Shame

In the essay “Shame” Dick Gregory endured a certain kind of racial discrimination. He was discriminated in a way that all young minorities probably had to deal with. His teacher put Gregory to shame in his early years of schooling. I can personally relate to the way Gregory felt. Not saying that I was racially discriminated against but socially I was labeled. Gregory had it rough in the early years of his schooling process. He lived as a poor minority, and because of that he was treated as less than human. Just to describe his early lifestyle. He only had a few pair of clothes that he had to wash in a bucket of hot water. To sum it up he didn’t have a father and his mother was around as much as she could be, but he basically grew up with his siblings. They all did what they could to be presentable. In school Gregory was a troublemaker, and on top of that his teacher thought he was stupid and incompetent. In class his teacher made him sit in the “idiot’s chair.” It was a chair in the back of the room with a circle drawn around it on the floor. Gregory believed that this horrible treatment was all because he was a minority. An example of this racism proved true when it was time to donate to the community

This all changed when his teacher put through such torment in front of Helene. Because of that my friends and I were blamed for a lot of things that we had nothing to do with. Another good example was just last year in school. The essay "shame" there was a perfect example of discrimination, and how it affected Dick Gregory. " She wasn"tmt done humiliating him yet she went on to say, "we all know that you don"tmt have a daddy. The teacher would ask each student what his or her parents would contribute. There were many incidents like that, and the more it happened the worse we were punished. He did everything he could to try to impress her. I also pointed out a few events that probably changed lives for the worst. It almost seemed to be that Gregory was very jealous of her, she had everything and Gregory had nothing. That name Helene Tucker stuck with him the rest of his life just as a reminder as to what this world really is. There weren"tmt many minorities where I grew up, so people didn"tmt understand them. Helene Tucker was Gregory"tms love at first sight. Gregory ignored the remark and continued on to say, "My daddy said he"tmd give fifteen dollars.