Kaffir Boy Research Paper
Abrianna Lopez
Kaffir Boy Paper
“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizen, but its lowest ones.” (Nelson Mandala). Even in America, where we promote freedom to the world and that “all men are created equal”, we allowed racial persecution, maltreatment and abuse in our country until the 1960s. In the South men were arrested for being drunk, homeless and for being too “uppity”, they would take these men to work in coal mines, cotton fields, turpentine camps and timber mills to pay off their fines. These men were forced to work under conditions that were worse than slavery up until the beginning of World War II, where the death rate was as high as 40 percent.(Washington post). …show more content…
This was separation was formed by the Natives’ Land Act of 1913 that reserved 90 percent of the land for whites who were the minority. To even live in Africa they were forced to have passes and if not they were brutally beaten, taken to jail and even deported back to their tribal homelands.(sahistory). The book I have been asked to read connects to Americas past treatment of colored people but takes place in South Africa and seems to be harsher than our history. Mark Mathabane reveals, in Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography, the harsh daily obstacles and struggles he faced as a black child growing up in apartheid South Africa. For example in part one of Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography called “The Road to Alexandria” Mathabane witness the police raids when he is looking out his window and also experiences the police raids by getting beaten by them in his house. In “The Road to Alexandria” Mathabane and his mother both endure physical/emotional domestic abuse from the father/husband, who is the one who is in charge. Both of these represent violence at different
Kaffir Boy Paper
“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizen, but its lowest ones.” (Nelson Mandala). Even in America, where we promote freedom to the world and that “all men are created equal”, we allowed racial persecution, maltreatment and abuse in our country until the 1960s. In the South men were arrested for being drunk, homeless and for being too “uppity”, they would take these men to work in coal mines, cotton fields, turpentine camps and timber mills to pay off their fines. These men were forced to work under conditions that were worse than slavery up until the beginning of World War II, where the death rate was as high as 40 percent.(Washington post). …show more content…
This was separation was formed by the Natives’ Land Act of 1913 that reserved 90 percent of the land for whites who were the minority. To even live in Africa they were forced to have passes and if not they were brutally beaten, taken to jail and even deported back to their tribal homelands.(sahistory). The book I have been asked to read connects to Americas past treatment of colored people but takes place in South Africa and seems to be harsher than our history. Mark Mathabane reveals, in Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography, the harsh daily obstacles and struggles he faced as a black child growing up in apartheid South Africa. For example in part one of Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography called “The Road to Alexandria” Mathabane witness the police raids when he is looking out his window and also experiences the police raids by getting beaten by them in his house. In “The Road to Alexandria” Mathabane and his mother both endure physical/emotional domestic abuse from the father/husband, who is the one who is in charge. Both of these represent violence at different