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Model Final Exam answers 2018 Essay 1: Revise & Extend Minority Identification & Analysis (Add African America) Index to Sample Essay 1 Answers |
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Kara DeLaughter
8 May 2018
Minorities: Changing the World Through Literature
According to Dr. White, one cannot define a minority
without pointing to the power relationship in a historical context. Basically,
one must look at the minority narrative—the story as told by the people in
question, not just the canned story per white historians. The Distance Between
Us, Kindred, and The Round House are a few of the rich narratives we read during
this semester that helped us determine and define minority as we compared and
contrasted them to the dominant culture. By reading through the perspectives of
different ethnicities, genders or classes I have gained some insight into the
way they see the world and it has changed everything for me: my understanding of
what it means to be a part of the dominant culture, and thereby “white
privilege”; my feelings toward those who refuse to assimilate, and the way I
look at cultures in general. In this essay I want to continue to develop
minority definition by looking into historical backgrounds and narratives
through the lens of literary devices and the vast information regarding
minority’s that we have learned throughout the semester.
Native Americans were here fist. They
fought for what was theirs and they lost to the “evils” of the white culture, as
we see later in a quote by Handsome Lake. The loss they suffered at the hands of
white men has so marked their culture that today, over two-hundred years later,
they are still resisting assimilation—even though resistance costs them what the
dominant culture calls success: money and all its entrapments. Natives are sure
that being lured into the world of the white man is worse than being poor. We
see this idea perpetrated in How the White Race Came To America by Handsome
Lake, when the bundles or “gifts” are spread by the white people to the Indians
and the invisible man explains, “These cards will make them gamble away their
wealth and idle their time; this money will make them dishonest and covetous and
they will forget their wives and bring about a time of tattling and idle
gossip; this rum will turn their minds to foolishness and they will barter their
country for baubles; then will this secret poison eat the life from their blood
and crumble their bones.” So, maybe it could be said that Native Americans were
actually assimilating into the white culture until it turned and bit them—taking
everything they had and beginning the narrative of loss and survival.
Native Americans, as part of their
“survival” in the white man's’ world, have kept historical traditions like
pow-wows, some aspects of traditional dress, and the traditional family dynamic.
This resistance is, perhaps, a way of spiting the people who have historically
oppressed them. Furthermore, by making themselves different, or conspicuous,
they have something akin to voice—their differences are empowering. In The Round
House by Louise Erdrich the narrator explains that “being an Indian is a tangle
of red tape” (Erdrich 38). She was referring to the fact that their identity is
in the hands of the government—that the government, or the dominant culture,
decides whether or not they are Indians by virtue of some historical document
that the Natives were forced to sign. However, she counters that by saying
“Indians know other Indians without the need for federal pedigree, and this
knowledge—like love sex, or having or not having a baby—has nothing to do with
government” (Erdrich 38). The implication is that Indians know each other
because of the traditions they hold true to; their actions define them and they
will not comply with the dominant culture’s box that assumes to know who they
are, and should be.
Other minorities resist labels too, in
fact Mexican Americans are considered the ambivalent minority because often they
are not decidedly Mexican or American--they are not truly assimilated to either
culture. Furthermore, they lie somewhere in between immigrant and minority
because while they do immigrate to the United States, often they feel that the
United States took their land to begin with, so it is not like they are actually
leaving Mexico anyways. This position creates a “border people” who come and go,
to and from Mexico; reaffirming traditions with every trip “home”. However, most
ambivalent minorities will lean one way or the other, like Juana in The Distance
Between Us by Reyna Grande; she first comes to the United States and is
susceptible to dominant culture influence which shows up in her appearance: hair
dyed blonde, clothing, etc…Still, after coming and going, and never learning the
language she is alienated from the dominant culture and ironically becomes more
Mexican the longer she is in the United States. She becomes ensconced in all the
identifiers of minority status: poverty, filth, hopeless, illiteracy, and
traditional lifestyle. Meanwhile, Natalio, Reyna Grande’s father, is clearly an
immigrant by the end of the book. He is the direct contrast to Juana, and it is
this difference that caused the couple to divorce.
Broken homes are a big part of the
minority experience, to the extent it is considered a marker. Besides the
divorce and confusing family dynamics in The Distance Between Us, Impression of
An Indian Childhood by Zitkala-Sa further shows the impact of the loss of
traditional family dynamics when she tells the story of her experiences before,
during and after boarding school in the Northeast. In her “before” narrative she
tells us about learning to traditionally bead moccasins from her mother “it took
many trials before I learned how to knot the sinew thread on the point of my
finger, as I saw her do” (Zitkala-Sa 3.4). This moment of bonding is a beautiful
example of why traditions are valued, and it serves to contrast the horrors of
life in boarding school that she details later. Zitkala-Sa’s mother knows what
awaits her daughter in the life of the white men, at least she knows the
hardships; and because of this she pulls away, and we see another example of
loss and survival: families torn apart by contact with the dominant culture.
