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Diary of a mad black woman summary
Examples of racial discrimination in society
Examples of racial discrimination in society
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Firstly, we live in a society where perspective is important. Society does not take the time to look at the bigger picture when forming an opinion about a person or in this case a group of people. For one person to actually for a true view of another person they must first understand that person. In Tyler Perry’s movie “ Diary of a Mad Black Woman” the main character Helen says “ I'm not bitter. I'm mad as hell.” after her husband of 18 years divorces her and immediately remarries. Later in the movie Helen’s now ex-husband says “ Even though I almost destroyed it, I know you still have a heart.” to her. Helen who loved her husband has the right to be angry because she has been betrayed by a man she thought that she could trust and would be
Aminata Diallo is an eleven years old African girl, when her life changes completely, as she goes from a beloved daughter to an orphan that is captured and enslaved. Aminata is shown in the novel Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill as a strong young protagonist that is able to survive the odyssey around the world first as a slave and later as a free activist agent of the British. In the book, her various stages of her life are always connected with the clothes that she is wearing or the lack of clothes and show the degree of dehumanization that accompanies slavery.
wouldn’t work or it would be very hard to pull off. But if the lights
“To gaze into another person’s face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity and to assert your own” –Aminata Diallo. The Book of Negros was written by Canadian author Lawrence Hill. The Book of Negros is about a young girl named Aminata who is brought to London, England, in 1802, by abolitionists who are petitioning to end the slave trade. As she awaits an audience with King George to speak on her personal experience of being a captured slave, she recounts on paper her life story. Aminata was abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village, Bayo in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle—a string of slaves. Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. Despite suffering humiliation and languishing in starvation, fortunately years later, she forges her way to freedom; by following the Slave Triangle: living in Africa to working on a plantation in the southern states and serving the British in the Revolutionary War and registering her name in the historic “Book of Negroes”, which eventually leads her to manor houses of London. “This book, an actual document, provides a short but immensely revealing record of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the United States for resettlement in Nova Scotia, only to find that the haven they sought was steeped in an oppression all of its own” (Haper Collins Canada, 2007). The Slave Triangle had a huge impact on everyone all over the world, and it was significant for Aminata Diallo to follow the slave triangle in The Book of Negros because it teaches the reader about the cruelty of slavery, the process or different stages of the slave triangle and the exploitation of people and goods.
Based upon Sarah van Gelder’s article, the members and supporters of Black Lives Matter seek a community where violence and racism are abandoned in order for people to live together equally and peacefully (Van Gelder, 2016). In addition, it seems that the police support nonviolence and equality as a means to improve public safety, as shown by Gary Simpson’s response to the sign reading, “White people: what will we do to change our legacy of violence?” (Van Gelder, 2016). If this is the image that van Gelder sought to illustrate in her article, then both sides seek to end violence in support for peace and equality.
"Let's Talk About Mental Health" by Cindy Troy from New York establishes the importance of acknowledging mental health through her very own experience. Her description of depression is heart-pounding as the readers can relate to it. She's points out how society views the concept of a rotting mentality to be an enigma that an individual has to face on their own. However, her family and friend's have pulled her out of an abyss of flames with gathering support. Despite that, a number of the people around her were shocked at the thought she was depressed, as if depression was created from thin air, they didn't know how to respond to it. What I admired most about the article was that the author comforted the reader, telling them to not be ashamed
George Yancy, in his piece Dear White People, tries to get white people to recognize their racism just like he recognizes his apparent sexism. This is a bold move by Dr. Yancy, who is a professor at Georgia State University. The quote above, is a simple statement of his goal for his New York Times article from December 24th, 2015. My reaction to this quote and the entire article is; why I am being blamed, as an individual, for black suppression and my overall happiness in the system? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. taught us to not judge by one’s color of their skin, but by the content of my character. Yancy goes against these teachings, as he uses group politics to race bait white people into a certain reaction that he will use to prove his point.
Thursdays are good days, as Friday and the weekend are right around the corner; before you know it, they will be there. Unfortunately, Thursdays still are a decent amount of time away from Saturday bliss. Thursdays metaphorically represent my 10-13 year-old self, a time of disgust and mental mind state change.
