Category: African American

African Americans are the most stereotyped group of people in modern and historical United States. Americas history with racial prejudices/biases against African Americans dates to the early eighteenth century, in the 18th and 19th centuries, many prominent whites in Europe and the U.S. regarded black people as mentally inferior, physically and culturally unevolved, and apelike…

From poetry to playwright, Langston Hughes played an important role in American literature. Langston Hughes was undoubtedly one of the most important figures in twentieth-century black American writing (Morley). He had an artistic ability to use literature as a social platform. Langston Hughes work plays a vital role in literature all the same. Hughes greatly…

Literature and films have the power to change the way we perceive others, specifically those who are at the edges of society. The representation of African-American women, in the past, have revealed that they have been exploited in numerous ways. The Black Women Civil Right Movement in the 1950s significantly contributed to the fight for…

Race has become a controversial subject throughout the years, ideas and perceptions about race are constantly in motion as society develops. Even today racial minorities continue to face oppression. Race has been created to support racist ideas and create divisions within mankind. We are all fundamentally the same because race is an idea that has…

America is often addressed as a melting pot of several cultures, cultures that are embraced and accepted by those of natural citizenship. The latter is a statement of fact, to a certain extent. Its difficult for many people to identify themselves. If I was born in America does that mean I am solely American? In…

Explore the representation of race in at least two texts from the course. The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom. (Angelou:33) How does a populous minority become so segregated from the…

In the essay ‘The Case for Reparations’, the author, Ta-Nehisi Coates, analyzes African-American history in order to further his argument that African Americans deserve some form of reparations. He argues that America has allowed for the ‘plunder’ of African Americans in the past and continues to do so in the present. To back his claims,…

Langston Hughes was an African American poet and activist beginning in the 1920s, during the Harlem Renaissance, a movement that encouraged people to embrace of black culture as American. Hughes was a prominent advocate for African American culture that was separate from but regarded equally to white culture. In his poems, he criticizes assimilation into…

Black slavery in the U.S. was made illegal in the mid-1800s. However, the effects have lasted more than a few lifetimes. Lynching, segregation, and discrimination have all diminished greatly since the Civil War, yet the trek for equality seems to be an uphill battle for black Americans. Between the Civil War and the present day,…

Brent Staples, a journalist, in his essay Just Walk On By explained through a personal story the perspective of how the American society has viewed and treated its African American male population. Society has put a negative label on African American men, they have been viewed constantly as a threat, and they also have been…