Deanna Scott

February 15, 2010

Web Reviews

After reading my chosen essays, I found that all three shared two common themes, misunderstanding and dehumanizing. Lathon Lewis’ midterm “Themes of Magic and Christianity within the Black Experience” immediately caught my attention due to the fact that magic is a force that is often misunderstood and dehumanized to the point of being demonized according to Christian values. I found Lewis’ view of the character Pilate of Morrison’s “Song Of Solomon” to be especially misunderstanding and demonizing. Pilate receives her name from the bible, named after the Roman procurator of Judea and the final authority concerned in the condemnation and execution of Jesus Christ.  On the other hand, Pilate’s name, the spelling of it, is meant to be misleading. As Lewis said, “Christianity only penetrates as deep as the names of some of its characters”.  She’s Pilate by name, not by her character’s actions. Pilate’s embodiment of the supernatural further demonizes and underestimates her true role in the story. Lewis’ blatantly claims that Pilate used witchcraft upon her brother. Drugging his food to ensure Milkman’s birth is considerably crafty but only proves how much knowledge Pilate possesses. Lewis is also mistaken about the use of the doll that Macon Jr. finds, "a male doll with a small painted chicken bone stuck between its legs and round red circle painted on his belly,". Using a doll to send a message is more closely associated with voodoo than with witchcraft. As Lewis notes, the full intended effect of the doll is not explained but Macon understands the message. Pilate is not an evil witch or a practitioner of voodoo; she closely resembles the more positive village cunning woman or a natural healer. Often cunning women or natural healers were mistaken to be evil witches. Pilate is not evil; she’s just an incredible manipulator of the mind and the body. She easily manipulated Macon by preying on his lusts and fears just as easily as the American dream seduces, manipulates, and dehumanizes the minds of people.

            Incidentally, with the themes, misunderstanding and dehumanizing, in mind, Dana Kato’s midterm essay “Chasing the American Dream, Living the “American Nightmare”: Defining the Immigrant and Minority Narrative” presents the ‘downward assimilation’ instead of climbing the dominant culture’s economic ladder”. Kato voices the misunderstood impressions that immigrants expect from the American Dream’s assimilation process. Immigrants expect the American assimilation process to enlighten them and bring them freedom, equality, and opportunity like the American natives. Instead of receiving the uplifting embrace of fellow American natives, immigrants are forced to experience dehumanizing exclusions from their fellow native immigrants and the American natives. Kato implies that the harder immigrants try to assimilate into American culture, the more they suffer from the loss of their original identity and moral. Kato makes a point by singling out the most affected by American assimilation, the younger generation.  For example, Kato quotes that “In Carlos Bulosan’s American in My Heart he suffered the disillusionment of seeing a relative become morally corrupt, a change he associates with assimilation into American culture.  He prays, “Please, God, don’t change me in America””. For Bulosan to beg God not to change in America displays that he is from the native generation and wishes to retain his human characteristic, his individuality from Americanization. The relative was most likely from the second generation exposed to the American culture. Often the second, third, and continuing generations are taught to adopt the American attitudes and  dehumanizing themselves by willingly abandoning many of their native teachings and instilled morality. The loss of their nativity dehumanizes them by robbing them of the freedom of being native. With each new generation the social equality level drops further and further, until the newer generations actions grow so dissimilar and distant to the point of being unrecognizable. As a result, communication between the Americanized and the native generation disintegrates. The heart of communication, speech, is the first defining characteristic change with assimilation. From personal experience, I can understand Richard Rodriquez’s feelings of being dehumanized; Richard Rodriquez struggled as an American son of Latino parents.  He was “wracked with guilt” because he was embarrassed to speak Spanish in front of his relatives, who referred to him as “pocho,” a name given to a Mexican-American who had forgotten how to speak his native language  (Rodriquez  29). I have a friend who was fair skinned and of Hispanic descent who told me that her father never taught her Spanish. I pieced together that he did this to make her more acceptable in English speaking society but simultaneously cutting her off from her native Spanish speaking society.

