The Moment Before the Gun Went Off: Class Discussion Essay

Reading the content in this book made me get a picture of what it was like to be a colored person in this time. My eyes were opened to the meaning of the word “nigga”. Nigga is such a derogatory term, yet now-a-days it is used by people so much. Kids in this generation use it as a term of endearment when they see their friends, or they say it when they are shocked by something. Frankly, I don’t believe they know how serious it really is. The fact that white people could look at a person and see less than a human being when they did nothing wrong distresses me. They (white people) treated them as if they were property and below them. Even though we don’t have racism to this extent

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.

Many people don’t know the struggles the African American people went through in 1945. The community treats them differently, just because of their skin tone. In the book, Black Boy, Richard goes through many hardships. He goes through many obstacles while trying to live out his life. Richard knows what it means to be a negro by the slurs, beating, and not being able to get employed due to the d Richard goes through many hardships and struggles as white people discriminate and treat him differently just because of his skin color.

The novel The Garies and their Friends is a realistic examination of the complex psychology of blacks who try to assimilate through miscegenation and crossing the color barrier by “passing as white.” Frank J. Webb critiques why blacks cannot pass as being white through the characters Mr. Winston and Clarence Jr.

Rankine’s extensive use of second person point-of-view establishes both directness and vagueness. Throughout the book, the reader experiences racism directly and indirectly, and acts as the author’s medium for expressing ideas and emotions. In one instance, we’re presumably placed in the shoes of a 12-year old Rankine, who allows a fellow student to cheat off of her exam, “You assume she thinks she is thanking you for letting her cheat and feels better cheating from an almost white person” (19). The occurrence is described passingly, as if it was one of many microaggressions young Rankine has experienced in the past. These seemingly normal happenings contrast with the book’s thought-provoking images; a street sign that reads “Jim Crow Road” is pictured after the aforementioned incident (21). Rankine utilizes these contrasts to force the reader to think deeply about

This world seems to be falling apart, going crazy, or even taking people away out of the blew. One of the main reasons behind that is school shootings. It tends to happen when people think they are taking their kids into a safe environment. School is supposed to be safe, full of kids talking to their friends, teachers, and maybe petting the psychologist’s dog just saying “hi” to the dog. For the longest time school shootings have been climbing, occuring more and more. Everyday, bad things happen which show how humanity is cruel. (table1, Mass Shootings Per Year) this graph is showing how the numbers every year change. Since the year 1982 and 2016, the numbers really do change drastically.

To show first hand to the whites the inequality’s and hardships that the blacks face, the entire first section is in a narrative and a descriptive format. The use of these types of essays lets the readers feel more involved in the story and feel things for themselves. Split into two sections within itself, this first paragraph juxtaposes two stories — one about a “young Negro boy” living in Harlem, and the other about a “young Negro girl” living in Birmingham. The parallelism in the sentence structures of introducing the children likens them even more — despite the differences between them — whether it be their far away location, or their differing, yet still awful, situations. Since this section is focused more towards his white audience, King goes into a description of what it was like living as an African American in those times— a situation the black audience knew all too well. His intense word choice of describing the boy’s house as “vermin-infested” provokes a very negative reaction due to the bad

c) Write 3-4 sentences that provide an analysis of the scene and quote. The analysis should include an explication of this scene and quote, and it should tell what this scene and quote reveal about the theme and aspect that you are writing about.

Setting is an important feature of novels. This narration takes place in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1960. A time that saw the segregation of black people and the dominance of white people in the southern United States. In this novel the setting of 1960’s Jackson, Mississippi exposes significant themes such as racial discrimination, social partiality. The setting also supplies decisive insight into character inspirations and views.

In this journey our main character also see’s the many faces of the black man, and how all of these faces where created in response to the actions of the white man never in response to one’s own actions. Towards the end of the novel the main character finds himself in a difficult predicament as he is being hounded by men who want him dead. Despite this, he manages to find a pair of glasses and a huge hat which he believes would disguise him just enough so that he can escape his potential murderers. As he walks around Harlem in his new guise, many begin to confuse him for someone called Rinehart who seems to be bookie, a pimp, and a preacher all at once. The ability to be so many things is at first attractive to the main character as he slowly begins to sink into the role of Rinehart, however he soon realizes that Rinehart’s multiple identities are merely a reflection of his inauthenthicity. Rinehart has no true self-consciousness and has allowed for others to create his image for him; Rinehart is only identified in the novel by others, never by himself. Rinehart’s character is representative of the notion of Double Consciousness as it shows the black men without the ability or better yet the privilege of self identity.

Siegfried Hummel then entered the conversation whilst reloading his weapon. “Or better yet,” he suggested to Chandler the Fair, “You might also be in the position to man the machine gun, if it turns out that Lydia is either wounded or dead, Virgil.”

Gruwell taught her class about the Holocaust, the genocide of Jews. While learning about this major event in class the students were able to see how another person’s hatred affected someone’s life. They saw that many of the victims did not survive and were killed simply because of their race. This drew a parallel for the students to see how their hatred and violence against each other was senseless. In the same way Hitler killed Jews because of their race, they were killing each other. From learning about the Holocaust the students were able to step outside from their own personal norms, and examine a situation from a new or different

The retort of a pistol reverberated through the room and those in the doorways vanished back to where they came from. My eyes went to Myles face - his beautiful features contorted in what appeared to be pain. I assumed he had been shot. I knew that shooting him would do no good…

Concerning the writer of The Pickup , indeed, having chosen apartheid as her major concern throughout her writing career, Gordimer faced a puzzling situation when this racist thought partially lost its mysterious trace in the early 1990s. Apparently, despite the expected loss of a thematic sound background ,24 Gordimer's The Pickup shows that she is still flexible

Gordimer uses different characters. He uses a colored and white resident of South Africa, to encounter how they are separated by laws, culture and traditions. In the short story “Six Feet of the Country” a colored boy dies and his body is then taken to the morgue. When the relatives claim the body to give him a decent burial, but they are given another body. They discovered that the wrong body was in the casket, “In the coffin was someone no one had ever seen before: a heavily built, rather light skinned native with a neatly stitched scar on his forehead,” (Gordimer 1327). Basically the African boy was discriminated even after his death. He was a colored boy so his body really didn’t matter at this point in time. Although the farmer and his wife had a fair relationship with the workers not everyone did. After the incident where they had been given the wrong body, Petrus wanted his money back. 20 pounds petrus had to gather and pay in order to get his brother's body back, which didn't turn out like that. Petrus was seeking a refund. At the end the neither the body is returned nor the money - ”I tried to get the money; Lerice had. We both telephoned and wrote and argued, but nothing came of it,” (Gordimer 1328). The author also states and describes the relationship between colored people and whites as, “When Johannesburg people speak of “tension” they don’t mean hurrying people in