Say Yes Tobias Wolff Summary

In Chrys Ingraham’s “One is Not Born A Bride,” heterosexuality isn’t solely recognized as sexual orientation or sexual identity; instead, it’s believed that “heterosexuality operates as a highly organized social institution” (Ingraham 303). When Jenny first comes out, her mother claims Jenny’s homosexuality changes the way she perceives her daughter. The mother’s reaction isn’t abnormal, as many people are initially surprised when discovering someone identifies as gay. This is the result of the heterosexual imaginary, which romanticizes heterosexuality and “prevents [society] from seeing how institutionalized heterosexuality actually works to organize gender while preserving racial, class, and sexual hierarchies” (Ingraham 304). Jenny’s mother associates marriage with heterosexuality because that is the conditioned “norm;” it’s what people are taught to expect. “The wedding ritual represents a major site for the installation and maintenance of the institution of heterosexuality” (Ingraham 303). When imagining her daughter’s “white wedding,” she never thought it would involve two women. Additionally, the mother is confused about other aspects of the relationship. She says to her husband, “I wonder who proposed” and the father tells her that Jenny did. Traditionally, the man proposes to the woman. This expectation reinforces gender roles—the belief that men should be in control and should initiate a marriage. Picturing their daughter take on a “male role,” such as being the one to propose, somewhat alters their view of the heterosexual

Interracial marriage has traditionally been viewed as a means of expressing a hatred of oneself, of escaping something in one’s culture or self that one no longer wants to identify with. Jacki Thompson Rand describes the outcome of this phenomenon in an essay on her experience as the child of an interracial marriage. She explains how her mother married a white man in an effort to make herself more white, and therefore more legitimate: “My mother 's marriage to my father was a racial love

The controversy surrounding race and racism has continued prosperous for years and will continue for years to come. However, racism has deeper implications than what appears on the surface. As shown in the literary works below, misrepresentation of minority populations and unfair judgment due to popular stereotypes instigate racism that can lead to conflicts in identity.

From the perspective of David, he is cursed by and burdened with living in a society that would rather separate races than allow them to be together. In his narrative, “Pick One”, Matthews states, “There was black or white. Pick one. Nowhere in their ranging questions was the elastic clause, mixed. The choice was both necessary and impossible: identify myself or have it done for me.” This quote reveals how David had to physically and mentally pick one race. Being titled “mixed” was no longer a choice from him. Whichever race he chose or whichever race was chosen for him, he would leave behind the other race. As a result, David would leave behind a part of him that would otherwise make David who he actually is. This choice would ultimately change

This story has affected me in a few ways. One of the ways was how children think and see the world. One of the ways is how children see and picture racial equality. They do this in a way that many adults are not readily capable of doing, or choose not to. From the story early on we are told of a girl named Kesha who distinguishes beyond the socio-typical distinctions of black and white, when she states, “‘Okay, peach with spots for you and brown without spots for me, except his one and this one on my cheek”’ (Paley, pg. 15). In another part in the story, the author says two children, Jeremy and Martha, playing a game of Guess Who? Jeremey asked

For Shelby, it seems as though Garcia contends an individual’s “attitudes” not his or her “beliefs” are what make the individual racist (479). Still, Shelby maintains that “beliefs are essential to and even sufficient for racism” (480). Basically, Shelby argues that in order to determine whether a person is racist or not, the reasons for one’s dislike of another must be evaluated. Shelby gives the hypothetical case of Stephen (white) disliking Andre (black) because Andre was having an affair with Stephen’s wife. In this example, Shelby illustrates that Stephen’s derives his dislike of Andre from Andre’s behavior not his race (480). Thus, Shelby raises the question of what racism actually signifies. Rather than disliking someone simply on the basis of skin color, Shelby suggests that is has a “deeper meaning” (480).

