Genevieve's+Final+Project

=Our Confused Racial Mores=

=//The Klan Klansman//=

by Andres Serrano
Courtesy of Andres Serrano and Yvon Lambert** [|photo source]
 * c. 1992, edition of four

=Democracy in America= by Alexis de Tocqueville

//**A quote that resembles W.E.B. Du Bois's thinking**// "The negro makes a thousand fruitless efforts to insinuate himself amongst men who repulse him; he conforms to the tastes of his oppressors, adopts their opinions, and hopes by imitating them to form a part of their community. Having been told from infancy that his race is naturally inferior to that of whites, he assents to the proposition and is ashamed of his own nature. In each of his features he discovers a trace of slavery, and, if it were in his power, he would willingly rid himself of everything that makes him what he is." (de Tocqueville pp. 387-88)

"The greatesst difficulty in antiquity was that of altering the law; amongst the moderns it is that of altering the manners; and, as far as we are concerned, the real obstacles begin where those of the ancients left off. This arises from the circumstance that, amongst the moderns, the abstract and transient fact of slavery is fatally united to the physical and permanent fact of color. The tradition of slavery dishonors the race, and the peculiarity of the race perpetuates the tradition of slavery. No African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the New World; whence it must be inferred, that all the blacks who are now to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves or freedmen. Thus the negro transmits the eternal mark of his ignominy to all his descendants; and although the law may abolish slavery, God alone can obliterate the traces of its existence." (de Tocqueville, pp. 414-415

=**American History X**= Written by David McKenna 30th of October 1998**
 * Directed by Tony Kaye

media type="youtube" key="jXaZENPQrsw"
 * //courtesy of youtube.com//**

"There was a moment... when I used to blame everything and everyone... for all the pain and suffering and vile things that happened to me, that I saw happen to my people. Used to blame everybody. Blamed white people, blamed society, blamed God. I didn't get no answers 'cause I was asking the wrong questions. You have to ask the right questions. Has anything you’ve done made your life better?"

//**Dr. Bob Sweeney, played by Avery Brooks**//

media type="youtube" key="8hEtN0-vF90" //**courtesy of youtube.com**//

=Invisible Man=

by Ralph Ellison
"Since you never recognize me even when in closest contact with me, and since, no doubt, you'll hardly believe that I exist, it won't matter if you know that I tapped a power line leading into the building and ran it into my hole in the ground. Before that I lived in darkness into which I was chased, but now I see. I've illuminated the blackness of my invisibility--and vice versa. And so I play invisible music of my isolation. The last statement doesn't seem right, does it? But it is; you hear this music simplby because music is heard and seldom seen, except by musicians. Could this compulsion to put invisibility down in black and white be thus an urge to make music of invisibility? But I am an orator, a rabble rouser--Am? I was, and perhaps shall be again. Who knows? All sickness is not unto death, neither is invisibility." (Ellison, pp. 13-14, from the prologue)

"I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?" Prologue, pg. 14

=The Soul's of Black Folk=

by W.E.B. Du Bois
“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others. . . . One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warrings ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." (Du Bois, pg. 9).

=Black, Brown, and White=

by Big Bill Broonzy
This little song that I'm singin' about People you know it's true If you're black and gotta work for a living This is what they will say to you

They says if you was white, should be all right If you was brown, stick around But as you's black, m-mm brother, git back git back git back

I was in a place one night They was all having fun They was all byin' beer and wine But they would not sell me none

They said if you was white, should be all right If you was brown, stick around But if you black, m-mm brother, git back git back git back

Me and a man was workin' side by side This is what it meant They was paying him a dollar an hour And they was paying me fifty cent

They said if you was white, 't should be all right If you was brown, could stick around But as you black, m-mm boy, git back git back git back

I went to an employment office Got a number 'n' I got in line They called everybody's number But they never did call mine

They said if you was white, should be all right If you was brown, could stick around But as you black, m-mm brother, git back git back git back

I hope when sweet victory With my plough and hoe Now I want you to tell me brother What you gonna do about the old Jim Crow?

Now if you was white, should be all right If you was brown, could stick around But if you black, whoa brother, git back git back git back

Our Confused Racial Mores reflection Social Inequalities in America [|Bibliography]