The US is and always has been an extremely multicultural nation. Nevertheless, minority groups in the US are tragically frequently subject to discrimination, racism, identity crisis to violent hate crimes. The groups that are most often discriminated against are African Americans, Hispanics, and Muslims. Racial discrimination was a major concern of American society during 19th, 20th and 21st century. This racial segregation resulted in the exploitation of African Americans, as there were no rights provided to them as well as had to suffer from the inferior treatment from the Whites.
These people suffered inequality as there was exploitation in the name of Jim Crow Law. The stories like “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker and “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin are perfect examples of their struggle to overcome prejudice, being African American people and to identify their culture. Whereas in “American History” by Judith Ortiz portrays Puerto Rico American immigrant life who faces discrimination, racism based on the smallest of the things, like where she lives, her skin color as well as it shows how humans can judge people and how it can hurt them.
In spite of the fact that the United States have come a long way since the days of slavery, and immense strides were made towards giving equal rights on the basis of race in the 1960s, racism and discrimination is still a very pressing problem in the US today. The story “Sonny’s Blue’s”, by James Baldwin is about two brothers, who experienced childhood in a black neighborhood of Harlem, NYC, in 1930’s-1940’s. One was an Algebra instructor and other a jazz musician turned heroin addict and drug dealer, both experiencing the inequalities faced by African Americans before and during the Civil Rights Movement.
As the story begins, Sonny has been arrested for “peddling and using heroine”(Baldwin 564). Although the narrator is surprised about his brother, he realizes that kids can turn “hard, so quick, so quick, especially in Harlem” (Baldwin 564). The news of Sonny’s drug addiction and arrest is the critical point of the story which makes Sonny societal outsider, a rejected one. This gives an idea to the readers, that Sonny’s identity is contrasted to that of his brother.
Sonny and his brother the narrator of the story are, obviously, both black, yet since the narrator has embraced way of life that is basically normal for whites, he represents the white side of the race equation. He got hitched after secondary school, went into the Army, turned into an instructor, and settled down to begin a family. This gives a picture of a “regular guy,” a middle-class American. His interests and yearnings are additionally standard, mirroring the great sense and normal values that prevailed in his time.
The narrator tries his best to overcome the stigma of his race as well as tries to fit in with whites solid citizens that everyone respects. In ‘Who Set You Feelin? Harlem, Communal Affect, and The Great Migration Narrative in James Baldwin’s ‘Sonny’s Blues”, John Claborn argues that “Baldwin’s vision of Harlem in the 1950’s shows a time of great personal trauma in a place that is encapsulating and inescapable” (89). The narrator describes the life of black kids in Harlem, “they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities” (Baldwin 564).
As per my opinion, racism limited the potential for boys to succeed in life and to escape from the harsh conditions in their ghetto neighborhood. Sonny takes a totally extraordinary course in life. Taking a way that is more well known in Black culture, self-expression for his situation, through music, enduring because of bigotry, and attempting to figure out how to manage with the pressure of life, he becomes involved with the heroin trade. In difference to his older brother, he fails the misrepresentation of respectability and the security it would manage the cost of him from mistreatment and inconvenience.
Rather, he seems to plunge himself into the very activities that precipitate more suffering. The one reprieve he has from everything is his music, particularly Jazz and the blues. These sorts are tense, not increased in value by the conservative world his brother the narrator lives in. Being a reader I feel, the narrator essentially maintains a strategic distance from Sonny, because Sonny’s lifestyle and music are alien to the culture he himself has been assimilated into.
He fears that Sonny’s interests will cause him harm, and he experiences difficulty confronting him or connecting with him due to this. Most importantly, there is the feeling that Sonny is sufficiently bad, not satisfactory to fit into the respectable way of life that the brother embraces. This gives a clear picture of racism at his heart. The narrator, like supremacist whites, therefore neglects to comprehend Sonny. Later, the narrator going to the jazz club with Sonny and finally watching him play shows that not only did Sonny grow and change, but so did his brother.
The narrator expresses his view, “I heard what he had gone through, and would continue to go through until he came to rest in earth. He had made it his: that long line, of which we knew only Mama and Daddy” (Baldwin 527). As pointed out by Robert P. McParland in the essay “To the Deep Water: James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”, it is in the end that the narrator has begun “to feel something special with Sonny and he senses the emotion in his music making” (132). He is finally ready to accept Sonny for the musician that he is. Jazz music is used to finally form a bridge between the two brothers.
The narrator finally comprehends his brother’s journey when he hears him play for the first time. He feels music helps Sonny not only to discover himself, but to reconnect with his heritage. Through playing jazz, an African American musical form, Sonny becomes part of a wider community and being seen as respectful person. His music reminds the narrator of his own suffering, his mother and father’s agony and a wider legacy of African American struggle. Listening allows the narrator to connect with the part of himself he was distanced from: his roots.
