Accepting and being accepted by others is such a very important factor in everyone’s lives. In Erin Murphy’s “White Lies”, Langston Hughes’ “Salvation” and Dick Gregory’s “Shame”, three children learn that it is difficult being different and, in turn, being accepted for that difference. These children learn that bullying is a never ending issue. The children also learn that peer pressure impacts them in numerous ways.
Everyone would like to feel like we are in some ways a unique individual. In today’s society people are teased about being different. In order to understand our selves, we must first understand what being different means to us. When one is faced with the people of today a central theme emerges - being different is either adored or despised. Some people are teased because of their economic status. A person could be teased because they do not have the same apparel as their peers. A person could be teased about the fact that that person’s physical appearance is different from the others. An insecure individual could be threatened by a person who is not afraid to stand out and be positively different, and they could bully that person only because they choose to be the leader rather than the follower.
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In Erin Murphy’s “White Lies”, Dick Gregory’s “Shame” and Langston Hughes “Salvation”, being different and gaining acceptance is a difficult task. In “White Lies” a student little girl named Connie is ridiculed by the students in her class for being albino and that her obvious differences sets her as being
“…alone in her differences.” (Murphy 382). In the same manner, Gregory in his story “Shame” wherein he learns how his ethnical and economic background differentiates him from all of his class mates. Hughes ...
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... had to make a strong choice to go along with the other children or stand by and watch everything happen.
Boys and girls, children and teenagers of all ages, skin tones, races, and economic class, as well as every person in each story has something in common, they all are wanting acceptance. Each child has their own individuality and in “White Lies”, “Shame” and “Salvation”, these children learn valuable lessons that teach them that they are different. Peer pressure plays a major role in adolescences’ life it faces each child with difficult challenges that help them overcome and mature. Going through life and learning what your differences are, and learning
Cisneros 5 how to cope with them is challenging. It is a wonderful thing to stand up, be brave, and be oneself and in the process a person may get their feelings hurt just like the characters in each story.
These stories taught that you should accept your culture and that people all over feel embarrassed by their culture. You should not be afraid to be how you are just to impress a boy like amy did in fish checks. Nor should you have to change the way you dress or look like the girls did in I Want To Be Miss America, or be classified as a slow learner just because you were taught a different way than other people. People should not be ashamed of their culture just because people do not understand it and think it is weird. You should be your self and if people can't accept that then it's their
Prejudice is a cancer that spreads hate among its perpetrators and victims alike. In 1930 Langston Hughes penned the novel, Not Without Laughter. This powerful story, written from the perspective of an African-American boy named James “Sandy” Rodgers, begins in the early 1900’s in the small town of Stanton, Kansas. Through the eyes of young Sandy, we see the devastating impact of racism on his family and those they are close to. We also see how the generations of abuse by whites caused a divide within the black community. Among, and even within, black families there were several social classes that seemed to hinge on seeking equality through gaining the approval of whites. The class someone belonged to was determined by the color of their skin, the type of church one attended, their level of education, and where an individual was able to find work.
Murphy expresses how justifying bad deeds for good is cruel by first stirring the reader’s emotions on the topic of bullying with pathos. In “White Lies,” Murphy shares a childhood memory that takes the readers into a pitiful classroom setting with Arpi, a Lebanese girl, and the arrival of Connie, the new girl. Murphy describes how Arpi was teased about how she spoke and her name “a Lebanese girl who pronounced ask as ax...had a name that sounded too close to Alpo, a brand of dog food...” (382). For Connie, being albino made her different and alone from everyone else around her “Connie was albino, exceptionally white even by the ultra-Caucasian standards... Connie by comparison, was alone in her difference” (382). Murphy tries to get the readers to relate and pity the girls, who were bullied for being different. The author also stirs the readers to dislike the bullies and their fifth grade teacher. Murphy shares a few of the hurtful comments Connie faced such as “Casper, chalk face, Q-Tip... What’d ya do take a bath in bleach? Who’s your boyfriend-Frosty the Snowman?” (382). Reading the cruel words can immediately help one to remember a personal memory of a hurtful comment said to them and conclude a negative opinion of the bullies. The same goes for the fifth grade teac...
Oftentimes, in the public, people have to be “normal” to be successful and accepted. Author William Saroyan believes that society steers people to be conform and fit in, but he disagrees. In the short story “Gaston,” Saroyan shows that carving a unique path can turn out to be erroneous. Through symbolism and contrast, Saroyan conveys the theme that society does not always accept people’s differences.
