Sample answers for Topic 1:
longer, comprehensive essay on minority identity
and the African American Dream

The African American Minority and
The American Dream vs. The Dream

            In modern America, we generally consider the term “minority” to apply to various different races, usually those who are not Caucasian. Therefore, often many ethnic groups are labeled as minority, including African Americans, Chinese-Americans, Asian-Americans, Mexican Americans and so forth. However, true minority groups, especially as presented by minority literature, represent a certain cultural experience and therefore, what actually constitutes a minority group is whether or not a group of people were voluntary or involuntary participants in life in America – for instance, whether or not a group was already here before America was established or whether a group was sought after by Americans in foreign lands and forcedly brought back to America. The three groups satisfying the criteria of the minority experience, then, are American Indians, Mexican Americans and African Americans. American Indians, as we all know, inhabited the lands that are now America long before America was ever established. Similarly, vast regions of the United States, including Texas, were formerly a part of Mexico, so peoples in these regions endured much the same plight as the American Indians in that, they did not choose to travel to America or join in its culture, but America inevitably came to them.

            Aside from those minority inhabitants who either resided in the lands that are now America before America existed, or were brought to America against their will, America is a country comprised largely of immigrants. Our founding fathers migrated here from Europe and numerous other individuals of diverse ethnicity and origin have been immigrating to America ever since. Because America is largely made up of an immigrant population, immigrant groups as a whole are considered the dominant culture. While a particular immigrant group may be considered a minority temporarily upon coming to the United States, because immigrant groups eventually assimilate to become like the dominant culture, they lose whatever qualities originally distinguish them from that dominant culture. Additionally, immigrants frequently intermarry within the dominant culture, allowing them to identify with the dominant culture even further. Unlike the immigrant groups, however, minorities such as African Americans are less likely to intermarry within the dominant culture. African Americans maintain their differences and remain linked as a group by the common bond of slavery, a major component of the minority experience.

            Because of the differences of circumstance and culture existent between the dominant culture of America and the African American minority, African Americans are forced to aspire to different dreams than the rest of America. For the dominant culture, an individual’s dreams can be realized by pursuing the “American Dream,” which was initially set forth by our Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and holds that “. . .all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Since the inception of America, if you are privileged to be a part of the dominant culture, you are granted “certain unalienable Rights” which include the rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The American Dream as it is typically applied to the immigrant culture is demonstrated by the immigrant narrative Bread Givers. Max Goldstein, a recent immigrant, tells of how on his first day in America, he “snatched up a shovel from the stack and dug in the snow. At the end of that day, when [he] was paid a dollar, [he] felt the riches of all America in [his] hand.” Max’s story typifies the American Dream in that his success is immediate; the day he arrives in America he immediately finds work and becomes successful very shortly thereafter. Additionally, Max’s story represents the American Dream in that the story is all about him, the individual, and has nothing to do with the group.

If you are not like Max, however, and are unfortunate enough to be of the African American minority, you will not enjoy the successes of the American Dream. Unlike the immigrant and dominant culture, you are most certainly denied the right to “Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” and frequently are even denied the right to “Life.” Frederick Douglass explains how the African American minority is denied the basic right to life during America’s slaveholding years in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass as he states, “I speak advisedly when I say this,—that killing a slave, or any colored person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either by the courts or the community.” Additionally, an example of the African American minority being denied “the pursuit of Happiness” can be found in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Marguerite’s idea of the pursuit of happiness lies in having a job on the streetcars, but she is told by her mother that colored people are not accepted as employees of the streetcars, on which she reflects as follows: “I would like to claim an immediate fury which was followed by the noble determination to break the restricting tradition. But the truth is, my first reaction was one of disappointment.” While Marguerite possesses the same desires and aspirations as the dominant culture, she must suffer setbacks and disappointment because of her minority identity; success does not come easily or immediately for her.

