How would you feel if you woke up in the morning, knowing that everyday a mass group of people are against you, because of the color of your skin? America has always come across issues about race, and this is something that will most likely never end. Race is embedded into our society, media, and even our classrooms. Zora Neale Hurston, author of “How it feels to be A Colored Me”, describes her exploration in the discovery of her self-pride and identity. She tells how living in her community she did not feel alienated or different. Tyina Steptoe, author of “An Ode to Country Music from a Black Dixie Chick”, uses a country film to understand her own life because she notices that the film sparked her love for country music, even though she had …show more content…
Steptoe says how she knows every scene in the movie because she loves it and used to watch it countless times, but she would never admit it to anyone. Steptoe states "You see, I 'm a black chick from Houston, born and bred in the shadow of pine trees and petrochemical plants…I understood that it was not cool for black girls to listen to country music or even enter a honky tonk…"(Steptoe, 422). Steptoe receded herself down to the racial stereotyping and hid herself from the world. Hurston would condemn Steptoe for her actions and argue that Steptoe should not let her race define her but rather she should forget about her race and just live her life the way she wants to. Hurston states "At certain times I have no race. I am me" (Hurston, 419). Hurston says it loud and clear. Steptoe should not be defining herself by her color but by just being herself. Now although that sounds like a great idea, Steptoe would backfire by saying that the reasons for previously tuning out country music was because of she was"…steeped in racial politics" (Steptoe, 423). Steptoe after many years knows that she is wrong for associating country music with "cowboy hats and pointed-toe boots, with a particular type of white person, the kind that painted Confederate …show more content…
Steptoe is the epitome of this because she convinced herself that black people cannot listen to country music or be even be associated with it because of how society defines them. She also disengaged herself with it because she thought that the only people who listened to country music were white racist people. Hurston would call her out on this and explain that yes this happens, we do “colorize” people, but it is not something that should define a person. What defines a person is who they are on the inside, not by the stereotype, and definitely not what society thinks. Hurston wrote this essay to inspire future black generations to look past the stereotype and imagine a world in which we were only defined by our identity. She states “No one on earth ever had a greater chance at glory. The world to be won and nothing lost” (Hurston, 418). She is inspiring these colored communities to show the world that they are not defined by the slavery, racial slurs, and that we should not belong to the “...sobbing school of Negrohood” (Hurston, 417). When Steptoe finally defines herself by her country music, and by her band, and although that’s all she should define herself by she still knows that the world may not see her
“How does it feel to be a problem?” (par. 1). Throughout “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” W.E.B. Du Bois explains the hardships experienced throughout his childhood and through the period of Africans living in America before the civil rights movement. Du Bois begins with his first experience of racism and goes all the way into the process of mentally freeing African Americans. Du Bois describes the struggle of being an African American in a world in which Whites are believed to dominate through the use of Listing, Imagery, and Rhetorical Questioning because these rhetorical devices stress the importance of the topic Du Bois is talking about.
America have a long history of black’s relationship with their fellow white citizens, there’s two authors that dedicated their whole life, fighting for equality for blacks in America. – Audre Lorde and Brent Staples. They both devoted their professional careers outlying their opinions, on how to reduce the hatred towards blacks and other colored. From their contributions they left a huge impression on many academic studies and Americans about the lack of awareness, on race issues that are towards African-American. There’s been countless, of critical evidence that these two prolific writers will always be synonymous to writing great academic papers, after reading and learning about their life experience, from their memoirs.
However, there is something to say about promoting pride within one’s community. There has been a trend in education to promote celebration and awareness instead of tolerance to combat racism. This aligns with what Hurston tries to argue. The traditional “color-blindness” model has proven not to work. At the same time, it can be argued that this is a redundant “fight fire with fire” tactic. Hurston conveniently ignores the many ways that blacks are treated less than whites within the united states at the time. Would blacks be better off if they were left to themselves in a constant situation of minority? This might have been a situation where pride was successfully sacrificed to promote give equal opportunity to all
Ethnic group is a settled mannerism for many people during their lives. Both Zora Neale Hurston, author of “How It Feels to Be Colored Me; and Brent Staples, author of “Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space,” realize that their life will be influenced when they are black; however, they take it in pace and don’t reside on it. They grew up in different places which make their form differently; however, in the end, It does not matter to them as they both find ways to match the different sexes and still have productivity in their lives.. Hurston was raised in Eatonville, Florida, a quiet black town with only white passer-by from time-to-time, while Staples grew up in Chester, Pennsylvania, surrounded by gang activity from the beginning. Both Hurston and Staples share similar and contrasting views about the effect of the color of their
Zora Neale Hurston's writing style in Dust Tracks on a Road is one of her greatest advantages. She easily and humorously show cases southern African American dialect. Examples of this southern African American dialect is when she shares with her readers co...
