The Poignant Effects of Racism
The Poignant Effects of Racism
Jonathan Kozol, a non-fiction writer and activist, once declared “children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available”. In Maya Angelou’s “Finishing School” and Lawrence Otis Graham’s “The Black Table is Still There”, both authors broach the topic of segregation and racism to expose how segregation affects people on a personal level. As these African-Americans grew up in a time of racial discrimination, they share similar experiences. Although Angelou and Graham both discuss the effects of segregation on the human spirit, Angelou uses catalog and parallel structure to convey a sarcastic and bitter tone while Graham uses rhetorical questions and imagery to convey a questioning and inquisitive tone to achieve his purpose.
Maya Angelou uses a great deal of catalog to achieve a tone of sarcasm in “Finishing School”, which describes her personal encounters with racism. When explaining her new duties as a cook in a white woman’s house, she acknowledges that “ it took me a week to learn the difference between a salad plate, a bread plate, and a dessert plate” (pg. 108, par.5). Angelou uses catalog because she wants the reader to understand that this is ridiculous and unnecessary. This touches on how different white girls and black girls were raised, and how her Mistress Mrs. Cullinan’s kitchen was her own finishing school while white girls were able to get a formal education. After Miss Glory tells Angelou that their mistress cannot have children because she is “delicate-boned”, Angelou emphasizes that “it was hard to imagine bones at all under those layers of fat. Miss Glory went on to say that the doctor had taken out all her lady organs. I reasoned that a pig’s organs included the lungs, heart, and liver, so if Mrs. Cullinan was walking around without those essentials, it explained why she drank alcohol out of unmarked bottles” (pg. 108,
Jonathan Kozol, a non-fiction writer and activist, once declared “children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available”. In Maya Angelou’s “Finishing School” and Lawrence Otis Graham’s “The Black Table is Still There”, both authors broach the topic of segregation and racism to expose how segregation affects people on a personal level. As these African-Americans grew up in a time of racial discrimination, they share similar experiences. Although Angelou and Graham both discuss the effects of segregation on the human spirit, Angelou uses catalog and parallel structure to convey a sarcastic and bitter tone while Graham uses rhetorical questions and imagery to convey a questioning and inquisitive tone to achieve his purpose.
Maya Angelou uses a great deal of catalog to achieve a tone of sarcasm in “Finishing School”, which describes her personal encounters with racism. When explaining her new duties as a cook in a white woman’s house, she acknowledges that “ it took me a week to learn the difference between a salad plate, a bread plate, and a dessert plate” (pg. 108, par.5). Angelou uses catalog because she wants the reader to understand that this is ridiculous and unnecessary. This touches on how different white girls and black girls were raised, and how her Mistress Mrs. Cullinan’s kitchen was her own finishing school while white girls were able to get a formal education. After Miss Glory tells Angelou that their mistress cannot have children because she is “delicate-boned”, Angelou emphasizes that “it was hard to imagine bones at all under those layers of fat. Miss Glory went on to say that the doctor had taken out all her lady organs. I reasoned that a pig’s organs included the lungs, heart, and liver, so if Mrs. Cullinan was walking around without those essentials, it explained why she drank alcohol out of unmarked bottles” (pg. 108,