Analysis Of 'Covering: The Hidden Assault On Our Civil Rights'

Improved Essays
It has always been known that basic human nature embeds the will to reach satisfaction and conformity in society through all means. Due to this, acceptance is customarily regulated to fit the requirements created by those who are considered superior. As individuals we are pressured to assimilate in order to fulfill the emotional void in the social aspect of their life. In Kenji Yoshino’s “Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights”, the concept of “covering” is introduced as a means to assimilate into the melting pot of society but is also viewed as a threat to both moral dignity and the civil equilibrium deserved by humanity. Covering can be defined as hiding one’s natural identity to meet the standards that are required of the individuals. The power of covering leads to demands that damage one’s integrity but remains relevant to American society due to its immense …show more content…
Although Yoshino states that covering is a hidden assault on civil rights, it is agreeable that Americans are aware of covering but do not receive it to be as great of a threat as it truly is. Yoshino states “Contemporary civil rights law generally only protect traits that individuals cannot change … This means that current law will not protect us against most covering demands, because such demands direct themselves at behavioral aspects of our personhood”(Yoshino 295). Revealing that civil rights laws are mindful of covering but are unable to protect against the demands. In the aspect of morality, covering to achieve a personal goal is damaging to culture. An example of such immoral action is social contracts which dimean the essence of both the social work environment and the integrity of individuals. Yes, there are benefits that are achievable like the example that Yoshino used about slaves gaining freedom by “acting white” but the conscious corruption stays relevant to

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    There have been several times within American politics where the rights of groups of people have been fought over. These types of fights have been spread over the course of America’s history the most well known being the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. One of the most recent of these fights was the repeal of California’s Proposition 8, originally titled the “California Marriage Protection Act,” which only affected same-sex couples. Proposition 8 was a proposal for an amendment addition to the California constitution stating “only marriage between a man and a women is valid or recognized in California,” creating controversy between groups. The California Supreme Court saw that “limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples,” was violating…

    • 1742 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Foreign cultures are stigmatized, or shamed, for possessing different lifestyles and physical features because they don’t fit into the mainstream society of the culture. Many of these foreign people conform and find different ways to blend in with the culture. Kenji Yoshino, author of “Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights,” discusses several instances where people try and “cover” or tone down a disfavored identity (293). On many occasions, people cover a disfavored identity to assimilate themselves into a more accepted society. Yoshino suggests that we cover based on four axes where we assimilate to a culture: appearance, affiliation, activism, and association (305).…

    • 2083 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The essay “Los Intersticios: Recasting Moving Selves” by Evelyn Alsultany, introduces a still existing issue in our society. The Author Evelyn Alsultany shows in this essay, her own collection of struggles, in having a mixed racial background. “The bridge becomes my back as I feign belonging, and I become that vehicle for others, which desires for myself” (Alsultany, 236). Evelyn finds herself constantly in the situation of being questioned by other strangers from which ethnic background she’s coming from, because she doesn’t look like the typical American.…

    • 389 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Author of the poem experience a racial prejudice which he explicitly addresses. He reflects how life was under the circumstances he was in. The speaker is excluded from the mainstream and dominant American society because of the color of his skin. He responded to the experience of exclusion by wearing what he called a mask. The advantage with his response by hiding his pain from society could end up disadvantaged by losing his true self.…

    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Search and seizure laws have been around since the beginning of the United States of America, and have a very controversial history. Many deem the way the laws are practiced unconstitutional, and oppressive to minorities, while others think they are just and need to be carried out to stop crime. Police officers have found many missing persons and have also brought down many drug dealers all while staying in the lines of legal search and seizure. Many people fear officers can overstep their boundaries and think that search and seizure laws are the underlying cause of mass incarceration, which Michelle Alexander examines in her book The New Jim Crow.…

    • 1234 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Freedom Summer Murders “Hatred isn’t something you’re born with, It’s taught.” (Mississippi Burning Mrs.Pell) On June 21, 1964 three young civil rights workers were killed on their way back from Meridian by the KKK. These three young men were James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, or Mickey for short. James was the only African American out of the three.…

