Blackness

community that has internalized the dominant culture’s racist ideas of a superior goodness associated with “whiteness” and a physical and mental ugliness associated with ‘blackness’ (158). Whether consciously or not, the members of the black community around Pecola have accepted the overtones associated with the ideals of whiteness and blackness. As a member of the darker variety, Pecola experiences the great misfortune of being one of the lower classed. This has a negative impact on her…

abolished. According to Dr. Zandria Robinson at New South Negress, a Black Southern critical magazine, Formation is a “metaphor, a black feminist and black queer feminist theory of community organizing and resistance… recognition of one another at the blackness margins”, essentially providing a voice for those whose voices are silenced under the expendability put upon their lives (Robinson,…

begetting, can have children, be something more than what has been up to that moment. From a young age Pecola is forced to believe that she is no good and invisible. This encounter with the store owner is just another reminder of her “ugliness” or “blackness”. Pecola never harmed the store owner but he automatically looks past her because she is African American. This is just another example on how Pecola is never given the chance in society to believe she is good because no matter where she…

is going on. The dark ones. They aren’t like the shadows. They don’t hide, but they aren’t noisy either. They simply are; until something provokes them. They thrive in the darkness, and they have no form, because they are more a part of the blackness than I am. They are the only creatures that would block out the stars. This has happened before, years before I existed. But the shadows tell stories, when we’re all shapeless in the dark. I thought it was a legend. They say the…

which black women are looked at has not changed, but what is used to look at them has changed. Firstly, John Bell’s statue The Octoroon (1868) presents a nude female slave, bound with rope. ‘Octoroon’ was a word used to classify an individual’s blackness, and how they would be classed in society by law. The woman’s nudity firstly shows the sexualisation of the subject, as a commodity it is not deemed unacceptable for her to appear this way. As she is nude and bound, it shows that she is on…

This doubleness, registered in Hopkins’s passing narrative Hagar’s Daughter, is emblematic of a national economy in which the law itself is counterfeit. For the slave economy to exist, the idea of racial purity must exist, and the white economy has to remain in collective denial of racial hybridity (Tuhkanen 488). The social contradictions are overwhelming, as racial identity becomes a figurative inheritance (Rohrbach 486). As the plot unfolds, Hagar and Jewel are able to escape enslavement and…

and blackened out the sun. Congress passed his legislation. This is something that Liberal News got on April 15, 1935, "...a great black bank rolled in out of the northeast, and in a twinkling when it struck Liberal, plunged everything into inky blackness, worse than that on any midnight, when there is at least some starlight and outlines of objects can be seen. When the storm struck it was impossible to see one's hand before his face even two inches away. And it was several minutes before any…

After the release of Jay-Z’s album 4:44 in June, there has been a galore of controversy and attention brought towards the topic of blackness in America. I chose to analyze the music video to the song in his album, “The Story of O.J.” This song adds a lot to the discourse of the representation of blackness in America. Specifically, this song advertises the endeavors black people have in being successful in America. This video aims to both challenge and reinforce the common belief that you cannot…

as Othello’s countrymen will finally have it, no amount of rhyming or coupling (or punning) will leave unseen the black Other whom the audience suspects is hidden within Othello.” Little talks about how as much as one can try to hide Othello’s blackness in his qualities, nevertheless it is still there and will be ridiculed. Othello shows the great difficulties a Moor faced in western society. Moors were…

I agree with his points when he explains that to be in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, you must incorporate anti-Blackness within your own community (Ramos 4). I agree with Ramos’s claim because I believe that movements like, Black Lives Matter, tackles general and broad issues such as, racism, and in order to overcome these social issues you need to do more than just…