Furthermore, Zitkala-Sa is similar to The Distance
Between Us in another way. Leaving traditional life for the dominant culture of
the U.S., Zitkala-Sa will never feel completely at home in her village again;
however, because of her physical markers: her dark hair and skin, maybe her
accent and other syntactic elements of her speech, she will never fit in the
dominant culture either. Similarly, Mago felt a dissonance between herself and
her Mexican roots upon returning, from America, to her grandmother's home in
Iguala. So, we see the narratives of loss and survival and the ambivalent
minority at play in both cultures--Indians and Mexican-Americans--both are
forced to choose a side, but either choice is punitive.
Another way that minorities are defined through the texts
we have read this semester is by a fear of authority, especially police, in the
dominant culture. The text that sticks out in my mind as illustrating this fear
is Juan Nepomuceno Seguin’s memoir that shows how it begins. Because Seguin
looked Mexican, he was considered to be for the Mexican army. The white
militants in the battle for Texas independence took advantage of Seguin’s
physical links to Mexico, and started a whisper campaign against him that was
ultimately effective at driving him out of his position in the new Republic of
Texas. Seguin took harbor in the country he fought against but that was
friendlier to him because he looked like them. The icing on the cake of Seguin’s
story is that he was technically, legally ousted by authority figures in Texas;
and I think stories like these are unfortunately common among minorities, so it
is no surprise that police and government are met with hostility and suspicion
among minorities.
On the other hand, considering the general fear of police
that I just described, it is interesting that in The Round House, Erdrich seems
to argue for both the good and bad of police. They are bad because they
obfuscate justice and interfere where they do not belong, but we see police
show up in the native traditions, as ghosts and visions, foreshadowing the good
they will do. Ultimately, Joe is saved by a cop. Ironically though, Joe is
running away from the police when he is saved by them, and I think Erdrich is,
through the story, telling minorities that fear of police is unwarranted, but
frustration with them is not without reason.
However, while Native Americans and Mexican Americans may
have a general fear of police it is nothing like the ingrained hatred, born from
severe abuse, in the African American community. The memoirs of Frederick
Douglass and Olaudah Equiano are rife with examples of abuse by whites, backed
up by police. This fear explains a little of why the immediacy of the American
Dream does not apply to The Dream of African Americans--because nothing comes
quick when authority knocks down progress at every turn.
Everything is different for African Americans. Unlike
Mexican Americans, the United States is not, and never was, their home. Africa
and America are at cultural odds with one another, and there was very little
ambivalence accepted from African slaves by the white slave-owners. They were
forced to forsake their traditions, their names, and their freedoms, they were
forced to assimilate--they are like Native Americans in this regard, but still
worse because they were completely slaves while Natives maintained some
freedoms. Native Americans were encouraged to go to boarding school, so that
literacy could “cure their savagery”, but literacy was not at all encouraged for
slaves; in fact it was life threatening. Kindred by Octavia Butler illustrates
the dangers when Dana is beat within an inch of her life for teaching Nigel to
read.
Furthermore, while Mexican Americans have broken homes
because of immigration, and Native Americans (in the case of Zitkala-Sa) endure
estranged relationships because of assimilation; African Americans were brutally
torn from one another. Homes were severed as slaves were sold to different
plantations--ever subject to be sold again and again. Truly voiceless and
choiceless, African Americans are the truest example of a minority by forced
contact.
In spite of it all, they overcame hopelessness and
developed The Dream. Largely popularized by Martin Luther King Jr. The Dream
says that everyone --the whole group, the whole culture--will see, one day,
their rights respected. Dana is fighting for the dream in
Kindred, when she holds on to the
future despite the awful circumstances of the present. Her hope allows her to
overcome, even if she loses a lot in the process. After all, it is expected in
the minority narrative to lose a little in search for the bigger picture.
Overall, the African American narratives have different
courses, but they converge in the way they solicit empathy. By telling their
stories couched in the dominant culture’s markers of religion, expression and
history the slave narratives are better able to show their humanity to the
whites who thought they were somehow “less than”. Through compliance they gained
a voice and were able to gently rise up, slowly gaining traction and becoming
themselves. For instance, Harriet Jacobs’s recount of her fair treatment would
make her story palatable to white readers, and would therefore garner more
readership. This compromise was justified as a means to an end, and served to,
slowly but surely, create the narrative of The Dream, and humanized slaves to
the degree that white people finally begin to notice them as people.
Finally, the plight of minorities as demonstrated through
their narratives links them together despite their cultural, racial, ethnic, or
gender differences. Minorities stand as one, fighting the injustices against
them. They use literature to give voice to the masses and to express their
status as humans with equal rights. They are Americans with traditions, they
have dreams and goals, they are more than their “class”, they do not conform to
the dominant culture, not even for success.Their history drives them, and they
want to be recognized as they believe themselves to be, not as they are
perceived by the dominant culture. I think this is a powerful stand, and I
believe America is growing towards a more diverse future.
