On Being Told I Don 't Speak Like A Black Person

"Mother Tongue" and "How if Feels to be Colored Me", touch upon the issues that are faced everyday among human beings. Human beings struggle throughout their lives to understand who they are. Amy Tan and Zora Hurston do this through language. Their storytelling tells their audience what has made them who they are through the use of metaphors, similies, and ancedotes.

Through out history society has created many stereotypes and assumptions based on race and nationality to confine us into categories. The reality is not every individual fits a specific category because we are unique even within the same ethnicity group. In “On Being Told I Don’t Speak Like a Black Person” Allison Joseph illustrates some speech stereotypes that come hand in hand with her racial background and how even people from the same racial background and house hold don’t all sound a like. The author portrays that race and linguistic has a huge impact on our daily life and how society sees her different to others. Also, her own identity is being put in to question base on a linguistic stereotype. Furthermore, base on ones racial orientation society already have a certain expectation of what they assume the person is capable of and an expectation of how one acts like. When we put stereotypes on individuals we discrediting the individuals identity, we are making those people part of a group base on a assumption and stereotypes can not be used to describe a who group because not everyone fits into a certain category.

In Zora Hurston’s “How it feels to be colored me”, she teaches her readers what it means to be a person of color who loves yourself. While reading “How it feels to be colored me”, the readers are shown that Zora Hurston has great pride and love for who she is as a person and she shows this with the many rhetorical strategies present in her story. In Hurston’s story she establishes her love of self by using connotations about her skin color, metaphors about how she should not be treated differently based on the color of her skin, and imagery to vividly describe the way she is treated by the people of the world.

Brent staples had always look as a different type of person just because of his appearance and by the people around him. An although he familiarized with the reaction of different people but he cannot be comfortable with everything. Staples was a big tall black male who had a beard and billowing hair, and when different race seen him specially by white females, they reaction were always the same. Staples love walking at night. And one time he was taking a late night strolls he encounter a white female walking toward him, as she sees staples coming she crossed the street to the other the other side just to avoid him. Because of how other people’s view of what looks dangerous and what doesn’t. it makes the white women change her route and cross the street so she could stay out of harm’s way. Staples had also affected decided to change his habits, of how he walk at night, so when he taking a stroll at night he started singing oh whistle a melody just because he didn’t want to give his late-night strolls to anyone but at the same time didn’t want to be harmful to

This Poem is about the similarities and differences between the life of a Caucasian person and an African American person. The author, Sharon olds, made this essay to compare and contrast both of them. Sharon olds uses a lot of poetic devices, imagery, and traditional racial stereotypes. Sharon uses a lot of imagery in this poem, she uses most of vividly dark and light as well as animal imagery to contrast her two characters. The whole skin of an animal taken and used shows that the boy represents the inside of an animal, and the speaker represents the outside. Sharon olds utilities a lot of racial stereotypes to show the distance between the characters that exists despite the close ties and connection that they share. In many movies the person

White people never thought about it that happened to them. They made African-Americans feel unwanted. White people thought it was all fine. They thought African-Americans would get over it eventually. Instead, African-Americans all over the United States did protests about it. It’s great that they did something about it. It was going on for a short period of time that wasn’t very

There are still the inevitable reports about African Americans being in gangs and shootings; however there are also stories of African Americans doing amazing things like becoming president. As the press learned during the Civil Rights Movement, people react more to shocking news so that’s probably why there is so many negative events that are broadcasted

The police viewed their behavior as strange and criminal, judging them on the basis of their skin. The second theme the poem addresses is police corruption and cover-up. Each vignette ends acknowledging that the victims were innocent of their suspected crimes. However, law enforcement was not blamed for their death; instead the cause of death was implied to be the victim’s fault, for being black.

African Americans have been burdened with the stigmas of racism for quite some time. It is indeed a fact that the media plays an extremely large role in maintaining a racial imbalance. These imbalances are executed through social media pathways, newspaper articles and television networks such as NBC & CBS. Another large tactic used to the detriment of African Americans is the inequality that is the judicial system. News outlets will often depict a false image of a black offender versus his white counterpart.

Although “Strange Fruit” and “The Summer I was Sixteen” have extremely different tones and depict images that seem nothing alike, they both have an underlying theme of discrimination and inequality. Throughout history we have seen the bizarre way humans treat other other humans. Acts from a group of humans towards another can range from violent to more mild, yet still harmful acts. Usually these acts are based on differences in outward appearance, from the color of a person's skin to the gender of a person. These two poems portray the idea that racism and sexism can be both blatant and subtle.

Nikki Grimes tells the story of Danitra Brown, a young girl whose first descriptor is splendiferous, an adjective used to describe a person as splendid. Meet Danitra Brown is told from the perspective of Danitra’s best friend, Zuri Jackson. Meet Danitra Brown is unique in that it’s told through a series of thirteen poems. Though the thirteen poems can be self-contained, they should initially be read sequentially to understand the overall theme of the story. The story begins by telling the reader who Danitra Brown is, from the perspective of Zuri. The pages go on to describe Danitra and Zuri’s friendship, through the good and the more challenging life situations they encounter together. One of the themes found within these thirteen poems is the importance of friendship. Zuri describes experiences throughout each of the thirteen poems that emphasize this theme, from jumping rope together to Zuri buying ice cream for Danitra. Going hand in hand with friendship, the other major theme found within this story is the impact that discrimination has on young children. Throughout the story, skin color and the struggle to accept one’s identity is touched on repeatedly. In addition to the themes discussed, this book incorporates core African American cultural values within the thirteen poems. The cultural aspects of African American culture I will be discussing are expressiveness, communalism, indirectness, and dramatic performance.

In his poem “Southern Cop”, Sterling Brown articulates the clear and blatant racism in southern society, and their attempts to hide and deny that it even exists. The poem is about a police officer who shoots an unidentified black male, without reasonable cause to do so. Brown sarcastically mocks society and the excuses that they try to make for the cop’s inexcusable action. Finally, Brown convicts the cop through these excuses, and shows all of the truly terrible things that he had done. Southern Cop is a very powerful poem, and carries a very important message.

The story focuses on the contradictions and problems that a modern Native American and African Americans have to face because of the color of their skin as they work hard in order to create balance in their lives. The story revolves around the virtue of appreciation. Virtue of appreciation is a common thing and doesn’t concern discrimination on the basis of religion, ethnicity and race.

Above all, the author experiences racial injustices. For example, when he walks behind a woman in street, “ she looked back again and started to run”(Brent

Poetry impacts the reader’s perceptions of universal issues such as racism, inequality and injustice through the use of poetic techniques, in which the poet’s thoughts and opinions are conveyed. ‘I, Too’ by Langston Hughes explores the idea of racism in the olden days, it is a relevant issue as numerous people in the world are able to relate to it. The poet transmits his hopes for future change and the challenges he is confronting. Symbolism and a pause exemplifies the racial inequality and division existing in society. Similarly, ‘The Hunger Games’ by Imani Cezanne portrays the notion of racism, the poet divulges her lived experiences due