Case Summary of Cathy
Cathy Williams is a 51 year old Native American and part Caucasian female who was adopted as an infant. She is unmarried and has no children. Cathy has approximately six years of college teaching, including a bachelor’s degree in art. Her chosen religion is Catholic. Her brother is of the Caucasian race, and was also adopted by her mother and father who are also Caucasian. Shortly, after Cathy and her brother were adopted, her mother became pregnant and had a baby girl. Cathy disclosed that her dad was in the army, and they traveled around a lot. They lived on the East Coast, and she remembers attending school in New York, where she was called the N-word often from her peers because her skin was dark and she had long dark hair. When she came home from school, she was in tears, but her mother told her that she was part French, and to ignore them. Nonetheless, her peers continued to tease her and call her names, which, unfortunately, helped to form the beginnings of her childhood. Still, she found somewhat of an outlet in art, and music, and she loved to write po...
Question 1: a) Donna Gamble is an Aboriginal woman who lives in her hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She is a former ward of the state and has spent a significant part of her youth inside juvenile correction centres. At a young age she started using drugs and alcohol as a form of escape and resorted to prostitution as a means of sustaining her habits. Donna has six children, all with the exception of the youngest two who were placed in the custody of child services. Donna has quit working as a prostitute and is currently on the road to recovery from years of addiction and abuse.
One story that the Author told that really struck a chord with me was when she went to the diner and was yelled at for just standing in front of the diner. You hear stories from like this from the past often, but it gives it a different perspective when it’s a young girl. If I was put in this situation, I would personally have a breakdown. I would want to lash out in anger and frustration, but the consequences of lashing out against a white person during this time period were very large. I have lived in predominantly white areas for most of my life, and I have not experienced any overt racism like the author
In "The Meaning of a Word" and "Being a Chink", Gloria Naylor and Christine Leong examine words of hatred that are meant to scorn, hurt and disgrace people. But these same words could also be used without harmful intentions and in a fashion of endearment amongst the people those words were created for. They each had a different word to discriminate their different culture and ethnicity. These writers discuss the words "nigger" and "chink", which are words in our language mostly ignorant people use. Naylor and Leong are also both minorities who were raised in America. They talk about how discrimination and hatred towards minorities is almost always inevitable in America, which is mostly populated by Caucasians. Naylor and Leong observe how these racial acts of discrimination can unify a group of people even closer together. Naylor didn't know the true meaning of the hate word nigger until it was used against her in a degrading manner. On the other hand Leong already knew what chink meant but wasn't traumatized until she found out her father discovered it.
Danielle Evans’ second story “Snakes” from the collection of short stories, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self depict a biracial girl who has been pressured due to her grandmother’s urge to dominate her. The story pictures her suffering with remarkable plot twist in the end of the story. Evans utilize a profound approach on how to bring readers to closely examine racism implicitly, to make readers recognize the actions may lead to social discrimination and its consequences that are often encountered in our daily life.
I will be evaluating the case of Angela and Adam. Angela is a white 17 year old female and Adam is her son who is 11 months old (Broderick, P., & Blewitt, P., 2015). According to Broderick, P., & Blewitt, P., (2015) Angela and her baby live with her mother, Sarah, in a small rental house in a semirural community in the Midwest. Adam’s father, Wayne, is estranged from the family due to Sarah refusing to allow him in the house however, Angela continues to see him without her mother’s permission which is very upsetting for Sarah. Angela dropped out of high school and struggles raising her son (Broderick, P., & Blewitt, P., 2015). With all that is going on in Angela and Sarah’s life right now their relationship has become strained and hostile which
Colored people were neat and quiet, niggers were dirty and loud” (Morrison 189). A character in the novel named Geraldine, a fare skinned African American women, married, one child, lives in a nice home with a cat, symbolizes the division of African American within their own culture. The ability to get an education made or broke an African American’s stance in society. While the irony in Geraldine’s characterization is that while she feels she is an upper-class African American, she is still viewed as inadequate as and less prosperous than White Americans. The desire for societal recognition evolved into the need for verification of societal status; with status entailed an education. Society began to allow African Americans who were not as fortunate to attend school r who were not given the same equal education the title of the N-word to remind them of their lack of racial and societal
She goes on to tell readers of a child's perception of race with other life examples that she learned from her own students. She states that children learn prejudices and stereotypes early on in life from cartoons, story books and their own parents. They are easily susceptible these things even if th...
About a month ago, a rather unique woman became the topic of discussion in millions of homes and social network accounts across the world. Rachel Dolezal, a former chapter president of the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), now claims to be a “transracial” woman that was recently exposed for pretending to be black for so many years. While she has gained many supporters, the naysayers were the ones that have really made her story a controversial one. What really seems to be the concern is why her story is such a big deal. Every day, we see people of different social and cultural backgrounds trying to pass off as a member of a community that they were not born into. This paper will be addressing why the media
Statements like ‘I don’t see color’ and ‘I accept you despite your race’ conveys a major implication. These statements imply that color is a problem. I believe there is no problem with color, but there is people who have a problem with color. Walker’s encounter with a WASP-looking Jewish student that invalidates her racial identity by asking if she is “really black and Jewish” (25) and “how can that be possible” (25) makes her question if her biracial identity is a problem and if “[she] is possible” (25). Ralina Joseph, author of "Performing the Twenty-first Century Tragic Mulatto: Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self" believes the conflict that arises from the farce of “colorblindness is the reality of tragic, mixed-race blackness.”(Joesph). According to Joesph, Walker’s invocation of Movement Child, and the tragic mulatto becomes the means through which she “demonstrates the impossibility of the racial ideology of colorblindness” (Joseph). I agree with this. Walker’s biracial experiences prove that society has yet to move past race. I can only imagine Walker walking into different classrooms and everyone looking at her trying to analyze what other race she is mixed with; this other race not being the norm, which leads to the social exclusion Walker faces.