Helen’s physical appearance is a sight for sore eyes, her style of dressing in a fancy manner can really set her apart from the rest of the crowd, and because helen dresses and grooms herself so proper, she is seen as a lady with pride. She can also show off her delicate smooth skin, that almost seems flawless to a limit. Not only her skin is flawless but she has an award winning smile that can be as bright as diamonds. Helen came from a poor family who lives in the ghetto that seems to have a close relationship with everyone of their relatives, who would do anything to help out a member of the family. Madea is an example of the type of family member that will do anything in her power to help out a member of the family. Growing up in the projects gave helen a sense of the real world and how love and compassion is a valued asset of life. Helen was acknowledged with very little education, although she does seem to be able to uphold an elegant and legit conversation. Even with Helens great talking skills, she has not held a job for about eighteen long years; other than the occasional household wife position. Her past experience from her marriage stops her from moving on and trusting any men in a relationship, such as Orlando, how she mistreated him and doubted his humble personality when his heart was pure the whole way. The tone used from Helen throughout the whole movie was a tone of insecurity, with a hint of doubtfulness in everybodys caring personality towards her. The way she thinks of herself gives her very little confidence in the way she sees life, and because of that her tone automatically changes from a proud wife, to a woman who has been hurt multiple of times.
The Notebook is an incredible movie that tells the story about two characters falling in love, growing old, and eventually dying together. Noah and Allie meet when they are just teenagers, but fall in love instantly. They go their separate ways for a while, but they eventually find their way back to each other and end up getting married. As they grow older, Allie’s memory starts to deteriorate and she eventually cannot recall anything from her past and she is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Allie portrays Alzheimer’s correctly in the movie because she has difficulty remembering her past and the people in it and is also very forgetful, which correlate to the known symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Considering that studies have shown that individuals with Alzheimer’s tend to lose recent memories first and their long-term memory last, in the movie Allie most likely had the disease for quite some time since she could not remember her own husband. It becomes difficult for her to care for herself so Noah admits her into a nursing home. Noah tries every single day to make A...
Racism is not a factor of the heart, according to Tommie Shelby in “Is Racism in the ‘Heart’?” He writes “the ‘heart’ does not have to be involved in order for an action or institution to be racist” (483). Instead, Shelby argues that racism is based on the effect of a person’s actions on deepening racist institutions or promulgating the oppression of a particular group of people based on their race. The individual intention of a person or the “purity” or his or her heart does not take precedence over the effect of his or her actions. Shelby’s argument is constructed as follows: Individual beliefs can be true or false but not inherently immoral. Therefore, it is not appropriate to morally condemn someone for holding a particular belief. However, when the particular belief leads to “race-based hatred...actions...or institutions” that is when it becomes appropriate to hold the individual with the belief morally culpable for racism.
The Confessions of Nat Turner Throughout history people have published articles and books in order to sway the public to their side. Rulers such as Stalin and Mao used propaganda to keep themselves in power; people such as Thomas Paine used articles in order to start revolution. Thomas R. Gray, author of The Confessions of Nat Turner, had that power when he interviewed Turner.
with a wasted face, dressed all in black. He sees her at the back of
Walking down the halls of Eastland High School, Brooke looks around. She is wearing a pair of ripped skinny jeans, high suede riding boots with a tie right above the back of her knee, and a tight black top. Her hair is long and straighten, which she places in a ponytail. Her makeup is elegantly done, not too much as tho to make boys think she needs it to be pretty, but just enough to show she knows what she is doing. The boys in the hall look her up and down, she begins to feel uncomfortably as the eye here like a piece of fresh meat in a den, but yet she feels confident in their desire for her. But then, she see the other girls. They look at here with hatred, and low murmurs of “skank” and “slut” trickly out as she walks past them. Unfortunately, this case described above had plagued the halls of high school for many generations.
After reading the article "Christians Can't Ignore the Uncomfortable Reality of Mental Illness" by Amy Simpson, not only did it increase my awareness about how society (religious communities) responds to an individual suffering from a mental illness, but it also reminded me of how I had made those initial responses as well. Out of the ten “how we often” responses, I am strongly convicted of at least two of them. By not being educated properly on mental health, I have interpreted a person’s behaviors/symptoms to be either based on selfishness, laziness, or lack of discipline. Furthermore, I reacted wrongfully by trying to fix them with inexperienced and amateur counseling. Acknowledging that I was wrong and uneducated, it is crucial to teach
In Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club the narrator struggles with how to cope with his personal problems. The unnamed narrator attends these weekly sessions for ailments he does not have because he finds relief there. Although the narrator may not be inflicted with any physical ailments, he deals with mental illness, guilt, loneliness, and insomnia on a daily basis. In order to sleep, he went to the doctor in hopes of gaining some medical solutions. As he experiences severe sleep deprivation, his doctor simply told him to “swing by First Eucharist on a Tuesday night. See the brain parasites. See the degenerative bone diseases. The organic brain dysfunctions. See the cancer patients getting by” if he wished to witness real pain (19). With this