Junot Diaz's How To Date A Browngirl, Blackgirl

The author of “The Black Beauty Myth” Sirena Riley has encountered multiple experiences concerning body image throughout her life. At a young age, she started to feel the pressure to have a perfect body. The struggle of making herself perfect ultimately lead to eating disorders for instance, bulimia and compulsive exercising. In her journey from a young age to her college years she has learned better ways to deal with negative body image through therapy. In her article, she states “I was in three body image and eating disorder groups with other young women on my campus. I was always the only black woman.” (Riley 2002, 229) This quote supports her belief that black women have body image issues but are not open to seeking help or expressing

It stayed true to its matter-of-fact tone, and showed that like in real life things such as having a girl over to your house on a date don’t necessarily have a big climax or a happily-ever-after ending. Usually this is something I would not enjoy reading but this text suited the rather level approach that Diaz applied, and this stark alternative captivated me. This style of writing exposed me to the fact that you can in fact use slang and everyday dialogue in writing, and still produce a beautiful

I was particularly interested in Camille Dungy’s “Tales from a Black Girl on Fire, or Why I Hate to Walk Outside and See Things Burning” which we read from the book Colors of Nature Culture, Identity, and the Natural World. I thought that our discussion in class of her poem was quite good, and realized it was something I wouldn't mind thinking a little bit more about. As I reread the poem, I found a few sentences that I still didn't quite understand what she meant by. In light of this, I have decided to write on what I believe to be her meaning. I wasn't sure why the fear of walking outside didn’t hit her until she moved to an old plantation sate. Why would it take up until then if she had been hearing her families history her entire life?

The main character also treats girls of different races differently. He wrongly suggests that if a girl is white, that you will definitely get a hand job before the night is through, if not more (Diaz 235). He says that white girls are the girls everyone really wants to date, because they are easy. This is why he does many things that white boys do. He also says that not many white girls live in his neighborhood, that the locals tend to be brown girls, black girls, or halfies. This is probably because many of the white people are of a higher economic class then he is. If they are in a higher economic class then he is, this may

In the short story “How to date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie” Junot Diaz

During the Civil Rights Era, many black power movements strived to prevent the New Jim Crow from happening. The black man was being oppressed during segregation and treated like animals. The white supremacy, only visualize African Americans as slaves, people who should not be a part of the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X drove men and women to fight for his or her rights. However, that was not enough to stop the white supremacy from oppressing African Americans. The Civil Rights movement did put an end to public segregation. It did not put not put an end to the laws being made by the government, which is dominated by the white race. In the book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander discussed how the Civil Rights and black power movements helped African Americans gain their equal rights, but did not help to gain political power. Mass Incarceration is where the African Americans’ lives end because of the social structure created by the government. Blacks are mostly in the lower class because after the Great Depression, Roosevelt only created laws for whites. This allowed the white community to build and move out the cities into better neighborhoods. Leaving the black community behind. The government placed businesses and built big buildings to keep all the blacks in one place. Base on how the black community was viewed as a race and social status, gives this race a higher chance of being behind bars.

What are some ways that we welcome back ex cons into society if we do at all? What help determined our attitude towards these incrassated victims whether they are guilty or not? These are questions and situations that sociologist take time to research in society. This is mainly done because it affects society in some sort of way and it’s their job to find out why things happen and how can we help better the problems. Most offenders are from a lower income society or belong to an oppress group. The victims of coarse are the people who the harm is being done to, which by law there are consequences for their action. The problem, that leave one thinking is the kind of crimes people committed, or some may not commit any at all, probably just at the wrong place at the wrong time and they still happen to receive harsh penalty, being stigmatize as a criminal on record causing them to struggle in society.

As David Blight says in his novel, Race and Reunion, after the Civil War and emancipation, Americans were faced with the overwhelming task of trying to understand the relationship between “two profound ideas—healing and justice.” While he admits that both had to occur on some level, healing from the war was not the same “proposition” for many whites, especially veterans, as doing justice for the millions of emancipated slaves and their descendants (Blight 3). Blight claims that African Americans did not want an apology for slavery, but instead a helping hand. Thus, after the Civil War, two visions of Civil War memory arose and combined: the reconciliationist vison, which focused on the issue of dealing with the dead from the battlefields, hospitals, and prisons, and the emancipationist vision, which focused on African Americans’ remembrance of their own freedom and in conceptions of the war as the “liberation of [African Americans] to citizenship and Constitutional equality” (Blight 2).

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander tries to advance intellectual dialogue regarding mass incarceration in the United States. Alexander does this by carrying out a historical analysis of the process in which the correctional system controls African Americans through intentionally selected, and systematically sanctioned legal limits. In fact, the United States incarceration rate is not at peak by coincidence. Moreover, it is not coincidental that Black men and women make up the majority of this number. According to Alexander, this problem is a consequence of the “New Jim Crow” rules, which use racial stratification to eliminate black individuals in the legal sense. Black people and a small number of the Hispanic community face racial stratified laws when they face the justice system. This paper will support the claims that race is a major factor in the incarceration of black men in the United States, which includes the Jim Crow system, the slave system and the drag war. This process will also involve analyzing of some of the arguments presented within the book.

White privilege is the societal privileges that specifically benefit white people. White privilege is why white people can get pulled over by the police and escape a ticket with just a smile and apology. White privilege is also why whites are in charge of a company and they see a black person, they bypass the application. Whites carry a certain privilege not available to people of color. Marilyn Frye describes how whiteness is a form social and political power.

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

The book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is about the mass incarceration of African Americans in the criminal justice system. It depicts individuals who were arrested on drug crimes. Because these individuals are labeled as criminals, it becomes difficult for them to find work, housing, and public assistance. (Alexander, 2010) The themes in this book include denial and ignorance, racism and violence, and drugs.

Whiteness is an integrative ideology that has transpired in North America throughout the late 20th century to contemporary society. It is a social construction that sustains itself as a dogma to social class and vindicates discrimination against non-whites. The power of whiteness is illustrated in social, cultural and political practices. These measures are recognized as the intent standard in which other cultures are persuaded to live by. Bell hooks discusses the evolution of whiteness in an innovative article in which she theorizes this conviction as normative, a structural advantage, an inclusive standpoint, and an unmarked name by those who are manipulating this interdisciplinary. Most intellects, including hooks, would argue that whiteness is a continuation of history; a dominant cultural location that has been unconsciously disclosing its normativity of cultural practice, advocating fear, destruction, and terror for those who are being affected by this designation.

Diaz progresses into detailing the necessary steps the young man must follow to get an actual date with a woman dependent upon her race and background. The young man is led to believe that for each type of girl he must present himself differently to not offend her or her parent’s fragile sensibilities and receives instructions on how to properly illicit a date “The directions were in your best handwriting, so her parents won't think you're an idiot” (256). Clearly, careful psychological manipulations of a girl’s parents are a vital component in achieving dating success. To this point, the young man has only received instruction and it is here that the reader receives some insight into which type of woman the young man is wanting to date “The white ones are the ones you want the most, aren't

The novel Coffee Will Make You Black by April Sinclair, is set in the 1960’s in Southside Chicago, Illinois, in a predominantly black community. The main character, Stevie, grows from a girl who doesn’t know the meaning of the word “virgin”, to a young woman discovering her sexuality. She is oppressed by boyfriends, and society. However, she resists this oppression by thinking about herself, and what she wants, instead of doing what society tells her to do and trying to please others all the time. In the end, Stevie becomes a person who is unafraid of being herself, and her feelings.