Ann Perkins, Jones’ character, is supposed to be an ethnically ambiguous person and in reality, Rashida is biracial (Glamour). Leslie Knope, the white protagonist of the series, frequently uses words like ‘exotic’, ‘tropical’, and ‘ethnically ambiguous’ when complimenting Ann. The ‘compliments’ also act as the only instances where race is spoken about in reference to Ann’s character. One would believe that Leslie’s constant complimenting of Ann is beneficial to viewers with a biracial identity, but there are some serious problems with Leslie’s behavior. There has been an historical and recent fascination with ‘mixed’ children. This fascination has crossed over into fetishizatoin of biracial or mixed children and people. Biracial people are seen less as people and more as a kind of spice that bell hooks mentions in her work “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance” (21). They are something that helps liven up the blandness of the pervasive white culture. Another harmful aspect of Ann’s depiction relates to her class. In Edison’s work, she notes that “biracial individuals living in a middle- and upper-class environments are more likely to be perceived as biracial (rather than black) than those living in working- and lower-class environments” and that “‘color blind’ portrayals of middle- and upper-class Black and biracial characters support the notion that race no longer matters (at least for middle- and upper-class people)” (Edison, 302; 304). Ann’s character is a successful college-educated nurse which is not problematic until one realizes that her race is never truly discussed. This feeds into the stereotype that race does not matter and that all people in the U.S. have the same opportunities. Again, the lack of racial representation leaves one character the duty of depicting a whole group of
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).
Cheryl has a very strong native pride and she wants to help the native people by showing the community that they are not the stereotypes white people set them out to be (quote). In order to help, Cheryl volunteers at a Multicultural centre. Their she meets a lot of homeless native people that are there because they are into drinking and selling sex, just like they are imaged to be by the people in the community. Cheryl sees past all the problems they have and thinks she can help them get rid of their problems and make them break away from the stereotypes they have. While helping out Cheryl finds herself doing all things girls going down native syndrome path do. This is mostly because she is exposed to the problems every day by the people she is trying to help. April has a very different view of her culture. She disagrees with the multicultural centre saying there is no point in trying to help the people there. April says that no matter how many people you help there is always going to be natives going down the same path and white people are always going to see them the same (quote). April knows what she is talking about in this situation because she has been living with in non native houses all her life. The native lifestyle has been gone for a long time. April sees the way people look at them and know it is impossible to change there
Although it often goes unknown, Allison wrote Two or Three Things I Know For Sure and it shares experiences that reveal intersectionality and it addresses how her life experiences and environment shaped her into who she is now. This book also reveals the juxtaposition between how people identify themselves with intersectionality and how society or others view and hold them to specific standards. This book reveals how history can repeat itself, how others can be impacted by the intersectionality surrounding them and how they feel pressured to stick to a standard placed upon them such as the reoccurring idea of being “pretty”. The book ends with Allison and her sister addressing Allison’s niece as being “pretty” and Allison breaks down the walls surrounding her allowing herself to see the battles she’s faced in the
My third major influence on my view of others was my friend’s sister and her racist point of view. Whenever I would be over at my friend’s house and we would listen to any type of hip-hop or rap music, she would always call us the ‘N’ word. She would also accuse us of acting black and so-on just for listening to a certain type of music, wearing a certain style of clothes or whatever, she would always get her racist remarks heard. The funny thing about this is she’s a hypocrite. She used to listen to the same type of music with her friends, and she used to wear the same brand and style of clothes that we wear now, so I do not understand how she can say anything to us.
African American people have been oppressed for hundreds of years. Slavery was a significant time period when African/African American individuals endured massive oppression, which refers to the feeling of being deprived of their human rights and dignity (Reed, 2016). Knowing that my ancestors had to conceal their feelings along with their cultural values, makes me feel more entitled to express my ethnic identity as an African American woman. My ethnic identity has increase my sense of belongingness because it gives me the ability to share and live amongst individuals with the same physical appearance and in some cases, the same obstacles. Society has placed its’ social norms on modern day women, which allows men to make more for the same labor, or that stop successful women from achieving their goals by installing the glass ceiling. However, there is a higher increase of risk for African American women, such as decrease in the male head of household, along with urbanization. Which caused African American women to work long hours that resulted in a devastating shift in the family structure (Reed, 2016). Past, present and current experiences of African American women is why my ethnic identity is so important to me, because it is used as a constant reminder of the struggles that I have to overcome for my daughter and the generation after