In Mat Johnson’s novel, Loving Day, interracial relationships are showcased throughout the text. The main character, Warren’s, journey through the story to re-identify who he is as a person mirrors the way America has thought about interracial relationships and marriages over time; as the book progresses, so do the thoughts of the main character regarding race and his personal relationships, as if the reader is walking through time from the days when interracial marriages were illegal, to modern day where interracial marriages are becoming more common and accepted. Warren encounters other people whose views reflect the “traditional” outlook on race and relationships as well as people with “progressive” views regarding race and relationships. He has to navigate through his own personal beliefs, the way he was raised, his personal experience, the way others react to him, and the way

After going through the literature given in Gallagher's compilation related to racism and romance, one can easily understand the shift observed in racist attitude over last few decades. Considering the statistics given, it is visible that Black-White marriages and Asian-American marriages were a taboo in the early twentieth century however this trend has gain familiarity and fame in the masses reflecting that individuals from Black and Asian ethic groups are becoming more acceptable to Whites.

In her story ZZ Packer uses juxtaposition and contrasts between content and tone, to show that racism exists as a result of suppression and denial of human flaws in contrast to accepting that everyone is different. Juxtapositions are used in the story to show the reader how Arnetta and Octavia’s racism is a result of their need to deny their differences. At the beginning, Arnetta and Octavia appear as the most perfect and confident girls in the story who everyone else wishes to be. As the story develops, the reader learns that Arnetta and Octavia are also the most judgmental girls who are always “prepared ti comment” (4) and their high reputation slowly suffers and becomes only impressive when compared to the other girls’ reputations which

For years there have been forbidden love and marriage in the history of the United States, I decided to write a reflection on my thoughts views, fact findings and information regarding biracial marriages and segregation laws that were discriminatory in history. I read the short story about the Loving family and their pursuit to the Supreme Court in 1967, I thought of my own family history and realized that my paternal grandparents would’ve been prosecuted had they lived in Virginia or any other state that prohibited bi-racial marriages in the 1900s.

Racism has been a debated topic throughout the years. There have been many questions about if racism is a communal structured method of categorizing and separating people or if it is a learned or inherited behavior. The word has so many different meaning to each person affected by it. According to Miles and Brown, “The concept of racism is heavily negatively loaded, morally and politically” (3). All the way through history, racism has generated grief for those who fall victim to the problem. “Kindred” by Octavia Butler explains how a black woman is able to take a journey back in time to encounter and witness slavery up close and personal. In Natasha Trethewey “Bellocq's Ophelia”, the reader is able to recognize Ophelia’s yearning to be seen as a white woman opposed to a very fair-skinned black women. both Ophelia and Dana encounter racism and stereotypes. “During both of these women’s journeys throughout the stories, they have to face issues and hardships concerning their race in many different ways.”

I have always thought and been taught that racism was a form of ignorance; people used stereotypes are the easy route, instead of looking at the individual outside of the whole. But Kelley’s thoughts on the topic rang very true to me—“Racism is knowledge…is learned behavior…” (7). When we are babies, we don’t notice or care if someone is of a different race, socioeconomic standing, sexuality; we just see them as people. It’s through repeated actions that we learn what separates us from the “other”. As a young child, my neighbor was my best friend. We played every day until I moved, but our families still kept in touch. It was until probably the 3rd or 4th grade that I realized he wasn’t like me, he had Down syndrome. Of course, that didn’t make a difference to me then or now, but I find it to be a striking example in my own life that as a young person, I was unable to see anything different about us, to me we were the same, we were

After the ruling of Loving v. Virginia in 1967 the U.S Supreme Court deemed laws prohibiting interracial relationships as illegal. Although this ruling was meant to change some of the social inequalities associated with interracial relationships, there are still incidents of where belonging to a multiracial family brings problems such as the way individuals identify their culture, and how others view them. Since Eubanks grew up in a multiracial family, his decision to bear children with his multiracial wife was a way for him to continue to challenge white supremacy. Cheryl Seelhoff, author of On Raising Biracial Children illustrates how being a white woman and having a child by a black man was a challenge towards white supremacy because it

Kevin Rodney Sullivan's 2005 movie is an overt comedy that, while not ignoring the race issues altogether, uses them more frequently for humor than to illustrate serious points. Both film’s premises are about the same situation of an interracial marriage.

The two articles used were “Understanding the Occurrence of Interracial Marriage in the United States through Differential Assimilation” (Lewis, Ford- Robinson, 2010) and “Marital Dissolution among Interracial Couples” (Zhang, Van Hook, 2009). The first article “Understanding the Occurrence of Interracial Marriage in the United States through Differential Assimilation”, spoke about the unprecedented changes that our society is going though in the 21st century.