Overcoming Racism
Theses: In Kiese Laymon’s How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America and Audre Lorde’s essay “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” they express moments of racism throughout each of their essays that connect the reader to the reality of racism being a current issue that is still problematic.
#1
Body #1-Laymon
Main idea In Laymon’s “Prologue: We Will Never Ever Know: Letters to Uncle Jimmy,” he gets an important mental note about his blackness from Uncle in his last words before he died. The last thing his uncle told him was,
Evidence “No matter how much right you try to do, white folks do everything they can to make a nigga remember they owned us,” (Laymon 18).
Analysis He emphasizes his point on the way he remembers the factuality of racism that his Uncle Jimmy informs him on. Laymon was raised to be aware of himself as a black man living in America and the handicaps and restrictions he would experience throughout his life.
Body#2-Laymon
Main idea On the other …show more content…
Americans now and in the past have had to survive throughout a racist economic, social, and political system that is fundamentally anti-human. Lorde points out,
Evidence “For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call america, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson-that we were never meant to survive. Not as human beings,” (Laymon 42).
Analysis The author knows that those who are born at the bottom have had it drilled into them from birth to be careful of white people because they are dangerous. Lorde is highly aware of the invisible world and the secret language one has to adhere just to make it. One can survive but not as one’s whole self, because one’s true self, has been deemed inappropriate by the status
Theses: In Kiese Laymon’s How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America and Audre Lorde’s essay “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” they express moments of racism throughout each of their essays that connect the reader to the reality of racism being a current issue that is still problematic.
#1
Body #1-Laymon
Main idea In Laymon’s “Prologue: We Will Never Ever Know: Letters to Uncle Jimmy,” he gets an important mental note about his blackness from Uncle in his last words before he died. The last thing his uncle told him was,
Evidence “No matter how much right you try to do, white folks do everything they can to make a nigga remember they owned us,” (Laymon 18).
Analysis He emphasizes his point on the way he remembers the factuality of racism that his Uncle Jimmy informs him on. Laymon was raised to be aware of himself as a black man living in America and the handicaps and restrictions he would experience throughout his life.
Body#2-Laymon
Main idea On the other …show more content…
Americans now and in the past have had to survive throughout a racist economic, social, and political system that is fundamentally anti-human. Lorde points out,
Evidence “For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call america, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson-that we were never meant to survive. Not as human beings,” (Laymon 42).
Analysis The author knows that those who are born at the bottom have had it drilled into them from birth to be careful of white people because they are dangerous. Lorde is highly aware of the invisible world and the secret language one has to adhere just to make it. One can survive but not as one’s whole self, because one’s true self, has been deemed inappropriate by the status