Social Class, By The Colored People And A Negro With The Double Dislocation Of Identity Essay

The essay that I am presenting today is “Strivings of the Negro People” by W.E.B Dubois. This essay was written in as an article in the Atlantic Monthly in 1987, but before I get to essay, I would like to give some background information about Mr. Dubois. Both scholar and activist, W.E.B. Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He studied at Harvard University and, in 1895, became the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard. He wrote extensively and was the best known spokesperson for African American rights during the first half of the 20th century. Du Bois co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. He died in

As Bell Hooks speaks about in her essay “Learning In The Shadow Of Race And Class,” certain college students, such as herself, appear to have “boundaries” placed upon them that cause great struggle. Typically there is a reason behind these “boundaries,” and in some cases it may be the fault of the person that is enduring these struggles, whether they realize it or not. While Bell is not completely at fault for how she lives her life, the way Bell Hooks was raised helped shape the way she would view her life and the people around her. Bell’s mother’s methods of raising a child are what led her to hate her time in school as much as she did, and how she will live her life afterwards.

In Hughes poem “Note on the commercial Theatre” he started off with an angry tone, upset that African American music was used by the whites, but the African Americans didn’t receive the credit for the artistic work: “You’ve taken my blues and gone you sing them on Broadway” (1043). Furthermore, at the end of the poem Hughes does expresses a powerful ending, our culture is beautiful, but you will never be me: “Black and beautiful and sing about me, and put on plays about me! I reckon it’ll be me myself” (1043)! Hughes poems focused on the urban cultures, while Zora Neale Hurston short story “How it feels to be Colored Me” focused on her as a woman who is discovering herself and her worth.

It is impossible for anyone to survive a horrible event in their life without a relationship to have to keep them alive. The connection and emotional bond between the person suffering and the other is sometimes all they need to survive. On the other hand, not having anyone to believe in can make death appear easier than life allowing the person to give up instead of fighting for survival. In The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, Aminata Diallo survives her course through slavery by remembering her family and the friends that she makes. Aminata is taught by her mother, Sira to deliver babies in the villages of her homeland. This skill proves to be very valuable to Aminata as it helps her deliver her friends babies and create a source of

The mulatto elite separated themselves from the black masses by assimilating the morals and manners of the slaveholding aristocracy. They acquired as a part of their family traditions the patterns of behavior which were associated with the idea of the southern lady and southern gentleman. As a rule, these families formed a closed circle from which were excluded all who could not boast of similar ancestry and did not conform to the same standards of morals and manners. They were self-conscious of their “culture” which consisted of the enjoyment of English and, in Louisiana, French classical literature music. They maintained literary societies in which they could enjoy and foster their “culture.” The patterns found in rural as compared to urban black communities changed. The folk tradition of the

Understanding that the poverty of black Americans did not just stay within the home is a big step in understanding urban poverty. Urban poverty reached outside the home, into the parks, schools and playgrounds. With poverties reach being that extensive, there was something other than adversity causing this. Louis Gates wrote an article about this called “Black America and The Class Divide.” (Jr.)

During reconstruction the United States was divided on social issues, presidential campaigns were won and loss on these issues during this period. The struggle for development of African Americans and how they initiated change in political, economic, educational, and social conditions to shape their future and that of the United States. (Dixon, 2000) The South’s attempts to recover from the Civil war included determining what to do with newly freed slaves and finding labor to replace them. The task of elevating the Negro from slave to citizen was the most enormous one which had ever confronted the country. Local governments implemented mechanisms of discrimination to combat citizenship

“The Book of Negroes is a master piece, daring and impressive in its geographic, historical and human reach, convincing in its narrative art and detail, necessary for imagining the real beyond the traces left by history.” I completely agree with The Globe and Mail’s interpretation of this story. One could almost see the desolate conditions of the slave boats and feel the pain of every person brought into slavery. Lawrence Hill created a compelling story that depicts the hard ships, emotional turmoil and bravery when he wrote The Book of Negroes.

Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-black laws, it was a way of life. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were relegated to the status of second-class citizens. Some of the laws excluded blacks from public transport and facilities, juries, jobs, and neighborhoods, voting, holding public office, and school. Although the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution had granted blacks the same legal protections as whites. After 1877, and the election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, southern and border states began restricting the liberties of blacks.

