Essay Example on Black Culture, Heritage, and Identity in America

Cultural identity and heritage define a person. People come from different diversities depending on their history. Kinship and social ties are fundamental in establishing someone's identity. While culture is a way of life of a people, heritage remains one's possession. Different races create different identities, heritage, and culture. The history of blacks in America is a long one rooted in slavery and servitude (Oliver). White supremacy has always been the status quo as the blacks in America strive to gain a position in a state divided on racial grounds. This paper discusses the concepts of culture, identity, and heritage and how they are related to the two texts by James Baldwin and Caroline Randall Williams, and a video clip by John Oliver.

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The black American's identity is founded on slavery and servitude. The short story by Caroline talks about how this woman has a mixed-race heritage because of her ancestry. The narrator says that she has white blood in her veins because someone in the past raped her great-grandparents. The pertinent issue of slavery comes about in this context. Slaves were transported from Africa and taken to America to work in plantations. Caroline has bitterness towards the white ancestors because, according to her, most probably, her great-grandmother must have been raped by the master. She says that the only kind of relationship between black women and their male masters was sexual exploitation. When something like that happens, the offspring of such a generation always find themselves in an identity crisis as they find it hard to define who they are.

The cultural differences between blacks and whites come from the diversity of their heritage. Black American children grew up with an understanding of their twisted backgrounds. The whites, on the other hand, grew up knowing that they are a superior race. With this difference in upbringing, the two races mature to make people of different personalities. The whites are filled with pride while the blacks' anguish in vengeance and bitterness and hatred towards the White race, which had always mistreated the year forefathers. In the clip confederacy, by John, there is a Confrontation between the blacks and Americans whereby a black American confronts a native white and tells him that he should respect the monuments of the Blacks erected in America. In that context, the black accuses the white man of leading into slavery the innocent black race, but the white man defends himself by saying that slaves were so expensive. The white native says, "Do you know how expensive you were?" (Oliver). And this clearly shows that there is animosity between the two races.

White supremacy is an ideology that oppresses black heritage. The Ku Klux Klan oppressed the blacks in America by killing them and subjecting them to torture. The history of America was made by such social movements that always perpetrated crimes against humanity. The blacks feel offended that there are monuments of confederacy leaders who did not deserve it. In her article in the New York Times, Caroline asserts that her body is the perfect confederate monument, and there is no concrete statue that would replace that (Williams). Because of her heritage, Caroline Randall and other blacks have a different opinion about confederacy from natives of the land. The current president of America, George Trump, is opposed to pulling confederacy monuments because he holds a different view from the blacks. When people have different heritages, their opinions are prone to prejudice.

It is history that preserves the culture of people. Pasts define people, and it is this past that gives people a culture. The confederacy monuments remind the blacks of their history in America, from which their culture is founded. When the blacks came to America as slaves, their masters subjected them to a hard life, which made them come up with the culture as a form of self-defense. Violence is not in the blacks' blood by choice, but because of the consequences of slavery (Oliver). The black resolved to violence is a way of expressing their anguish in the plantations because their white masters treated them as second-class humans. In the video clip, confederacy, the Host talks about a Ku Klux klan marshall's monuments that the blacks want to pull down. It does not sound good when a statue of someone who oppressed the blacks is erected Because it serves as a constant reminder of the tribulations that the slaves went through back in history. The slaves who were tortured by the people in the monuments have their offspring in the United States of America, and for them having to look at the memorial now and again plants vengeance in their hearts.

James Baldwin's "going to meet the man," is an epitome of white supremacy, a social movement that metaphorized the black race as the accursed lot. White supremacy doctrine believed in the white race's superiority while assuming that the black race was inferior and less human. Jesse, a white deputy sheriff, is a racist. He accounts for his childhood how the blacks were mistreated in the hands of the white masters. When he was a boy, he witnessed a lot of violence perpetrated against the blacks, and this made him grow to be racist because he was taught to believe that the black race was inferior. For him, this was a culture, and that is why he becomes violent when he becomes a sheriff.

The sheriff mistreats a young black man that is in jail (Baldwin). He uses a cattle prod to shock him, just as it used to happen to slaves during his childhood. According to this sheriff, he is carrying out a godly duty of protecting the noble white race from troublesome niggers. "protecting white people from the niggers and the niggers from themselves" (Baldwin). For him, negroids were salvages who needed to be protected against themselves. It is common for a person born from a twisted heritage to have problems in defining their identity.

Knowing that you have white blood flowing in your veins because a certain man raped your great-grandmother is painful. Caroline Randall cannot define herself from a race perspective. She called her skin pigment as a rape- colored skin. Her light-brown blackness serves as a reminder that she is a daughter of mixed races, which came about due to hate, violence, and human indignity (Williams). For her, it is the practices of the old south that define her. She doesn't know her white relatives but asserts that they must have been rapists and murderers. Sometimes not knowing who you are is traumatizing and can lead to long-term psychological conditions. The writer is bitter that no white is relative has ever claimed her. Caroline Randall feels like the best confederacy monument should incorporate the contributions of the black race to the development of America and not that which propagates racism and hate in the minds of the people. For her, she is the living monument of the confederacy, an advocate of her ancestors' pride.

Conclusion

Culture, identity, and heritage are consistent themes in the three works discussed. The forefathers of these two races drew the line between the blacks and the whites. The offspring of the oppressors and the oppressed are at conflict because none knows the motive behind their forefathers' behaviors. History will always repeat itself if the two races will not come together and seek forgiveness. A good example is the death of George Floyd, who died in the hands of a white police officer. Since time immemorial, the black race has always been seen as a weaker race that has nothing useful. Violence, ignorance, and poverty have always been the things that define this race. However, the bottom line is that these people resort to violence because of the maltreatment that they receive from the other race. The black race may have identity problems because they come from mixed races. All in all, every race deserves justice.

Works Cited

Baldwin, James. Going to Meet the Man. Michael Joseph, 1975.

Oliver, John. "Confederacy: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)." YouTubeLastWeekTonight, 8 Oct. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5b_-TZwQ0I.

Williams, Caroline Randall. You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument. 26 June 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/confederate-monuments-racism.html.