            Speaking of being cut off by society, immigrants were given a personal choice of dehumanizing their individuality by severing their connections to the past, and traditional or alternative families. The slaves presented in Philip R. Jones’s “The American Nightmare:

Stolen Innocence, Lost Identity, Physical Abuse, & Suppression of the American Slave” did not have this choice. Similar to Kato’s, Jones’s midterm emphasizes another cruelty of the dark side of the American dream. Where Kato mentions lost of individual character, Jones presents the horror of never receiving an identity to begin with. Douglass lacks knowledge of the most sensitive and intimate facts such as his age and date of birth which clearly defines one’s identity, and existence as part of the human race. It must feel like having amnesia, not knowing what day you were born or how long you’ve been alive. Imagine, knowing that your own birth, as a slave, was not considered important enough for you to know. Douglass is not only trapped within a human injustice here, he is denied the key, basic knowledge of the self which separates the human species from animals. Withholding this important knowledge dehumanized the slaves to the form of beasts of burden. After all, animals never need to know when they were born. The only knowledge that animals need to understand is to perform a mechanical routine. Humans on the other hand, have a sense of consciousness; they have a need to know all the facts of their social identity in order to feel whole. Humans need to know their name, their age, their family, and where they live. When were they born? Where were they born? Why were they born? These are the little facts that give us a history, a history of knowing who we are and where we come from. These facts help us to feel as if we truly exist and that our existence matters.

Deanna Scott

February 21, 2010

The Bonds of the family

            The bond of the family is a powerful and special hold that ties families together. Unfortunately, outside forces and impressions attempt and succeed at severing physical ties to the family, the immediate family and racial connection. The outside forces define as The Color Code and "class" as a repressed subject of American discourse. Harriet Jacob’s “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon”, and Maya Angelou’s “Still I rise” demonstrate the overcoming and transcendence of outside forces despites not being able to defeat them entirely.

            Slavery was a terrible time of when enchainment and forced servitude was forced upon black people. Worse, it created many broken homes due to slave trading. Slave fathers were separated from their families, so there was no official head of the household. Slave mothers tearfully stood by as their children were snatched away, sold at auctions, so there were no feelings of material love. Slave girls were forced to become the object of sexual arousal of their Masters until incidents, such as pregnancy, eventually caused them to be quickly sold, discarded, to a different and far away plantation. Such a situation happened to Linda Brent, the main protagonist of “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”. Following the principles of The Color Code and "class" Brent came from a higher level of slaves. “In complexion my parents were a light shade of brownish yellow, and were termed mulattoes. They lived together in a comfortable home; and, though we were all slaves”. Mulattoes are the offspring of one white parent and one black parent. The Color Code of western civilization transfers values associated with “light and dark” such as good & evil, rational & irrational—to people of light or dark complexions, with implications for power, validity, sexuality, etc. With this in mind, mulattoes are the wild card presented against The Color Code’s values due to possessing inherited white and black traits, ranging from medium to fair yellow brown complexions. Still, by having black parentage, the offspring are still classified as black and as slaves. The blackness in the genetics places the mulattoes under the white Masters and socially above the darker skinned slaves. Linda Brent took advantage of The Color Code’s values, social class values, and her black womanly values to attain her elevation.

            Linda Brent grew up in the times when women, especially black women, had to be firm and confident against the evil forces of slavery. As a result, they had to be strong and endure the shame of molestation from their Masters’ hands. It was crucial for them to protect and maintain their families from separation and being sold. Unfortunately, Linda’s family members failed to protect her from continuing the cycle of slavery. Linda faced her master’s constant perversion, “He tried his utmost to corrupt the pure principles my grandmother had instilled. He peopled my young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think of.” Those principals were purity and self-respect. A woman’s purity is her freedom from guilt or evil and her chastity. Her self-respect is her rank of being a noble individual. Dr. Flint’s lust endangers her only freedom, her purity, if she allowed him to take it from her. The loss of self-respect would leave her no different than the darker skinned slaves because she would have proven that she was as equally dominated as they were. Linda knew that her eventual children would be born slaves if she did nothing to prevent her Master’s sexual interest. “If we had children, I knew they must "follow the condition of the mother." Rather than see her children face the same fate that she endured, Linda sacrifices her purity to another man but retains her self-respect.

Consequently, by allowing herself to become pregnant by “a man who was not my master I could ask to have my children well supported; and in this case, I felt confident I should obtain the boon. I also felt quite sure that they would be made free.” Linda’s sacrifice was not out of affectionate love for her children’s father, Mr. Sands. Instead, it was for her own personal gain. “To be an object of interest to a man who is not married, and who is not her master, is agreeable to the pride and feelings of a slave, if her miserable situation has left her any pride or sentiment. It seems less degrading to give one's self, than to submit to compulsion. There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment.” Linda gained the choice of who she chose to sleep with, father her children, and would eventually be the benefactor to her family and her own personal freedom. Linda played the values of the Color Code and Class into her favor, where as her black slave father and grandmother and her free black lover failed at buying her freedom with money, Linda bought her children’s freedom through sex with the white lawyer Mr. Sands.