Yet Sonny is not just impersonating those that have that have preceded him. He invokes his heritage, but is not overwhelmed by it. Through jazz music he asserts his own identity. His music is both universal and personal, both steeped in community history and remarkably Sonny’s. “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker is a story of a black family composed of a mother and her two daughters: Maggie and Dee. In the 1860s, when the story takes place, is a period when some African-Americans become a part of groups, such as the black nationalists.
The narrator of the story Mama realizes how Dee, who becomes a member of the black nationalists, trying to conceal her cultural identity and fights the stereotype of her race, while on the other side Maggie truly feel about their culture and heritage and the obvious difference between their views. Throughout the story, Mama the narrator has talked about many significant items that were in the house. The items were used to represent people from their past, culture and heritage. Dee arrives at her mother’s house and views the house as an image of her childhood.
The first items that Dee begins noticing are the benches. While admiring the benches, Dee says, “You can feel the rump prints” (Walker 593). This helps the readers to know that the benches have been at home for years as well as represents characters past. When speaking of these items, Mama even mentions about, “there were a lot of small sinks; you could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into the wood” (Walker 593). Mama continues on describing the dash saying that it was made of “beautiful light yellow wood, from a tree that grew in the yard where Big Dee and Stash had lived” (Walker 593).
These make clear that the narrator of the story wanted to get the point that here is the history behind the butter dash as well as remembering the details of the dash shows the fact that remembering the history indicates the narrator Mama values heritage. As David Cowart says, “Walker is surely sympathetic to someone who seems to recognize the need to preserve the often fragile artifacts of the African American past” (175). In other words, the items, such as the admiration of the benches, the butter churn, and dasher, are items that represent African American customs and traditions.
Along with the benches, the butter churn, and dasher, the quilts are the most significant symbol that Mama mentions in “Everyday Use. ” When Dee brings the quilts out, Mama describes it as, ” quilts were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarrell’s Paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece, about the size of a penny matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Ezra’s uniform that he wore in the Civil War” ( Walker 594).
The quilts represent the entire past of the family that dates back to the days of the Civil War. They are extremely important to their culture, and doesn’t only represent the past, but also represent the work of their family members. Houston A. Baker, Jr. , and Charlotte Pierce-Baker agree when they say, “quilts, in their patched and many-colored glory offer not a counter to tradition, but, in fact, an instance of the only legitimate tradition of ‘the people’ that exists” (311).
The readers can see that Alice Walker uses these quilts as symbols to show the appreciation and respect of African American culture as well as wanted to clarify the significance of respecting the African American culture and heritage During the quilt scene, Dee is practically demanding Mama to give her the quilts, and Mama says, “when I looked at her like that, something hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the soles of my feet” (Walker 595). Mama views Dee as the prettier and smarter daughter, but at the same is also aware that Dee has a much more superficial idea of heritage.
At the same white supremacist society has oppressed African American men and women by urging them to conform and dismiss their cultural traditions which explains why Dee becomes obsessed with acquiring items (quilts) from her upbringing so she is able to display her culture in a way that will not hold her back from thriving in a society that stereotypes her race. As Mama describes Dee as, “Dee, though. She would always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation was no part of her nature,…
She was determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts. Her eyelids would not flicker for minutes at a time… At sixteen, she had a style of her own: and she knew what style was” (Walker 590). These identity characteristics, along with her style of dress and speech, establish her identity as a symbol of the Black Power movement. This makes Mama feel that Dee does not acknowledge and properly respect the many AfricanAmericans who suffered incredible hardships in their efforts to survive in a hostile environment.
Dee even changes her name to Wangero, and her reasoning behind it is that “she couldn’t bear her name any longer, being named after the people who oppress me” (Walker 592). She views items from her upbringing as something that she wants to hang and display in her home as well as wanted to deny her heritage used or followed by her ancestors. She forgets the true meaning of these items. Cowart agrees by saying, “in her name, her clothes, her hair, her sunglasses, her patronizing speech, and her black Muslim companion, Wangero proclaims a deplorable degree of alienation from her rural origins and family” (172).
Maggie, unlike Dee, values her heritage. She knows the history of everything and in addition acknowledges it. Maggie does not have the looks or the brains like Dee, however she conveys with her something more significant, which is the regard that she has for her way of life and legacy and Mama understands this of Maggie. When Dee says that Maggie will use the quilts for “everyday use,” Mama knows she will and says, “she can always make some more, Maggie knows how to quilt” (Walker 594).
Mama knows that Maggie has the learning and the heart to convey the customs that she passes to her daughters. “Maggie is the arisen goddess of Walker’s story; she is the sacred figure who bears the scarifications of experience and knows how to convert patches into robustly patterned and beautifully quilted wholes” (Baker and Pierce-Baker 314). All these stories, shows us how racism leads to the elimination of another race, division of a race and the enslavement of another race, as what took place in history.
Racism can develop among people of a different race because of the lack of knowledge about the other race culture, belief and history. Since little is known about the other race their behavior can be misinterpreted. I would say the adults and significant others in the lives of the children are the examples that the children learn to follow as they get older. By educating the children at a young age about the dangers of stereotypes we can minimize the transference of racism, prejudice and discrimination to the future generations.