During this time in a movement known as the Great Migration, thousands of African-Americans also known as Negros left their homes in the South and moved North toward the beach line of big cities in search of employment and a new beginning. As Locke stated, “the wash and rush of this human tide on the beach line of Northern city centers is to be explained primarily in terms of a new vision of opportunity, of social and economic freedom, of a spirit to seize, even in the face of an extortionate and heavy toll, a chance for the improvement of conditions. With each successive wave of it, the movement of the Negro becomes more and more a mass movement toward the larger

Social Stratification in the African American community has changed over the years. Social stratification is defined as a rigid subdivision of a society into a hierarchy of layers, differentiated on the basis of power, prestige, and wealth according to Webster’s dictionary. David Newman in Sociology Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life describes stratification as a ranking system for groups of people that perpetuates unequal rewards and life chances in society. From slavery to the present, the African American community has been seen to have lower status compared to white people. Today, the stratification or hierarchy difference between whites and black are not really noticeable, but it is still present. However, during

The abolition of slavery in the United States presented southern African Americans with many new opportunities, including the option of relocation in search of better living conditions. The mass movement of black people from the rural areas of the South to the cities of the North, known as the Black Migration, came in the 1890s when black men and women left the south to settle in cities such as Philadelphia and New York, fleeing from the rise of Jim Crowe Laws and searching for work. This migration of blacks from the South has been an important factor in the formation of the Harlem Renaissance. The period referred to as the Harlem Renaissance, was a flourishing period of artistic and literary creation in African-American culture and

Within popular black music from the early 1900s there was often a duplicitous message, allowing the authors to both entertain their audiences and provide a social critique. In their song, She’s Getting More Like the White Folks Every Day, George Walker and Bert Williams tell the story of a young black girl who, after working in a hotel for a richer white woman, takes on the habits and affectations of white folk. While at first this song might appear to simply be making fun of a young girl whose mannerisms have changed, when examined closely it reveals a powerful commentary on the meaning of blackness, specifically in regards to race relations, social progress, and gender. Black performance in the early 1900s, whether it was minstrelsy, vaudevillian, or coon songs, all relied upon the perceived differences of the black lower class. They usually featured white or black actors parodying black persons, with blackface a common trend. However, in She’s Getting More Like the White Folks Every Day, this mimicry is reversed. Rather than a white man taking on black traits, they show a young black girl adopting the mannerisms of her rich, white boss. Instead of using blackness as the primary source of humour, they rely upon a satire of white culture. By showing how unusual the young woman is acting, Williams and Walker impress upon their audience ideas of contrast between lower class black culture, and upper class white culture. Unlike usual themes present in the black and white

The black freedom struggle has not yet come to an end – there are still prejudiced and racist radicals that try to negotiate white supremacy and dominance in order to prevent the blacks from their long wait for equality. Consequently, the movement has progressed very sluggishly in the past few centuries. Nevertheless, the campaign for equal rights has led to the triumph over slavery and has led to the accrual of suffrage rights. However, this is still not enough, not after centuries of enslavement, lynching, segregation, and discrimination. Oftentimes, there is still no justice in court houses, especially when black people are accused and convicted, even for the simplest of crimes – as compared to the white and powerful who are charged for heinous misconducts and get away scratch free. Hence, throughout the period of the Blacks’ long fight for freedom and equality, several Black intellectuals have come front with ideas that could administer better treatment for their people. A good strategy to encourage the black populace to fight for their freedom and their rights is by inverting popular ideas so that there is a clear distinction between the reasonable and unreasonable notions of equality and justice. Thus, it was not uncommon for these literati to undermine dominant discourses in order to bolster their own analyses. Among the discussed black intellectuals who inverted prevailing dissertations, three that stood out the most are Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, and

Race, Gender, and Social class are all common interests in our American Society since before the Civil Rights Movement until now and will continue to be. Many theories have been developed with the intent to analyze these concepts of human life, and genetics within the scope of society. Critical Race theory, a modern take on the subtle racism and discrimination in institutional society and our American law, is one of these theories that construct the ideas relating race, gender and social class to American society. All groups of people are affected by racism and discrimination throughout the United States. Arab Americans and the Sioux, Native American Indian group, are two groups I will analyze in relation to Critical Race theory.