Comparing the Loss of Innocence in Cullens Incident and Naylor’s Mommy

Loss of Innocence in Cullens Incident and Naylors Mommy, What Does nigra Mean? Unfortunately, a interrogate that many African the Statesns present to ask in clawhood is Mommy, what does common raccoon mean?, and the answer to this question depicts the racism that still thrives in America (345). Both Gloria Naylors Mommy, What Does Nigger Mean? and Countee Cullens Incident demonstrate how a word like nigger destroys a childs innocence and initiates the child into a humanness of racism. Though the situations provoking the racial slur differ, the word nigger has the homogeneous effect on the young Naylor and the child in Cullens poem. A racist society devours the white childrens innocence, and, consequently, the white children embody the notion of racism as they consume the innocence of the black children by stereotyping them as niggers. The word nigger causes the young Naylor and the child in Cullens poem to catch viewing the world in terms of black and white, and the racial epithet establishes an invisible barrier between the black and the white worlds. uncomplete child ever indicates the color of the people he/she speaks of. Naylor gives her most in-depth somatic comment of the child that calls her nigger when she recalls that she handed the papers to a slight boy in back of me (344). Naylors vague description gives the look that the young Naylor sees no important distinctions between the boy and herself. However, the fact that the micro boy calls her nigger proves not only that the boy sees a major(ip) distinction between himself and Naylor, only when also that the boy is white (344). The child in Countee Cullens poem gives a similarly color-less description of the Baltimorean boy as he/she say... ...my grandmothers living direction took a word that whites used to signify worthlessness or abasement and rendered it impotent (346). In this response to the derogatory term, Naylors essay offers a tool to fight racism and a message of hope for t he desolate minority children which Cullens Incident lacks In the process of socialization in a racist society, a child may lose innocence, but a child may also gain strength and reference book by rising above any racist stereotypes society applies to him/her. workings Cited Cullen, Countee. Incident. African-American Literature A Brief Introduction and Anthology. Ed. Al Young. spic-and-span York Harper Collins, 1996. 398. Naylor, Gloria. Mommy, What Does Nigger Mean? New Worlds of Literature Writings from Americas Many Cultures, second edition. Eds. Jerome Beatty and J. Paul Hunter. New York Norton, 1994. 344-47.