Analysis Of Malcolm Gladwell's Black Like Them

Malcolm Gladwell’s piece “Black Like Them” discusses the differences between West Indians “blacks” and American “blacks.” Within the article, Gladwell discusses the stereotypes brought up when it comes to the argument of West Indian “blacks” being the same as American “blacks.” Being half West Indian, half American and trying to take a position in Gladwell’s article could be rather difficult. Once a position is chosen, you must then speak higher of the culture that you identify with more, thus belittling the other. Currently in the society that we are living in we must conform into what society has shaped us to believe. A symbol of this could be the recent activity involving African American youth and the ongoing issues with police or “figures …show more content…
The most common assumption made is, when a white woman is walking either in a hall, a sidewalk, etc. She’ll clutch her purse when she sees a young man of color walking toward her, so to help her feel secure and not assume what she has already; that young man would then choose either cross the street or take another route to walk to where he’s going.
In the beginning of Gladwell’s piece “Black Like Them,” this particular part stood out. Gladwell states “To a West Indian, black is a literal description: you are black if your skin is black. Noel’s father, for example, is black. But his mother had a white father, and she herself was fair-skinned and could pass.” However this is not the first case, similar to West Indian’s is that being called “black” is a literal description of one’s skin tone. This is also known as Colorism, meaning “prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial …show more content…
For example, it’s known that back in the times of slavery you were treated differently on account of your skin color. The lighter your skin, the less whites were afraid of you. Although, the lighter skinned blacks would use their skin tone to their advantage, they became “in-house” workers; Instead of working in the cotton fields, they had gotten the invitation to work in the home for the master and his family. Although slavery has been abolished, colorism still exists. It’s been disguised so well that sometimes it is hard to tell the use of colorism. To illustrate, what is being said, in schools students usually of the same racial group will discriminate one another by using colorism, meaning the lighter your skin tone, the smarter you