Hurston, sitting on her porch imagines it to be a theatre as she narrates her perspective of the passing white people. She finds a thin line separating the spectator from the viewer. Exchanging stances at will and whim. Her front porch becomes a metaphor for a theater seat and the passers Despite the current scrutiny that her race faces she asserts to the reader that her race and color define her as a person and does not determine her identity.
Hurston, Zora Neale. “How It Feels to Be Colored Me.” Writer’s Presence: A Pool of Readings. 5th ed. Ed. Robert Atawan and Donald McQuade. Boston:Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. 166-170. Print
Hurston does not concern herself with the actions of whites. Instead, she concerns herself with the self-perceptions and actions of blacks. Whites become almost irrelevant, certainly negative, but in no way absolute influences on her
From slavery to the Harlem Renaissance, a revolutionary change in the African American community, lead by poets, musicians and artists of all style. People where expressing their feeling by writing the poem, playing on instruments and many more. According to the poem “ I, Too” by Langston Hughes and article “How it feels to be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurtson, the poem and article connects to each other. The poem is about how a African Man, who sits in the dinning café and says that, one day nobody would be able to ask him to move anywhere, and the in the article written by Zora Neale Hurtson, she describes how her life was different from others, she was not afraid of going anywhere. They both have very similar thoughts,
I was late for school, and my father had to walk me in to class so that my teacher would know the reason for my tardiness. My dad opened the door to my classroom, and there was a hush of silence. Everyone's eyes were fixed on my father and me. He told the teacher why I was late, gave me a kiss goodbye and left for work. As I sat down at my seat, all of my so-called friends called me names and teased me. The students teased me not because I was late, but because my father was black. They were too young to understand. All of this time, they thought that I was white, because I had fare skin like them, therefore I had to be white. Growing up having a white mother and a black father was tough. To some people, being black and white is a contradiction in itself. People thought that I had to be one or the other, but not both. I thought that I was fine the way I was. But like myself, Shelby Steele was stuck in between two opposite forces of his double bind. He was black and middle class, both having significant roles in his life. "Race, he insisted, blurred class distinctions among blacks. If you were black, you were just black and that was that" (Steele 211).
She even talks about how they were being generous to her. For example, Hurston says, “During this period, white people differed from colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived there. They liked to hear me “speak pieces" and sing and wanted to see me dance the parse-me-la, and gave me generously of their small silver for doing these things, which seemed strange to me for I wanted to do them so much that I needed bribing to stop, only they didn 't know it” (539). Hurston would soon find out that when she had to leave her small town to go to a boarding school because of family changes that the real world is full of racism and discrimination towards colored people. I think this is when she realizes that she is
Hurston’s “How it Feels to be Colored Me” the presence of conflicting views in their
...izes that there are still great differences between them and she sees them in a positive way. She feels while he only hears. Hurston handles the topic of race relations with no shame for herself or the African American community. She is proud of the differences. She feels life more fully.
Hesitation was no part of her nature” (Walker 922). This characteristic is contrasted with Mama Johnson’s personality traits, as she represents devotion to others rather than herself. Unlike Dee, she wonders “who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye?” (Walker 922). Dee denies all of her mother’s feelings of intimidation and seeks to find her individuality by pretending to boldly confront any situation as if she were not a minority. She does not associate herself with any of her immediate ancestors and attempts to define her identity without genetic influences. Similarly, African American women in the Civil Rights Movement attempted to define themselves as individuals without reflecting on their past or ancestry. Many activists promoted ideas of progression, but failed admire the homogeneousness that came along with African American history. While the literary period of modernism did promote individuality, it also disrupted the unifying period after World War Two, which resulted in a division in
Some people feel the color of their skin puts them at odds against society, and there are others that are put at odds by society simply because of the family they were raised in. In “Ranch Girl” we meet a character that grows up on a ranch. She is intelligent but is raised in a town where education is not considered as important as events like the rodeo. She has a father who is so engulfed in his work that his daughter takes on more of the parental role. She lives in a simple world where life’s biggest worries were who was going to be up on the hill that weekend. Although she is an intelligent young woman, she lets the fear of a big world around her let her stay within the small town she was raised. She is small-minded because of her upbringing and believes that she is not good enough to attend the same schools that the upper class attends, although she has the grades to qualify. If the society that the Ranch Girl lived in where to put more value and emphasis on an education instead of the rodeo, Ranch Girl may of found a drive to go to school more important than the drive to date a rodeo