Afro

From the time slaves were imported from the Africa to the US, blacks have always been faced significant discrimination in America. Once slavery was abolished and segregation was outlawed, African-Americans generally still faced more hardships compared to any other group in the US. Many people look down and think of this group in such a negative way. There are various reasons including media portrayal and perceptions which depict many African-Americans as felons. This stigma is not only…

Institutional racism is a form of racism expressed in social, political and economic systems. “Between the World and Me”, depicts the institutional racism that plagues the Black community. Such as political, educational, and criminal justice inequalities. The “black body” is forced to create their own sense of self in a world that they do not recognize as their own. The Black body is a metaphor to describe the loss of identity. The body is no longer a physical body but a commodity. “The dream”…

The book Mojo workin’: The old African American Hoodoo system was written by Katrina Hazzard-Donald. Hazzard-Donald (2013) is an associate professor of sociology, anthropology, and criminal justice at Rutgers University-Camden. Hazzard-Donald’s book explored the African American cultural tradition of hoodoo. Subsequently, Hazzard-Donald argued that the tradition of hoodoo emerged from a range of different African ethnic cultures brought together as a result of enslavement during the Trans…

Alice Walker is the author of many great works. Her short-story “Everyday Use” is a strong work based on the themes of heritage, tradition, and sisterhood. With this book, she shows the struggle of African-Americans within themselves. Heritage is the most important theme in this story. In the beginning paragraphs, readers learn that Mama and Maggie lived in a more rural area. Mama explains in the first paragraph that her front yard felt like an extension to her living-room, which means she took…

Toni Morrison, author of The Bluest Eye, reflects the feminist theory throughout the novel. Characters narrate the novel from different point of views to help understand the story of the protagonist, Pecola Breedlove, and the hardships of growing up as a young black girl. The eleven-year-old fails to get help because of the suffering from other characters, which eventually contributes to her fate. The feminist theory is presented by Pecola’s desire to be beautiful, black women resisting…

Throughout the civil rights movement, African Americans received no respect for decades and decades, no matter if you were old or young, man or a woman. Martin Luther King Jr. was an inspirational speaker sticking up for what was right. While dealing with the same disrespect all Negroes were receiving. During the civil rights movement King spoke out his hopes and wishes for the world, hoping to change the ways of many. By using appeals to logic and emotion, it helped people understand Kings work…

Since the Africans were brought to this country, they have faced oppression and isolation by white Americans. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote a memoir titled The Souls of Black Folk to represent his concerns about the oppression of African Americans and their education. This book provides insight to African Americans’ culture, values and religion and in providing insight to those aspects, he also takes the time to speak about the color-line. The color-line or as he often refers, “the Veil” is an imaginary…

In his essay, “Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space”, Brent Staples uses the rhetorical strategies of anecdote and diction in order to convey his message that due to racial discrimination black people (mainly men) have to change the way they naturally conduct themselves in public for they run the risk of something terrible happening to them. Staples uses anecdotes to bring in the personal side of the message to the audience. Staples creates a persona of innocence…

Kate Chopin’s Desiree's Baby is a short story that depicts the life of a wealthy ‘Creoles’(White descendants of French settlers in Louisiana) in antebellum Louisiana. Consequently, the story describes some of the darker tendencies of ignorance and bigotry, as well as drawing a cruel image of the treatment of slaves in racist America from a time long ago. In addition, desiree's Baby was written during a time where political satire was needed the most as an ocean of change threatened the status…

As a result of the multitudes of eye-opening written works describing the African American plight, modern day society has become more progressive and determined to fight for racial equality. By recounting the persecution of African Americans, the poem “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and Maya Angelou’s autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” contribute to the quest for equal rights. Moreover, these pieces of literature share a central idea as they both focus on the African American…