            Pilate Dead of Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon” faced similar trials as Linda Brent. Pilate also came from a broken family. Her mother died in child birth and her father was murdered. “They blew him five feet up into the air. He was sitting on his fence waiting for’em, and they snuck up from behind and blew him five feet into the air” (p.49) Pilate emotionally lost her brother, Macon Jr. due to the trauma of their broken family and his eventual lust for wealth. The loss of Macon senior marks the loss of the head of the family, the bond of the family, and the culture of the family. Of the remaining Dead siblings, Macon Jr. adopts and pursues the American dream through assimilation. Pilate oppositely chooses to hold on to her pervious culture, the memories, the songs, the family love, while seeking out other members of her black culture.

            Physically, Pilate’s place according to the rules of “class” is a low class laborer.  Contrasting to Linda, Pilate possesses dark skin, and at first glance is described as “ugly, dirty, poor, and drunk” (p.46). This is a falsely given impression of her outer appearance and an underestimation of her true power. Pilate is not attractive, but she is “unkempt” rather than dirty, poor by in the sense of money but rich in family love. Drunkenness is a temporary state in which one's physical and mental faculties are impaired by an excess of alcoholic drink. Neither of these qualities applies to Pilate as she can see clearer and act more responsibly than those who are intoxicated by money.

Pilate attains her elevation by rejecting progress. For example, she does not use electricity in her home. Electricity is the driving force of a progressive civilization. Electricity powers almost everything including the radio, the washing machine, and the lights. Electricity is the master of progressive civilization, forcing people to depend on the constant sense of change. Electricity drives progress, progress requires money, money controls progressive people. Pilate, on the other hand, depends on herself and a state of peaceful retrogression compared to the chaotic sense of progresses. She depends on natural ways or uses sources of nature to get by. For example, she uses kerosene for light and wild berries to make wine. Pilate’s choice of simple living naturally brings her all of the ideas of the American dream’s assimilation process, such as freedom, equality, and opportunity. She’s free from having to worry about paying bills for electricity and most modern conveniences. She sees natural equality in people, especially in family. For example, upon meeting Pilate’s granddaughter, Hagar, Pilate introduces Milkman as Hagar’s “brother”. In the present, the proper classification of family relation, Milkman should have been properly introduced as a cousin. Pilate’s choice of introduction stood for more than just direct family relation. She uses the term brother in the sense of racial love and equal status. Often, African Americans address one another as “my brother” in the sense of racial unity. This demonstration of agape love is her opportunity of passing on and instilling unselfish love of one person for another to the next generation despite social standings.

Maya Angelou’s “Still I rise” verbally illustrates how even after all the suffering of separation, one can still hold their head up high.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops.

Weakened by my soulful cries.

Like Linda and Pilate, each had a chance to break down and accept the limitation and hardships forced upon them. Instead, both chose to remain strong.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise.

According to Maya Angelou, “but still, like air, I'll rise”, Linda and Pilate arise through holding onto their instilled beliefs. Both of these women started as children who lost connections through their immediate family due to lust, greed, and oppression but neither allowed any of these factors to overwhelm and consume them. Linda faced temptation, relented her beliefs for the sake of her children. She offered herself to the white man, Mr. Sands, not for personal pleasure but to endow her children with a higher status of freedom. Pilate faced temptation and chose to hang onto her instilled beliefs and family love. She rejects worldly progress but embraces timeless brotherhood and kinship. Pilate strongly believed in family and held no bounds for blood-kin and black racial unity. This characteristic made her sociable and comfortable around her black peers. Pilate’s convenient relationship with her peers allows her not to be distracted by progress but maintain a steady standard of living. Both women decided and were determined to rise up against the outside cruelty of social unfairness.

The bond of the family is a powerful and special hold that ties families together. Harriet Jacob’s “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon”, and Maya Angelou’s “Still I rise” are authors whose purpose is to empower black women, to be confident, strong, with an internal written promise of hope for the future. Linda sacrificed her purity for the sake of her children’s future freedom. Pilate ensured that the next generation was met with instilled family love. Maya Angelou’s poem says to black women even though your situation may offer cruelty, “ like air, I'll rise”.