Summary Of Passing And The Birth Of A Nation

In 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man was anonymously published by James Weldon Johnson. It is the narrative of a light-skinned man wedged between two racial categories; the offspring of a white father and a black mother, The Ex-Colored man is visibly white but legally classified as black. Wedged between these two racial categories, the man chooses to “pass” to the white society. In Passing: When People Can’t Be Who They Are, Brooke Kroeger describes “passing” as an act when “people effectively present themselves as other than who they understand themselves to be” (Kroeger 7). The Ex-Colored Man’s choice to ultimately “pass” at the end of the novel has been the cause of controversy amongst readers. Many claim his choice to “pass”

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Dubois is a influential work in African American literature and is an American classic. In this book Dubois proposes that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." His concepts of life behind the veil of race and the resulting "double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others," have become touchstones for thinking about race in America. In addition to these lasting concepts, Souls offers an evaluation of the progress of the races and the possibilities for future progress as the nation entered the twentieth century.

The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man depicts the narrator as a liminal character. Beginning with an oblivious knowledge of race as a child, and which racial group he belonged, to his well knowing of “white” and “black” and the ability to pass as both. On the account of liminality, the narrator is presenting himself as an outsider. Because he is both a “white” and “black” male, he does not fit in with either racial group. In the autobiography of an Ex-colored man, James Weldon Johnson uses double consciousness to show the narrators stance as a person that gives up his birthright for the “privilege of whiteness”.

A lack of self-awareness tended the narrator’s life to seem frustrating and compelling to the reader. This lack often led him to offer generalizations about ““colored” people” without seeing them as human beings. He would often forget his own “colored” roots when doing so. He vacillated between intelligence and naivete, weak and strong will, identification with other African-Americans and a complete disavowal of them. He had a very difficult time making a decision for his life without hesitating and wondering if it would be the right one.

The memoir “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston, was first published in 1928, and recounts the situation of racial discrimination and prejudice at the time in the United States. The author was born into an all-black community, but was later sent to a boarding school in Jacksonville, where she experienced “race” for the first time. Hurston not only informs the reader how she managed to stay true to herself and her race, but also inspires the reader to abandon any form of racism in their life. Especially by including Humor, Imagery, and Metaphors, the author makes her message very clear: Everyone is equal.

Between the World and Me has been called a book about race, but the author argues that race itself is a flawed, if anything, nothing more than a pretext for racism. Early in the book he writes, “Race, is the child of racism, not the father.” The idea of race has been so important in the history of America and in the self-identification of its people and racial designations have literally marked the difference between life and death in some instances. How does discrediting the idea of race as an immutable, unchangeable fact changes the way we look at our history? Ourselves? In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and the current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the

In 1619, early American colonists began bringing in slaves from parts of Africa to aid in the production of tobacco and other crops. Abraham Lincoln became the President of the United States on November 6, 1860 and began to work towards ending slavery. The Birth of a Nation, which hit the big screen in 2016, is a historical film based on an enslaved Baptist preacher named Nat Turner who led the only successful slave rebellion in 1831. The making of this film has sparked a national controversy over its depiction of racism and a fictional rape scene.

The writing styles of Claudine Rankine and Colson Whitehead vary significantly, but both manage to address the issue of race in America in profound ways. In Citizen: An American Lyric, the former utilizes a combination of images and poetry to convey a sense of open-endedness, while the latter follows a traditional historical fiction narrative in his novel, The Underground Railroad. The books build on historical and modern events to evoke emotion and convey criticism. *Rankine uses an experimental style to allow introspection, and Whitehead’s traditional writing blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction.

The misinterpretation of African Americans is very prominent in society. Claudia Rankine’s Citizen sheds light on the hyper-visibility of the African-Americans through stereotypes and invisibility of the Black body itself in an attempt to get readers to understand the inner conflicts of Black citizens. Citizen is composed of seven sections, which vary in length and content. The book is interspersed with photographs, sculpture, paintings, and other types of media. Rankine also draws from film and video, and various news media. Her descriptions of encounters between people of different races show how disconcerting words are and how they affect people. Though we often hear about deep-rooted institutional and cultural forces that contribute to racism, it appears that we less often hear about the psychological processes involved. Many would like to believe that racism is over, but society actions are a constant reminder of their true feeling about Blacks. Racial bias is prominent at all levels of the institution and it paralyzes the race as a whole. Rankine uses pronouns, anecdotes, and visual art to uncover the unconscious nature of racism and extend the conversation. The audience is both the eyewitness and the victim in this “post-racial” society that fails to teach us how to be a citizen. In allowing us, the readers and audience, to subject ourselves to this hurt, we experience, an understanding of true citizenship by identifying the wrongs and understanding the difference.

