As I read the essay, Many Thousands Gone by James Baldwin, one thing that really stood out to me is the comparison of Negros and cancer, and tuberculosis, “which must be checked, even though it cannot be cured.” This statement in particular surprised me because it shows just how much the black race is degraded. I got from the sentence that the Negro race could be bound by slavery or Jim Crow laws, but like tuberculosis the Negro race will not disappear. In the “social arena” the black race have been described as the lowest of low, animals, the bottom of the barrel, and Baldwin expresses that in the story. “He is a social and not a personal or a human problem;” simply explains how society sees the Negro race, as “statistics, slums, rapes, injustice... “ The Negro man and race have been historically thought of as lazy, useless, animal-like, wild, violent, etc. Since the days of slavery there have always been inferior characteristic linked to the Negro race. A Negro was not supposed to be successful In America, but to remain a servant, someone incapable of thinking for themselves. A Negro was thought of as uneducated and ignorant.
This is still relevant in today’s society because the Negro, now known as black, man/race still have the same statistics and stereotypes associated to him/it. Statistics show that a black male is more likely to go to prison before he graduates with a degree from college. The stereotype linked to that is all black males are criminals. Statistics also shows that black males are still at the bottom of the workforce and have a harder time moving up in a business. The stereotype linked to that is blacks aren’t educated enough to earn a high salary, or smart enough to move up in the workplace. A black man is still discriminated against and thought of as inferior. As Baldwin states, “a negro is to be confronted with an endless cataloguing of losses, gains, skirmishes;” I believe this means a Negro man is supposed to be continuously faced with hardships, fights and live on an everlasting rollercoaster because of his race and the statistics/stereotypes that is associated with him and the race.
The link I found deals with some of the statistics and stereotypes of a black male. http://www.lohud.com/article/20070204/NEWS01/702040354/Statistics-stereotypes-fuel-negative-perception-black-males-advocates-say
LaShaneika,
ReplyDeleteYou make several solid points here. The illness metaphors are among the most striking uses of symbolic language in this essay, and you do a solid job of addressing them. Your point about tuberculosis is really insightful - it never goes away regardless of attempts to restrain it - and even cancer diagnoses in the 1950s tended to have more dismal prognosis.
Beyond degradation (which is certainly relevant), the symbolic elements of the comparison of the black race with these conditions also highlights both the unnatural combination that started things off - the unhealthy environment or exposure that caused these conditions to develop - the slave trade - and the fact that the results may well be deadly to the host (the white nation). The real threat of death or rebirth certainly lingers in these conditions, and the Civil Rights movement served as a form of the latter.
Your link is to the point and directly evidences the continuation of tense racial conditions, particularly with regard to statistics, today. Although the "disease" seems to have gone into remission and some kind of diverse coexistence seems to be emerging, the "facts" are still against many members of U.S. society, and you make this point very clearly.
Thanks for this contribution.