            Because the “American Dream” does not sufficiently apply to the African American minority, African Americans rely on a different kind of dream, which is “The Dream” as popularized in Martin Luther king, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Dr. King proclaims, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed—we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. . . This is our hope. . . With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.” The dream presented by Dr. King is similar to the American Dream in that, both dreams are bound in the American Dream. Dr. King relies on the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” – not merely rich, white men, but all men of all background and race, including African Americans. Dr. King also values for the African American minority the rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” rights which are promised by the Declaration of Independence yet have not been extended to African Americans. But Dr. King’s speech differs from the American Dream in that he has a dream that “one day this nation will rise up” and he knows that “we will be free one day.”  Freedom for the African American minority has not occurred yet, and it will not occur immediately or overnight, but in time, after many setbacks, one day, African Americans will be free. As JJ in the 2005 minority literature class states, “King accounts for stumbling blocks, but he urges African Americans not to fall, but to ‘rise again’ in order to maintain dignity.” The same was true with Marguerite in I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings – one day she will be free to work on the streetcars; it will not happen immediately, but with much perseverance and after enduring numerous setbacks, she will eventually have her job. Alternatively, Donald Goines’ Black Girl Lost presents the story of an African American who is eventually freed, but only upon his death. In this novel, the protagonist, Sandra, kills her boyfriend Chink in order that he might not suffer in prison for the remainder of his life. After Sandra has killed Chink, the narrator tells us that “Whether she was tried for his death or not didn’t make any difference to her now. All that mattered was that her man was free. He was free at last.” As Dr. King’s speech points out, freedom for the African American minority will not be achieved immediately. For Chink, freedom is never actually realized, except that he is finally freed from the difficulties of the African American plight upon his death. However, upon the conclusion of Black Girl Lost, we are left with the hope that circumstances may be different for the next generation due to the reference to Dr. King’s speech; in other words, eventually, things will change and life will be better for the African American.

Another way in which the Dream differs from the American Dream is that the American Dream tends to be centered around the individual, whereas the Dream focuses on the group. Dr. King tells us that if we “work together, pray together, struggle together, go to jail together, and stand up for freedom together” that one day “we will be free.” “Together” and “we” are the important words in his speech, as he desires freedom and equality not just for himself, but for all African Americans. [RF]

The American Dream vs. The Dream

The dominant culture of America remains distinct and separate from the minority culture.  In the dominant culture, we see voluntary participation, forgetting the past, individualism, and nuclear families (Objective 3).  However, these things are often allusive to the minority culture, which can be seen throughout the minority literature that we have read so far in this semester. 

We see how Jacob’s life contradicts the dominant culture.  She is forced to participate in slavery. Her family, like Objective 3 states, is an extended family because mother takes care of her children because she is forced to hide in their roof for several years. However, though Jacobs lives the minority experience, she still says, “’Give me liberty, or give me death’ [is her] motto” (The Classic Slave Narratives, 424). This is interesting because it is a deeply American principle.  Yet, the situation that is prompting her to say it in total opposition to the American Dream.  She has found herself in slavery, which is the antithesis of freedom and opportunity, which the dominant culture supposedly claims for everyone.  This is the life of a minority.  We see this very clearly in the African American concept of “The Dream.”

For African Americans, I think that the best way to define “The Dream,” is the American Dream with a catch.  It seems to parallel the American Dream, but it is at the same time remains very distinct and different. The American Dream “involves voluntary participation, forgetting the past, and individuals or nuclear families” (Objective 3).  According to Objective 3a, “The Dream’ factors in setbacks, the need to rise again, and group dignity.”  We can definitely see this in Dr. King’s dream speech.  He encourages the African American people by saying, “This is our hope… With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day” (Dr. King’s Dream speech).  This excerpt from his speech shows the setbacks that the African American people will experience.  He notes the “struggle” that he knows they must face.  He also establishes the group identity that they have, which is how they will inevitably do all of these things “together.”  Lastly, we see the need he presents for the need to rise again and the fact that one day will be their true freedom day.