    • 1122 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When I was unconfident in public I succumbed to pressure and changed my ways. When we are unconfident others are not only blind to our true identity they modify and shape an increasingly fake identity. To conclude this essay we see that it is our responsibility to ensure that we show who we are and be proud of it when surrounded by others it doesn't matter whether your black, white green or Muslim Jew or Christian but it does matte that we believe in our identity and…

    • 564 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The book The Wall Between by Anne Braden tells a story of segregation in the 1950s, and how a white couple buys a home for a black couple and the fight the two couples had to go through. Housing issues during this time were critical in the fight for Civil Rights. Equal protection under the law, home values, and pressure of society are some of the reasons housing was an issue the Civil Rights struggle. Braden shines light on how the housing issue was struggle for the Wade family and violent acts made towards. Anne and Carl Braden were a white family who lives in Louisville, Kentucky The Wades, who lived in the same town, were unable to purchase the home that they felt was a good fit to raise their family in.…

    • 1276 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    By the turn of the nineteenth century America was a new and prosperous young nation, being built upon principles of ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’. By the middle of the decade the nation was struggling to hold true to these principles, as it denied rights to Native Americans, women, and Blacks. Although the injustice was greatly resisted: Native Americans fought to keep their land, women fought for equality, and blacks were faced with the unrelenting task of fighting for freedom. One of the most notable cases of blacks fighting for their rights happened in the 1850s with Dred Scott. Scott was an African American slave who sued for his freedom in 1857 in Dred Scott v. Sanford; the case is commonly known as the Dred Scott Decision.…

    • 1682 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    People often “wear a mask,” hiding their true identity from society in order to cope with difficult or potentially violent situations, or to control society’s perception of them. Because of America’s difficult past, particularly the aftermath of slavery and the fall of the genteel South, this “mask” often appears in American Literature. Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” is a poem showing the raw pain that was felt in the 1890s, particularly within African American community. Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” is a short story about people who use the idea of the mask to hide their flawed personalities from a judgmental society. Although these two works are from very different times and have different reasons for wearing the…

    • 1528 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The civil Rights Act of 1964 is consisted of three different civil Rights acts, the first one is the one that study abuses, the second one is the one that says that the fourteenth amendment cannot be ignored, especially when is related to voting. The third one is about equal pay to women. In the civil Rights of 1964 is when everything started changing for African Americans and also strengthens the first and second Acts. The provisions that came with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were great. All of them were enforced right away but they were not fully accepted for the Caucasians, the accommodations were integrated to daily basis within 10 years after the Civil Rights were passed.…

    • 476 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Today the United States are commonly referred to as a melting pot due to people of all different races, customs and beliefs coming together and melting as one. When people come to the United States they generally have a vision for what’s called the American Dream; this dream either consists of hitting it big with wealth and materialistic things, or hitting it big and being able to provide for one’s family. In The Circuit self-written by Francisco Jimenez, the author narrates a story of how he and his family of migrant workers arrived from Mexico to California in search of consistent work to provide for the family. Over a span of years, Francisco comes to terms and reality of what the true American Dream is and how it can only be established…

    • 836 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Civil Rights Act of 1964 Racial segregation was an unfortunate part of the U.S history. Before the mid 1960’s, people were not only discriminated against by their skin color, but also segregated from the rest in public facilities, education and employment. In 1964 however, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted. This legislation outlawed any discrimination based in skin color, gender, religion, and sex in the workplace as well as in public places.…

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Thesis Statement: In the story, Invisible Man by Ellison and the poem “We Wear the Mask” by Dunbar they both use the theme of masking. Firstly, one can notice the theme of masking in Invisible Man. One example of masking is when the women had to perform for the men.…

    • 687 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout history, humans have isolated one another based on what they consider defining characteristics; Americans frequently treated one another poorly due to race. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man highlights the values of a culture or a society by using a character who is alienated from society because of his race. The narrator, or Invisible Man, feels as his name describes him, invisible, because he is African American and has been ignored, forgotten, disregarded, and overlooked throughout the novel. His white counterparts disregard his existence, worth, and humanity causing a sense of alienation to develop in the narrator. These isolating experiences the Invisible Man endures throughout his journey reveals the unjust morals of the novel’s…

    • 730 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays