Racial Oppression
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The histories of oppressed minorities in the United States have all begun very differently, but throughout the twentieth century they have developed as many similarities as differences. African Americans, for example, were brought to America against their will and forced into slavery where they were encouraged to increase in number because they were considered valuable 'property' essential to the economy of the Southern states. Native Americans, on the other hand, were forced off their own lands, robbed of their traditional means of survival, and systematically murdered any time they occupied lands the European Americans wanted. By the twentieth century, however, slavery and the wars against the Indians were over and, perpetuating the dominant group's racism, laws were invented to keep both groups out of the mainstream and confined to poverty, illiteracy, and fear--on federal Indian reservations or in urban ghettos. As the century progressed both groups gradually worked out strategies to overcome this treatment and began to claim their places in society. Autobiographies by Sioux activist Mary Crow Dog and African-American writer Richard Wright show the many similarities between the oppressive conditions endured by their people and the initiatives they used in the struggle for equality. Both Wright and Crow Dog devote a considerable portion of their books to descriptions of their emerging awareness of racial discrimination. Both describe the prevailing attitudes of
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in hell" as a result of his love of fiction, which they equated with lies (40). This attitude carried over as Wright, in his elation over having his first story published in the newspaper, met with "distance" and "suspiciousness" among his classmates who could not grasp why he had decided to do such a thing (167). And his accomplishment generated fear among his family members who believed that he would either go to hell for lying or would never get a teacher's job because he had stepped outside the lines of acceptable behavior. As Wright says, his action and his hopes were part of "a dream which the entire educational system of the South had been rigged to stifle," and the reactions of those around them showed how thoroughly they had internalized the goals of the oppressive system (169).
Both writers came to realize the full extent to which institutionalized racism bore the desired effect of convincing the people of their own lack of worth and the necessity of conforming to the desires of their oppressors. But Crow Dog, in her wild youth, and Wright, who struggled constantly to find work and continue to educate himself, took different paths. Both, however, were part of general trends in their people's history. Crow Dog's l
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Approximate Word count = 1670
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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