In The Caged Bird Sings, one of the themes that stands out is the concept of the need to rise again and the fact that their day will one day come.  At graduation, after Donleavy had thoroughly embarrassed and reduced African Americans to athletes, the valedictorian reminds them of “The Dream.”  Though Maya is at first filled with grief and shame, after singing the Negro National Anthem and being reminded that their day is coming, Maya says, “we were on top again.  As always, again we survived” (I Know why the Caged Bird Sings, 184).

The African American culture, along with all minorities, should not be confused with immigrants. The minority experience involved “involuntary participation,” being “voiceless and choiceless,” and “the color code” (Objective 1).  One of the key factors that distinguish minorities from immigrants is the “involuntary participation.  According to Objective 1a, “ethnic minorities did not choose to come to America or join its dominant culture.”  This is quite clear in Equiano’s story.  When brought onto the slave ship he says “indeed such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely part with them to have exchanged my condition…” (The Classic Slave Narratives, 33).  The thought of getting on the slave ship filled Equiano with fear and agony, and not optimism or hope, like the immigrant story.  In fact, it filled him with such fear, he would have traded ten thousand worlds to part with it.  Yet, Equiano was a man who was forced to participate and could not use his voice to get his way out of it. 

This is quite different than the words of Anzia Yezierska.  In the immigrant narrative written by Yezierska, when Max tells his story it is described as “[flowing] like magic.”  It combines the opportunity immigrants had with their immediate success, which coincides with the American Dream.  “Magic” is a word that could hardly be used for the minority experience. 

However, just as the student JJ records in their 2005 midterm, “The African American slave narrative, however, shows a completely different side. They arrive in the land of milk and honey only to find out they are the ones milking the cows and fighting off the bees.”  His comment shows how distant the minority experience is to the slave narrative. In the minority experience, with the examples of Sandra and Chink, we see that the only way for them to get ahead is through unjust means.  Even when Sandra tries to work for Sammy for an honest living, it seems as if this just is not meant to work out.  The black officer who helps arrest Sandra and Chink reflects and notices the cheap wardrobe of the white officers.  Then, he “[glances into the car at Chink, who wore fifty-dollar pants and a pair of alligator shoes that must have cost a hundred dollars” (Black Girl Lost, 63).  He sees that Sandra and Chink were trying to pull “up out of the ghetto” (Black Girl Lost, 63).  Unfortunately, drug dealing seemed to be the only opportunity to make this a reality.

The issues in minority literature are relevant and interesting to today’s culture.  We can see the issues of dominant culture, “The Dream,” and the immigrant stories all within the literature that we have read so far in this semester.  Hopefully, strong African American leaders will continue to pen their ideas and continue to inspire the African American culture to keep dreaming of a truly free America.  [KR]

Dominant vs. Minority

            The dominant culture of the United States is for all intents and purposes an immigrant culture.  These are the people who chose their own path.  In the excerpt from Bread Givers, the immigrant mentality is clearly shown. Max Goldstein tells a story that exemplifies the immigrant spirit and endorses the dominant culture’s forward thinking ideals.  When Goldstein exits the boat he immediately “pushes” himself into the work force.  This immigrant narrative shows the ideal: a man choosing a path and following it without looking back.  The immigrant plunges into the workforce almost forcing those in charge to accept him.  As is pointed out in AH’s 2005 midterm, Goldstein becomes successful due to his own determination; even his limitations of speech and money can not hold him back.  In contrast, the minority experience is dominated by barriers and force.  Objective one in the course syllabus defines the minority experience through involuntary participation, and without voice or choice.  This is certainly true when examining African American literature. 

Africans, typically as in Olaudah Equiano’s case, were not given a choice in their participation; they were forcibly taken from their homeland and sent to the America’s.  Once there the displaced African was not given a choice as to where to go, but instead forced from one situation to another at the whim of a master.  In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the author is dependent on the whims of his master.  In chapter five, it is not Douglass’ choice to leave the plantation for Baltimore but his master’s.  He is moved from one place to another throughout his early life, not through his own will or choice, but through the whims or circumstances in his masters’ lives.  It is his master’s death that sends him back to the plantation to be divided as a possession among the heirs (373-4).  He, as a possession, is not allowed to participate in the planning of his own future.  He has no say, no choice, in where he is sent or to whom he is given. 

