In One Friday Morning Nancy Lee, a beautiful, proud African American student, is given the Artist Club Scholarship but unfortunately it is taken away from her “when the committee learned that [she was] colored.” It is not right nor fair what Nancy Lee faces, but it is and has been an ongoing issue here in the world today. America has struggled with racism for over centuries now. What is racism exactly? Racism is hatred or intolerance of another race or races. We as a country tend to brush off racism and act as though the problem has diminished over the years but it is still very much an issue here in America. Our government and our people can pass as many laws as they want, but no laws will change us, the people. We the people as a nation need to be willing to change to better the world Americans live in. One needs to learn to be accepting of the others in this nation. It does not matter that on the outside one may look or appear different because on the inside everyone looks the same. Everybody wants the same things in life. One just wants to have a happy life full of love. One should never deny that to anyone because of the color of their skin pigment. No one should ever be judged or discriminated against.
Nancy Lee is very proud of who she is and where she comes from. Until the scholarship she received was taken away from her, she holds her head high as an African American and loves who she is and the country she lives in. Even after the scholarship is taken away from her she promises to make a difference in the world. As the pledge comes to an end and the words “one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” are spoken, Nancy Lee thinks to herself “That is the land we must make.” She keeps confide...
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...p away, she is not. Instead, she uses it as a motivation to make this world a better place for the future.
One Friday Morning is a beautiful story that will make the reader aware of the troubling fact that racism is still very much alive and a hard battle that many in America still have to face today. It is a story that will provoke the reader’s feelings. It will make one think twice before they judge another human being. No one should ever be judged. A Person is a person no matter what color their skin may be. Everybody is the same on the inside. Everyone bleeds red.
Works Cited
Hughes, Langston. "One Friday Morning." In An Introduction to Literature, by Barnet-Burto-Cain, 476-481. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006.
Roberts, Michael. "The Enduring Stench Of Racism." OEN, 2014: 1.
Thorndike-Barnhart. Student Dictionary. Glenview: Foresman and Company, 1988.
This piece of autobiographical works is one of the greatest pieces of literature and will continue to inspire young and old black Americans to this day be cause of her hard and racially tense background is what produced an eloquent piece of work that feels at times more fiction than non fiction
Anne Moody’s memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, is an influential insight into the existence of a young girl growing up in the South during the Civil-Rights Movement. Moody’s book records her coming of age as a woman, and possibly more significantly, it chronicles her coming of age as a politically active Negro woman. She is faced with countless problems dealing with the racism and threat of the South as a poor African American female. Her childhood and early years in school set up groundwork for her racial consciousness. Moody assembled that foundation as she went to college and scatter the seeds of political activism. During her later years in college, Moody became active in numerous organizations devoted to creating changes to the civil rights of her people. These actions ultimately led to her disillusionment with the success of the movement, despite her constant action. These factors have contributed in shaping her attitude towards race and her skepticism about fundamental change in society.
Anne Moody's story is one of success filled with setbacks and depression. Her life had a great importance because without her, and many others, involvement in the civil rights movement it would have not occurred with such power and force. An issue that is suppressing so many people needs to be addressed with strength, dedication, and determination, all qualities that Anne Moody strived in. With her exhaustion illustrated at the end of her book, the reader understands her doubt of all of her hard work. Yet the reader has an outside perspective and knows that Anne tells a story of success. It is all her struggles and depression that makes her story that much more powerful and ending with the greatest results of Civil Rights and Voting Rights for her and all African Americans.
The past sixty years have been full of monumentally huge changes for society in the United States. From the civil rights movement and the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to the election of the first black President and the legalization of same-sex marriage, equality has been the subject on hand. While it may be a big pill to swallow for some, those that have been discriminated against for quite some time finally have the freedom to be themselves, knowing that they are protected under the law. Those minorities that celebrate this equality have a lot to teach the bigots of the country in such a wonderful day and age – pride. Zora Neale Hurston shows how important it is to have pride in yourself, your differences, and where you come from, in her four-sectioned essay, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me.”
Racism (n): the prejudice that members of one race are intrinsically superior to members of other race (Wordnet search, 1), a controversial topic in today’s society, a subject that many people try to sweep under the rug, but yet a detrimental problem that has been present in America since the colonial era. Will this dilemma come to a halt? Can all Americans see each other as equals despite their skin color and nationality; and what role has it played in past generations versus today’s generations and how will it affect our future? Has this on going way of thinking gotten better or worse? These are questions raised when many think about the subject; especially members of American ethnic groups and backgrounds, because most have dealt with racial discrimination in their life time.
