The more things change, the more they stay the same
"The Times They are a-Changin'," or so 60's singer/songwriter Bob Dylan thought. But have we really matured enough as people to say that racism and prejudice are no longer words in the English vocabulary? Most people like to think so, but the facts paint a different picture. The novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald can be used to illustrate these points.
In the mid-20's, when American author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, it was common to use words to describe African American people that today would be seen as offensive and degrading. Mainly the sole purpose of using such words were to depict African Americans as objects, not human beings. When Nick describes the "two Bucks" and a Negro girl passing them in a horse-drawn carriage with a white chauffeur he thinks to himself "Anything can happen now that we've slid over this bridgeŠanything at allŠ" This shows how people in Fitzgerald's time reacted to free black families. Nick describes the black males as "
. . .
Congress states proudly he will be "the first to stand up openly and proudly" to defend the rights of Christian whites. People still think they are better than you are if they are richer or are a different race. Because it's up to us as the people to survive. He couldn't just refer to them as "men" or "gentlemen" because it was inappropriate to give blacks a high status. Tom and Daisy share thoughts about the downfall over dinner and Tom states that "If we don't look out the white race will be-will be utterly submerged," and Daisy follows that comment up with "We've got to beat them (minorities) down. Bucks" because that's the name people used when they auctioned them off as slaves. I think rapper Tupac Shakur said it best when he said, "It's time for us as the people to start making some changesŠLet's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live, and let's change the way we treat each other. They also stated that American culture is overly influenced by African Americans and other minorities and that that should come to an end. If Gatsby would've been rich in the beginning of his life, Daisy would have married him instead of Tom, and Daisy proudly admitted that to Gatsby, but sobbed when she had to tell Tom. I guess that really does show that even after all of these years, we still have not changed. He and Edward Fields read a 30-minute speech blaming Jews and Israel for the ills of the world. "
It was scary for me to see how similar Duke's quote and the comment made by Tom in Fitzgerald's story are so similar after 70 something years.
And now here we are in the late 90's and times are still pretty much the same. A recent article in the Sacramento Bee on Ex-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke states facts that show we really haven't changed.
Approximate Word count =
709
Approximate Pages =
3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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