The lack of choice is not only limited to the slave.  In Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Marguerite describes an encounter between Momma and the powhitetrash girls.  The girls are deliberately disrespectful to Momma, but Momma is quiet throughout the episode, only singing hymns as they disrespect her (24-6).  Momma is aware that even though she owns the property that these children reside on that she is black and that despite being their elder and a respected member of her own community, she had no voice even among the poorest and youngest and trashiest of the dominant culture outside.  Similarly, when Chink and Sandra are arrested in Black Girl Lost, despite the rough handling by the police both black teachers and black police officers refuse to speak up (60-3).  The black teachers are aware that “they could and would be handled the same way if they so much as opened their mouths” (60).  And while the black officers are offended by derogatory things uttered by the white officers, they say nothing. 

While the dominant culture relies on the “American Dream,” the African American like other minorities must fall back on a modified dream.  Where the immigrant Goldstein is allowed to immediately work alongside and in the midst of the dominant culture, the opposite is seen in African American literature.  Douglass, for instance, even though he has escaped from slavery fears both white and coloured people seeing them as potential kidnappers who will send him back to slavery (422).  He is later prohibited from plying his trade as a caulker due to prejudice and is forced to take a lower paying job (428).  Sandra and Chink in Black Girl Lost must modify their “American Dream.”  As opposed to the emphasis on the “individual or nuclear family” of the “American Dream” they create their own “alternative family” (Obj. 3).  When Sandra’s mother turns her out Sandra creates her own family with Chink (56).  Sandra’s boss, Sammy, is another non traditional family member.  He is alternately seen as a father figure and protector in her life. [PR]

African American Literature: An Ongoing Struggle for Inclusion and Voice

   In Tony Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved, there is a scene that borrows from African American folklore.  It involves an exchange between an overseer and a slave named Sixo.  For the purposes of this mid-term examination, the overseer represents the dominant culture and therefore epitomizes the immigrant whose descendents came to the U.S.A. to pursue the “American Dream.”  Sixo is a black man who symbolizes minority culture, and his people did not choose to come to America.  They were instead kidnapped from their homeland and arrived in chains to be used as a source of unpaid labor.  In Morrison’s tale, the slave has been caught by the overseer eating a hog that he has stolen and cooked.  Being overworked, Sixo knows hunger.  The overseer calls Sixo a thief, but the black man rejects this designation.  He points out that in his own mind, he has simply been about the business of improving his master’s property:

                                    Sixo plant rye to give the high piece a better chance

                                    Sixo take and feed the soil, give you more crop

                Sixo take and feed Sixo give you more work ( Morrison 190).

The overseer is amused, but he whips Sixo anyway to teach him a lesson: “Definitions belonged to the definers—not the defined” (190).

   I use Tony Morrison’s story because it is loaded with many of the major issues addressed in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, and Black Girl Lost. The story of Sixo illustrates that minority culture (and African America Literature as a reflection of it) cannot be divorced from the unequal distribution of economic power in the United States and the reality of racial and color based discrimination.  As the result of each, African Americans have had to struggle to express their own voice since the founding of this nation. The story of Sixo also reveals the inherent tension which exists between “The Declaration of Independence” written in 1776, and Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech delivered in 1963. Each of these texts addresses the question of who is to be included in our nation’s definition of humanity; each focuses on the issue of power and its relationship to justice; and each concerns the role of voice and agency as vital ingredients in developing strategies to move a particular political program forward.

   When Thomas Jefferson wrote “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” only white males who owned property were being considered in his formula.  Outside of his definition of “men” were all females, indentured servants, criminals, indigenous people, and of course all black slaves.  And by equating skin color to the condition of slavery, slave-owners like Jefferson were allowed to do two things; 1. They assured themselves of a labor force that was easily identifiable and therefore more effectively controlled.  2. And by utilizing racism, they could obscure the class divisions which existed between slave-owners and poor white immigrants since the founding of Jamestown in 1607.  If the “American Dream” offered the promise of a better life through hard work for the immigrant, for Frederick Douglass it meant only a lifetime of forced servitude.