Dating back to the beginning of times people have always been looked at different depending on the color of their skin or what your religion, race, or beliefs may be. It is in our human nature to not like people for certain things that they are. Many will argue that in this day in age we are no longer at a race war but how can you be so sure when you actually open your eyes and see reality. Rapper Kanye West once said “racism is still alive, they just be concealing it” and these words are everything but false. You must ask yourself the real question about racism and it is how could you ever cure such a thing in people’s minds? People are free to think and believe what ever they would like and old habits such as racism will never change in people.
It appear that we have been investigating the cause and effects of race and racism for quick some time, as middle age adult in the year 2015, I feel that we have run into a brick wall which seems too hard to break though, to wide to get around and runs to deep to get under.
Racism isn’t a subject that appears in every day conversations. Although most people try to ignore its existence, it’s quite obvious that it marked the lives of a lot of people and it has now become an essential part of our history. As a student who has lived in the valley all her life, I’ve been taught about the hardships African Americans had to endure while obtaining their freedom, becoming eligible to vote, being segregated, but never did I stop to think that the people who shared my culture and walked the streets of the Valley and San Antonio were going through a similar experience. Throughout the years it has become apparent that African Americans weren’t the only people who had been mistreated.
Racism is the discrimination of different race/races and is the thought of one race or color of skin has more physical/mental abilities than another. It is based on the additudes of one or more people based on the supposed superiority of one group to the supposed infiority of another. A lot of racism existed in the 1900s and with the help of some, most of it stopped. But now it’s coming back. So why do we think such things of other people? Is it really right to think of people differently because of the color of their skin?
Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi is a narrated autobiography depicting what it was like to grow up in the South as a poor African American female. Her autobiography takes us through her life journey beginning with her at the age of four all the way through to her adult years and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. The book is divided into four periods: Childhood, High School, College and The Movement. Each of these periods represents the process by which she “came of age” with each stage and its experiences having an effect on her enlightenment. She illustrates how important the Civil Rights Movement was by detailing the economic, social, and racial injustices against African Americans she experienced.
Racism is the mistreatment of a group of people on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, place of origin, or ancestry. The term racism may also denote a blind and unreasoning hatred, envy, or prejudice (Dimensions of Racism). Racism has had a strong effect on society. Despite the many efforts made to alleviate racism, what is the future of African Americans' Racism's long history, important leaders, current status, and future outlook will be the main factors in determining how to combat racism. Racism is still present in many societies, although many people are doing their best to put an end to racism and its somewhat tragic ordeals.
Racism as a Common Problem in the 21st Century Racism has been a problem since the very first day that two men of different races met in the past. Racism is defined as belief in the superiority of one race over all others. Often racism is a belief that one type of person has better physical attributes, or is more. intelligent. The snares are a lot of fun.
Diversity, we define this term today as one of our nation’s most dynamic characteristics in American history. The United States thrives through the means of diversity. However, diversity has not always been a positive component in America; in fact, it took many years for our nation to become accustomed to this broad variety of mixed cultures and social groups. One of the leading groups that were most commonly affected by this, were African American citizens, who were victimized because of their color and race. It wasn’t easy being an African American, back then they had to fight in order to achieve where they are today, from slavery and discrimination, there was a very slim chance of hope for freedom or even citizenship. This longing for hope began to shift around the 1950’s during the Civil Rights Movement, where discrimination still took place yet, it is the time when African Americans started to defend their rights and honor to become freemen like every other citizen of the United States. African Americans were beginning to gain recognition after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, which declared all people born natural in the United States and included the slaves that were previously declared free. However, this didn’t prevent the people from disputing against the constitutional law, especially the people in the South who continued to retaliate against African Americans and the idea of integration in white schools. Integration in white schools played a major role in the battle for Civil Rights in the South, upon the coming of independence for all African American people in the United States after a series of tribulations and loss of hope.
Hughes, Langston. “Balled of the Landlord”. An Introduction to Literature. Ed. Sylvan Barnet, William Burto, and William E. Cain. 16th ed. New York: Longman, 2011. 765-766. Print.
Hughes, Langston. "Harlem." [1951] Literature. 5th ed. Eds. James H. Pickering and Jeffery D. Hoeper. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 1027-28.