Thursday, October 27, 2011
Journal Posting #11. The Perplexing Motivations of Segregation
After reading Pauline E. Hopkin's "As the Lord Lives, He is One of our Mother's Children" and Claude McKay's poems, I still feel a sense of numbness and disbelief over how specific, grim and detailed these authors' writings were. Yes, historically this event, where segregation and discrimination was so brutally common, is something that must not be "sugar coated" or kept secret of its horrific details. However, while reading Hopkin's story, I felt uneasy and in shock. For a crowd of people to be encouraged by a stranger into killing someone seems wrong and unbearable! I cannot grasp the motivation that people got to kill someone, particularly an African American. Motivational words such as "I will lead you. On to the prison and lynch Jones and Wilson," or "I have come today to assist you in teaching the blacks a lesson," seem unreasonable and incomprehensible to me (p.245). To gain such an adrenaline rush and eagerness to kill because of a stranger's willingness to kill cannot be understood for me. Perhaps this is because of the generation time that I am living in. Perhaps if I was a youth in that time, I too would have "danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee," being one of those "little lads, lynchers that were to be" (p.708). McKay's poem "The Lynching," goes into such detail of how people embraced the deaths of African Americans. Women would look, but "never a one showed sorrow," as the man died in the "cruelest way of pain" (p.707-708). I do not feel like I will ever be able to understand people's intentions, beliefs towards killing a different race, and motivation to do so, especially during those times of ultimate segregation.
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The readings completely shocked me also. I think it is the generation that we were raised in that makes us so incredibly shocked and moved by a person's ability to be encouraged to kill. When it talked about "teaching the blacks a lesson", that was what really threw me off. Teach the blacks a lesson for what? Had they not been through enough suffering from slavery? This just proves how long and hard the African Americans had to struggle for their TOTAL freedom. Even post Civil War, they were not free from judgement. The newly "freed" African Americans had to endure the pain of the hatred from so many people, as well as the Jim Crow laws which hindered them from doing so many things that they should have been allowed to do.
ReplyDeleteI also was appalled when I read that the people could just watch someone die and not even show an ounce of pain, even the women! How they could even look on and "embrace" the deaths of African Americans, who died right in front of their eyes, is frightening. Today, if that happens, it's only in a horror movie about a psychopath.
These readings also really opened my eyes and made me thankful that we were raised in such a different generation. I am thankful that we didn't have to watch people die and be completely numb to the whole situation.