   In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass follows the pattern of the slave narrative genre.  The story is told from the first person-point-of-view by a category of person—a slave.  Douglass acts as witness and authentic spokesperson for his entire race, as he offers testimony concerning the brutality of the slave experience.  He writes about the sadistic whippings, the sexual exploitation suffered by female slaves at the hands of their masters, the physical hunger he endured, and the pain of separation caused by family members being sold off at the auction block.  But Douglas also describes the two factors that enabled him to survive.  They were his desire to learn how to read, and his willingness to physically fight back.  It marks an epiphany for Douglass when his master points out to his mistress that it is illegal to teach a slave to read and that it would forever make one unfit for service:

                                  I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing

                                 difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the

                                 black man…From that moment, I understood the pathway

                                 from slavery to freedom (Douglass 364)

When Douglass is sent to a farm-renter who had a reputation for being a first-rate overseer and slave breaker, Douglass fights back when the white man tries to beat him and he wins the fight:

This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave.  It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood…The gratification afforded by the triumph was a full compensation for whatever else might follow, even death itself…I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact (395).

Here, Frederick Douglass advances a political strategy that links literacy to freedom.  Importantly, by claiming a natural right to self-defense, he also links himself directly to his American revolutionary heritage.

   The Civil War ended slavery but the defeated slavocracy remained determined to reconsolidate its power over the south.  It did so by advocating white supremacy and anti-black violence.  With the overthrow of Radical Reconstruction following the war, and the Supreme Court Ruling in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson that separation of the races did not violate the 14^th Amendment, the stage was set for the next major battle for civil rights in the minority experience.  When Martin Luther King bemoaned in his dream speech that one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, “The Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination,” he was partially singing the weary blues, as he went on to describe men and women like Uncle Willie, who we find in Maya Angelou’s, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.

   In this autobiography Angelou relates how one day she walked into her grandmother’s store (the only one for Negroes in her small southern city) to find her severely deformed uncle standing erect behind the counter serving two colored school teachers who are visiting from out of town.  Because Uncle Willie had been dropped as a small child, it required tremendous spiritual strength to remain in a position with his back unbent.  Maya wondered why he was pretending, and when the out-of-towners finally leave the store, she describes her Uncle’s behavior as being “like a man climbing out of dream”(Angelou 12-13).  Angelou goes on:

                                   He must have tired of being crippled, as prisoners tire of

                                   penitentiary bars and the guilty tire of blame…the looks

                                   he suffered of either contempt or pity had simply worn him

                                  out, and for one afternoon…he wanted no part of them…(13)

Uncle Willie’s behavior is an understandable reaction to his physical condition, but clearly Angelou is also using this incident to make a broader point concerning the spiritual drain entailed for a black person living in a racist society.  Later in this book, Uncle Willie must sleep in empty potato and onion bins to avoid lynch law because a black man has allegedly offended a white woman.  In some ways, Uncle Willie’s survival strategies seem rather timid, especially in comparison to say a Frederick Douglass.  Yet even The March on Washington in 1963 was criticized by Malcolm X as being a lame response to the plight of black America. So the voices in minority culture in reaction to racism has always been varied, and what they help prepare us for in African American Literature is the explosive rage to be found in Donald Goines’ Black Girl Lost.

   Black Girl Lost unleashes the kind of anger and fury that is reminiscent of the explosions that rocked our large urban cities and sent them up in flames following the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968.  The protagonist in the story is a young black girl named Sandra, and she is a child of poverty who must live with daily hunger.  Without even stating it, Goines sub textually suggests that this character is a victim of crime.  The offense is a social one, for hunger constitutes a crime of violence against an innocent she child.  This character grows to be a teenager and along with her boyfriend begins to sell drugs.  Soon they are both arrested, and when she is questioned about her accomplice in the crime she responds:

                               “If you mean honkie, do I give him some pussy every now

                                and then, that’s our business.  Ain’t got nothing to do with no

                                peckerwood (Goines 61) !

