Racism
Topic: Reflect on whether Zora Neal Hurston deals with the issues of racism?
The topic of racism is a very intriguing one for me. Other authors criticized Zora Neal Hurtson that she, being a black woman during the black liberation movement in the 1910’s, should be writing about white people Blacks Black">black people being set free and how they are being suppressed by the world around them. Instead, Zora mainly deals with the issues of the women being suppressed and not allowed to be free. This idea itself mirrors that of freeing black people, but yet authors of the time were not able to see that, they called her book artificial and did not help them in their quest for freedom.
The authors of the time did have a valid reasoning to believe that the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was such an uninspiring novel. An artificial reading of the novel shows the reader a few small points that came make people mad. Janie the main character lives a sheltered life. Her grandmother, an ex-slave, shelters her from such a world, and she is brought up in a rich environment. All the black people that she do see are fairly well-off. She marries her first husband, Logan, who is not financially stable and she has to do labor, so she leaves him. Her next husband, Jody brings her to an all black city, Eatonville. The city mirrors that of a white city. Jody makes all the rules in the town and soon it becomes prosperous and grows while Jody makes a lot of money. She is unhappy in this rich white society. Thus when Jody dies, she goes off into the Everglades with Tea Cake and works in the fields where she is able to find true happiness. This is what an artificial reading of the book shows.
The Essay on John Griffin Black White People
Black Like Me: Racism Is A Foolish Misunderstanding of Man All men are created equal... or are they? John Griffin's 'Black Like Me " shows how racism is nothing more then the foolish misunderstanding of man. White's current superiority hangs in the balance as Blacks become tired of being the minority, in the late 1950's. Even though this struggle isn't as dreadful as it was then, it still exists. ...
But at the Everglades is when Zora Neal Hurston really deal with the issue of racism to its fullest affect. With the character of Mrs. Turner, she shows how everyone is racist in the world. Also, when the Indians were passing by in the Everglades before the hurricane, the black workers called them stupid and that the white man knows more than dumb. Here Hurston shows that even black people themselves are racist and that they have nothing to argue against. The biggest part is when they must burry the dead people after the hurricane blwos by, the black people are buried in a mass grave while white people are given a separate burial.
This is how Neal Hurtson deals with racism. She mocks the black critics of the time and show that they themselves are racist against other people, so their argument for freedom is only half and argument and has no valid basis. Also during the time, Booker T. Washington was speaking of his ideals of ethnic integration, the character of Mrs. Turner is what would be stemmed from this ethnically integrated person. But Zora Neal Hurtson sees that the black people are fighting for their freedom, but she tries to show that their battle is only half a battle. Zora Neal Hurston wants to have freedom for everybody, blacks, Indians, and also, females. But what Zora Neal Hurston doesn’t see if that, if you fight for everything, you might not get any amount of freedom.
