Thursday, February 16, 2012

Eng 481 post 5

The reading this week dealt with the issues of racial identity and value. These issues are the topic I would like to discuss this evening. In the case of Chesnutt's The Wife of His Youth the narrator of the story deal with the complex racial identity of being "black" while having fair skin tone. The narrator values his "whiteness" over his African descent. It may be uncouth to say but I believe that, given the circumstances of his time, the narrator properly utilized the assets that his mixed birth had afforded him. Don't get me wrong, the narrator had lived his life as a pretentious ass, but in a culture where being white was considered good and black people were considered subhuman the choice of the narrator seems much more reasonable. On that note I will leave you, whomever you may be, with this thought. If pretending to be someone you weren't afforded you a better lot in life would you? What would be the significance of such a facade? Food for thought.    

3 comments:

  1. You raise a significant ethical issue, Ryan, and I'll be interested to see the responses you get.

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  2. Ryan, you certainly do raise an interesting point. However, I’m not certain if Ryder was “pretending to be someone” he wasn’t; I think that he was rather denying a part of himself. Perhaps this was what you meant by “pretending to be someone” else, but to me there is a distinction between pretending to be someone completely different and denying a part of oneself. Granted, neither is particularly healthy as both involve ignoring a significant aspect of one’s identity. I agree that Ryder’s choice to embrace his “whiteness” was reasonable given the time, but I’m not certain it allowed him to be accepted in white circles. There was still a degree of racism toward anyone with any African blood. I see it more as the mood oppression fosters: those who are subjugated by one group will in turn subjugate a sub-group within their own group in order to feel superior to someone else. In this case, the lighter blacks, who were still inferior to the whites, looked down on the darker blacks in order to feel some sense of superiority. Thus, I’m not certain his “whiteness” allowed him better access into white culture, but it certainly did afford him advantages within the black community.

    As for the question you posed, I am a firm believer in being true to oneself. I believe that everyone is unique and that we should all be proud of and embrace that fact. Thus, I would hope that I would never try to be someone I’m not in order to achieve a better lot in life. While the external trappings of life may be better by pretending, the internal knowledge that I had not stayed true to who I was would not necessarily leave me better off.

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  3. I believe that a lot of people will do whatever they can to get ahead, even if this means pretending to be someone you're not. This kind of reminds me of the gay and lesbian community today. While some people are comfortable in their skin, others deny a part of themselves in order to fit in. It is sad, but this kind of behavior is a direct result of the culture of the time. If culture was accepting of people of all kinds, people would never have to deny themselves to get ahead.

    -Stefanie Eggers

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