At the close of the novel Sandra kills her boyfriend and she is clearly headed for the penitentiary.  But Goines links his character’s defiance directly to the Civil Rights Movement by closing the novel with the line that the boyfriend is, “free at last” (184).  To what degree the murder of a loved one initiates its victim into a state of “freedom” makes for interesting discussions.  What can’t be denied, however, is that Donal Goines does extend the fictional voice in African American Literature and his novel represents one part of that continuing process. 

   In summary, a major focus of African American Literature is its attempt to address the inherent contradictions which exists between America’s revolutionary heritage and its treatment of African Americans.  The literature reviewed proposes several survival strategies for the black community, the two preeminent ones being literacy (education) and political agitation.  It remains doubtful that either two will bring success in closing the racial divide in the United States if the underlying structural problems are not addressed:  the unequal distribution of wealth and race prejudice.  Literature itself surfaces in the solution equation though, because we read partially to answer questions that are relevant to our lives. [GB]

Differences

     To define minority literature and culture one must identify the differences from the dominate culture.  One obvious difference relates to Objective 1d “The Color Code”.  For the dominant culture, on the surface, they are visually “white”.  For the minority groups they are visually “non-white”.  Indirectly people associate “white” with positive ideals, having power and being beautiful.  As for “non-white”, people associate dark with evil, irrational behavior and ugly.  Another difference among the two cultures is the willingness to come to America.  For immigrants, who quickly become part of the American dominant culture, they had a choice to come to America.  No one stole or forced them to come.  In Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers, Max runs away from his past, boards a boat for America to take advantage of the opportunities America represents.  For the minority groups, such as African Americans and Native Americans, America came to them.  There was no choice or willingness to get on the boat. In Equiano, he is stolen from his home, placed unwillingly on a boat headed for America to be a slave.  America offers no opportunities for him because work is not rewarded.  

     The immigrant culture is very different from the African American culture.  One difference is as discussed above: their willingness or lack of to come to America.  In the immigrant narrative, immigrants are willing to come to America and they voluntarily participate (obj. 3) in the American dream.  Their past is forgotten and there is no looking back.  They are self-motivated in the pursuit of happiness.  In the minority experience, African Americans who did not have a choice to come to America, there is an involuntary participation in the American dream.  They want to go back to their past.  As they lose their past they want to go back and “patch things up”.  There is a lack of opportunity for African Americans.  Reward for their work is not immediate.

      Another factor that distinguished the immigrant culture from the African American culture is assimilation.  Immigrants tend to lose their ethnic identity after a few generations.  They intermarry and further become part of the dominant culture.  For African Americans, they remain minorities.  They do not assimilate as completely as immigrants do.  In Black Girl Lost, we can see the differences of immigrants and African Americans.  The shop owner (Sammy) who is an immigrant is a business man is an example of an immigrant narrative.  He has assimilated and become part of the American culture.  We see this as Sandra moves in and out of the immigrant and minority cultures.  When she is working with Sammy, she educates herself to such an extent that the teachers are astonished at the improvement.  She sets up a bank account for the money she is earning to keep it safe from her mother.  This act further separates her from her mother and the minority culture.  All this happens when she is influenced by Sammy and his immigrant culture.  However, when Sandra’s so-called “lucky break” comes along she moves back to the minority culture.  She has Chink sell the drugs she found and is pulled back into the minority culture and is still connected to the past.  She is living the “American Dream” but with a catch.  Drugs equal opportunity for Sandra, but she is restricted to her neighborhood and legally cannot go beyond.  This is the catch.  Sandra does not completely assimilate into the dominate culture and does not lose her separate identity and therefore remains a minority. 

     African American culture and The American Dream of the dominant culture are related yet differ.  In obj. 3a the American Dream emphasized individual success; however “the dream” factors in setbacks, the need to rise again and a quest for group dignity.  The American Dream does not work for African Americans or it has not worked for them in the past.  In Dr. Kings speech, he says,” But one hundred years later, the Negro is still not free.”  The episode of the school graduation in Angelou’s life story represents “the dream”.  As Angelou listens to the white speaker he reminds them that they are only successful in athletics and that the other successes are reserved for the white graduates.  For Angelou, the excitement of the day has turned into a nightmare.  As the valedictorian leads them in the anthem song, “the dream” is represented in that the graduates will rise again and they are on a quest for group dignity. 