In Passing, Nella Larsen deconstructs the idea of race related to skin color and challenges the dangers of “passing” into the white world as a black person. She tells the story of Irene Redfield, a reserved and methodical woman who coincidentally encounters her childhood friend, the fierce and seductive Clare Bellew. They both pass as white, but while Clare controls the situation to her own advantage, Irene unconsciously uses it to build and guarantee her security. In the essay “Passing: Race, Identification, and Desire,” Catherine Rottenberg explains how the “compelling race identification” creates a desire to assimilate whiteness, – while trying to remain true to blackness - which most likely is the origin of Irene’s fears. Meanwhile, in

The Color of Water, James McBride’s autobiography and tribute to his mother, gives the reader a look into his childhood and growing up biracial. James McBride was born to an African-American father and a Polish Jewish immigrant mother in 1957. While James was too young to fully grasp the civil rights and black power events that took place in the 1960s, he recounts experiencing these events vicariously through his older siblings. James McBride does a marvelous job at painting a vivid picture for his readers in The Color of Water. Although McBride utilizes language and rhetorical devices to alter meaning there are passages that require critical examination of language. A critical examination of language contributes to our understanding of a literary text by deepening and expanding our understanding of a work of literature. A critical analysis of The Color of Water will allow us to break this piece of literature into parts and examine its components. In doing so, the reader can offer alternative meanings about each part.

Racial identity is an important concept that everyone must deal with in their life. It is an individual’s sense of having their identity be defined by belonging to a race and or ethnic group. How strong the identity is depending on how much the individual has processed and internalized the sociological, political, and other factors within the group. In some instances, people do not identify with their race and they will “pass” as another. Nella Larsen, an African American writer and prominent member of the Harlem Renaissance movement, she explores the consequences of “passing”. Larsen’s Passing is a novel that challenges the concept of ethnicity, race and gender while revolutionizing the idea of what we describe as identity. The novel explores the issue of race through vivid plotting that depicts a mentally touching story of affecting boundaries in the early American society. The novel also explores the effects of racial construction on a person through multiple levels. Through Larsen’s characterization and setting she is able to bring out the social construction of race in an enjoyable and educated format in which race, class distinction and identity themes are intertwined. Larsen herself often struggles with identity, as she grew up being raised by an all-white household after her father, a black West Indian, disappeared from her life. Larsen depicts the theme of racial identity by using two women characters, both of which are attractive, and are “light” enough to be able

Nella Larsen’s Passing explores the dynamics of privilege within a purely African American context. Instead of focusing on the privilege of White Americans, which is obvious and self-evident, Nella Larsen focuses on the privilege of a certain social class of African Americans: the upper class Harlem socialites. This is done through Irene, who embodies this form of privilege. In fact, Irene’s obsession with security is only possible through her privilege. She also rejects passing in superficial terms without considering why anyone in a less privileged position then her would utilize this strategy in a racist America. Her disapproval of Clare is rooted in Irene’s fear of Clare disrupting the status quo. Passing is able to form a complicated

Throughout her novel Passing, Nella Larsen explores the limits of a monochromatic world and the separation of black and white. Larsen reveals what it means to be black, what it means to be white, and ultimately the struggles one faces should they try to be both. Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, two African-American women in post-World-War-I-America, find themselves on opposite ends of the spectrum despite having started from the same place: the ‘black’ streets of south side Chicago. Clare, passing as white, searches, from the depths of her ‘new life,’ to re-immerse herself in the life she left behind, however despite her desperate efforts, finds her self lost in a grey area. Clare has a vast hole in her identity, which progressively grows as she struggles to find herself culturally, physically and emotionally bouncing back and forth between two races.

Equality. This word carries an enormous amount of meaning and relativeness in today’s society. After the turning points in history such as the 13th and 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights movement, and many others, African Americans are still in a critical battle for equal and fair treatment by the judiciary body of government. The disproportion of blacks being murdered by civil servants in relation to the Caucasian percentage is highly alarming and telling of how far this country still has to progress. It seems as every day, new footage is being released that shows police officers shooting unarmed black citizens. The African American’s uphill battle is one of the most telling and critical on going struggles this country has created.