. These trends of the black community and general society left Precious struggling with a sense of self that was eventually lessened by the end of the novel.