      For Jacobs, she is living the American Dream.  She is free, has individual success and she is in pursuit of happiness.  However, there is a catch as in “the dream”.  She says in her story, “The dream of my life is not yet realized…I still long for a hearthstone of my own”.  This passage resembles Dr. King’s speech where he says, “one day”.  Jacob has hope even in the midst of disappointment that she will have a home “one day”.  [SB]

After reading the assigned texts for this course I have to admit I fell in love with the literature more than I expected to. The struggles and hardships that African Americans had to endure are heartbreaking to read. The treatment of slaves during captivity and how they were treated after slavery was abolished was cruel and it goes to show just how heartless and guiltless the dominant culture was back then.

            The readings from the texts give great examples of the hardships the African American culture had to endure. Unlike the dominant, white culture, African Americans were not given a choice on how to live their lives. Objective 1a in our syllabus, involuntary participation, is a great start in looking at the differences in culture. Ethnic minorities and immigrant cultures did not have a choice in coming to America, much less agreeing to be slaves. In The Life of Olaudah Equiano, there is a reference to his kidnapping and the horrors of being on a slave ship bound to America (52). Equiano recalls his terror and sadness over his separation from his sister and him coming to America.

    In comparison to Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers, when immigrant Max Goldstein chooses to come to America to make a better life. Unlike Equiano, Max makes a life for himself and is free to go about as he pleases. The immigrant life was much easier than for the life of a slave. Like Objective 1b, African Americans did not have a voice or choice when it came to how to live their lives. A slave could not voice his/her opinion and if he/she did, punishment was a certainty. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Linda receives a blow to the head when she tells her Master Flint that she should be able to marry how she chooses. Linda openly says, “Don’t you suppose, Sir, that a slave can have some preference about marrying?”(483). She is immediately silenced and then physically assaulted by Master Flint’s disapproval towards her request and outbursts. Slaves were property and they were treated as such. There was rarely any freedom or liberty granted to a slave. The dominant culture on the other hand had plenty of freedom and liberty as they pleased. In the story of Fredrick Douglass, he talks about his mistress’ will was for him to be a free man but it was disregarded by her children and Fredrick was to remain a slave. The dominant culture was given power to grant and take away opportunities to slaves any time they saw fit. In the Slave Girl story, the grandmother loaned her mistress three hundred dollars with a promise from the mistress to repay. Although the mistress never did repay the loan, there was nothing that could be done for, “...no promise or writing given to a slave is legally binding,… a slave, being property, can hold no property.” (447).

            Although the dominant culture overpowered the minority culture, there was a little less control over the immigrant minority groups. In Black Girl Lost, Sammy, an immigrant, owns a liquor store in the neighborhood Sandra grows up in. Sammy is of immigrant descent, but unlike the culture that surrounds him, he chose to come to America to make a better life for him and his family. He starts his own business, which unlike the African American culture; he obtains the means to live out his dream. Because Sammy chooses to live in America, he is free to live out the American Dream. However Sammy is subjected to racial slurs when he is taunted by the neighborhood black kids but he dismisses the remarks as just kids being kids. Even though he is discriminated against, Sammy still has a better chance of success in his life than some of his customers that enter his liquor store. Sammy has the opportunity to live out the American Dream.

