“Because I’m black?” this question is a common phrase among people. But why is there a need to ask this question? Is there a difference between how we treat people based on their skin-color? As we see in the short-story Graduation Ball from 1989 racism can be disguised in many ways. The author of this short-story tries to showcase, with the theme racism, how Carrie, the main person, doesn’t know she makes racist actions.
The setting is at a dance institute in Newark. (p. 1. l. 1). This is important to know since Newark is later described as ‘home of the underprivileged’ (p. 1. l. 11). Into this environment comes the twenty-two years old lady named Carrie. Carrie is going to be a teaching assistant. Carrie herself comes from a women’s college called Mount Holyoke. Before that she had studied at a middle-class college where she had learned a lot about Afro-American, but not known any. This shows that Carrie can’t relate to the environment in which she is going to teach and it also creates distance between her and the students. Before she gets to know the kids there is a huge gap between them and she has negative thoughts about them. “The sight of the students that first week at the institute upset me, they were terrible dancers.”(p. 2. l. 32.) Carrie is a passionate dancer, which makes her always wanting to improve her dancing-skills. “I didn’t know anything about being fourteen.” (p. 2. l. 36). Carrie hasn’t really had a childhood because she had to dance all the time. Because of this it’s hard for Carrie to put herself in the place of the children, which make it hard for her to understand them and thus teach them. Lorraine the program coordinator is the first person presented, she is strict …show more content…
She gets conscious about her disguised racist actions and does her best to stop
The setting is at a dance institute in Newark. (p. 1. l. 1). This is important to know since Newark is later described as ‘home of the underprivileged’ (p. 1. l. 11). Into this environment comes the twenty-two years old lady named Carrie. Carrie is going to be a teaching assistant. Carrie herself comes from a women’s college called Mount Holyoke. Before that she had studied at a middle-class college where she had learned a lot about Afro-American, but not known any. This shows that Carrie can’t relate to the environment in which she is going to teach and it also creates distance between her and the students. Before she gets to know the kids there is a huge gap between them and she has negative thoughts about them. “The sight of the students that first week at the institute upset me, they were terrible dancers.”(p. 2. l. 32.) Carrie is a passionate dancer, which makes her always wanting to improve her dancing-skills. “I didn’t know anything about being fourteen.” (p. 2. l. 36). Carrie hasn’t really had a childhood because she had to dance all the time. Because of this it’s hard for Carrie to put herself in the place of the children, which make it hard for her to understand them and thus teach them. Lorraine the program coordinator is the first person presented, she is strict …show more content…
She gets conscious about her disguised racist actions and does her best to stop