In her book, Difference Matters, Brenda Allen discusses the importance of identity in an individual and in society. She addresses specific factors, from age to social class, that affect society. In her first chapter, more specifically, she talks about these factors as a whole in introducing the why differences matter. She then lays out the issues associated with differences in society. There are misinterpretations and misconceptions that become problematic between the relationship with individuals and society. This chapter is perfect for my topic because it shows that people differ from
In the poem “White Lies” by Natasha Tretheway the narrator opens the poem with vivid imagery about a bi-racial little girl who is trying to find her true identity between herself and others around her. She tells little lies about being fully white because she feels ashamed and embarrassed of her race and class and is a having a hard time accepting reality. The poem dramatizes the conflict between fitting in and reality. The narrator illustrates this by using a lot imagery, correlations and connotation to display a picture of lies. The narrator’s syntax, tone, irony and figurative language help to organize her conflict and address her mother’s disapproval.
People go through many obstacles when they face their social identity. Some can overcome their differences, but others may not have they change to even face them due to the treatment that they get from society. Social identity is the one of many controversial and complex problems that many individuals deal with. Because, sometimes it used to be misunderstood making reference to racism and/or others complex matters. “On Being a Cripple” and “How It Feels to Be Colored” are two essays in which both characters suffer from some kind of discrimination. Indeed, in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston and “On Being a Cripple” by Nancy Mairs, each author shows different attitude, endures challenges, and change toward social identity.
The “play of difference” contributes to this cycle through what Hall identifies as “the Other,” an outside group used for differentiation. He claims that “only when there is an Other can you know who you are.” The “Other” serves to provide a comparison in order to discover that which one is not; this is differentiation. Identity does not solely rely on the social differentiation of the self – identity is mutually constructed. It does not exist without “the dialogic relationship to the Other.”(Hall, 11) That is, one’s personal narrative of the self must also come into play, relating identity to difference.
Richelle Goodrich once said, “To encourage me is to believe in me, which gives me the power to defeat dragons.” In a world submerged in diversity, racism and prejudice it is hard for minorities to get ahead. The novel “The Other Wes Moore” is a depiction of the differences that encouragement and support can make in the life of a child. This novel is about two men, with the same name, from the same neighborhood, that endured very similar adversities in their lives, but their paths were vastly different. In the following paragraphs, their lives will be compared, and analyzed from a sociological perspective.
The early 1900s was a very challenging time for Negroes especially young women who developed issues in regards to their identities. Their concerns stemmed from their skin colors. Either they were fair skinned due mixed heritage or just dark skinned. Young African American women experienced issues with racial identity which caused them to be in a constant struggle that prohibits them from loving themselves and the skin they are in. The purpose of this paper is to examine those issues in the context of selected creative literature. I will be discussing the various aspects of them and to aid in my analysis, I will be utilizing the works of Nella Larsen from The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Jessie Bennett Redmond Fauset, and Wallace Brown.
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).
Brent Staples and Richard Rodriguez’s autobiographical essays both start out with a problem, but they deal with it in different ways. Brent Staples’ “Just Walk on By” deals with the issue of racism and social judgment he faces because he is African-American, while Rodriguez’s essay “Complexion,” details the self-hatred and shame he felt in his childhood because of his skin color. Both of these essays deal with race, appearance, and self-acceptance, but the authors write about them in different ways. When looking at the similarities and differences together, the points of these essays have a much stronger message about how to deal with discrimination.
Both Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes were great writers but their attitudes towards their personal experience as an African American differed in many ways. These differences can be attributed to various reasons that range from gender to life experience but even though they had different perceptions regarding the African American experience, they both shared one common goal, racial equality through art. To accurately delve into the minds of the writers’ one must first consider authors background such as their childhood experience, education, as well their early adulthood to truly understand how it affected their writing in terms the similarities and differences of the voice and themes used with the works “How it Feels to be Colored Me” by Hurston and Hughes’ “The Negro Mother”. The importance of these factors directly correlate to how each author came to find their literary inspiration and voice that attributed to their works.
The main issue that children face during this stage is self-identification. Adolescents are making the transition to adulthood and trying to figure out exactly who they are. Children during this time, often experience an identity crisis as they explore many different beliefs and value systems in the search for self-identity (Woolfolk, 2013, p.102). Societal forces, such as race, sex and class, also play an important role in self-identification, especially in regards to African American youth. Erikson believed that the search for identity encompassed not only how an individual viewed him or herself but also how they were viewed by society (Brittian 2012). African Americans, between the ages of 12 and 18, grapple with the same issues all adolescents experience, such as physical changes and the desire for autonomy. However, African American adolescents also deal with racial prejudice and the role that it plays in shaping their self-perception. According to Brittian (2012), the way that African Americans handle issues of race, rather problematic or constructive, has a major impact on the formation of their self-identity. Identity is the focal point of the adolescence stage and when children can’t decide who they are or their place in society, they become hampered by an identity
A main theme in this novel is the influence of family relationships in the quest for individual identity. Our family or lack thereof, as children, ultimately influences the way we feel as adults, about ourselves and about others. The effects on us mold our personalities and as a result influence our identities. This story shows us the efforts of struggling black families who transmit patterns and problems that have a negative impact on their family relationships. These patterns continue to go unresolved and are eventually inherited by their children who will also accept this way of life as this vicious circle continues.