            Dr. Martin Luther King wrote his famous “Dream Speech” in 1963. He was a brilliant man who only wanted what was promised to him and to every man, the chance to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. King, like the Declaration of Independence, wanted equality and to be able to live completely free from slavery and to trust in God’s will. The Declaration of Independence gives the people the right to change laws and organize powers that will seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. King similarly states, “In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.” King urges his brothers and sisters to fight for freedom but to pursue with dignity and discipline.” Like the Declaration of Independence, King wanted his people to organize and change ways to ensure that their goal was met. However, the Declaration of Independence and King’s “Dream Speech” were different in many aspects. There were limits to the Declaration when in came down to who was considered under the word “Men.” The Declaration does not mention slavery or oppression and therefore cuts out the African American culture. In Martin Luther King’s speech he says, “America has defaulted when citizens of color are concerned.” King wants all men to be viewed as equals and he vows not to rest until Negroes are granted citizenship rights. Kings hopes for the future generations was that people, “Will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” King’s speech has had a great influential impact on this course as has the Declaration of Independence. Although written hundreds of years apart, both documents essentially have the same goal at hand.

            This literature course has probably been my most memorable. The reading and contexts of each book contain great details and descriptions of how hard life was as a slave and even as a free African American after the abolishment of slavery. The stories are so heart felt and real that it is hard not to sympathize with the author. Even thought the African American culture may not be as equal as the dominant culture today, the progress is a vast improvement from previous years. I view America and all its contents as a work in progress. [AB]

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             . . . First, we must understand the differences between the minority narrative and the immigrant narrative.  Although both groups of people arrived in America to live from another country, both groups are different for the reasons they came over and how they were accepted, or assimilated.  The immigrant narrative differs from the minority narrative in that an immigrant chose to come to America, looking to achieve the American Dream.  These people traveled alone, with family, or to meet family in hopes to find opportunity.  Leaving a country with poor conditions to go to a new land with jobs and a chance to achieve anything was a goal to many of these immigrants.  Keeping their native language and being able to practice old customs was a perk of the American Dream immigrants had, but not the minority group.  The minority culture was very different from the immigrant experience.  The minority culture of African Americans did not have a choice in coming to America.  Examples of the brutish conditions African Americans were brought to the United States can be found in The Classic Slave Narratives, a man named Gustavus Vassa writes about the trip to the United States and the experience on the boat ride.  Unlike the immigrants, most of the people on Gustavus’ ship were kidnapped from their families and crammed onto a ship where “we all pent up together like so many sheep in a fold, without regard to sex or age.”  Amongst all of the confusion over the people, no one could understand each other because of the different dialects.  Gustavus gives the reader a picture of the confusion and how he felt because he could not converse with no one.  “  I had no person to speak to that I could understand,”  is a quote in the book demonstrating a clear difference between the minority and immigrant culture because African Americans were thrown on vessels with whoever and whenever, as oppose to immigrants who were able to plan and make decisions about their journey.  As we can see, both the minority and immigrant narrative share coming from a different country, but the way they arrived and the way the groups adjusted to the dominant culture are quite different. . . . [LM}

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Minority and the dream

Minority culture has a very different beginning than dominant culture. Minorities specifically African Americans were stolen from their families and forced to come to a country to work for no money, with little to no understanding of the language or culture with no idea what to expect. “I now totally lost the small remains of comfort I had enjoyed in conversing with my country men; …were all gone different ways” (Equaino 64). The dominant culture chooses to come to America and is excited by the opportunity that awaits them. “I felt the riches of all America in my hand…”  (Bread Givers).

Stolen from Africa and beaten left the immigrants desperate and alone. They had to find their way to survive. African American’s had to learn to speak English so they could understand what the masters wanted them to do. However they couldn’t speak up for themselves because it would only earn them a beating. “Frederick Douglass describes in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass a clear picture of his voiceless experience when his master at the time, Colonel Lloyd, criticizes a slave’s care taking techniques concerning his horse, Douglass explains, ‘To all these complaints, no matter how unjust, the slave must answer never a word’ (352).” (JJ)

Minorities are forced to make their own way. In Black Girl Lost by Donald Goines, Sandra is doing her best to survive in a white dominated society. She drops out of school for awhile because she doesn’t have the proper clothing and the children make fun of her. She ends up with a large amount of drugs that she gives to Chink, her boyfriend, to sell, so that she can have money. Sandra is an example of objective 1d “The Color Code”. Sandra is powerless over he circumstances and when she becomes empowered it is an illegal power. . . . [MT]