Black Picket Fences Sharlene looked at me with her big, watery brown eyes. "No," she said emphatically, with a definite doleful tone in her voice. "I have never felt like I fit in here." Sharlene, who is 31 years old and has two children, is a black woman that falls into what Mary Patillo-McCoy calls the "black middle class." However, unlike the men, women, and children that Patillo-McCoy interviews for her

African-American Vernacular English can be described as an assortment of American English that is mostly used by urban-working class and mostly bi-dialectical middle-class black Americans. The language is also commonly known as Black Vernacular English or Black English. In some cases, particularly outside the academic community, it is referred to as Ebonics given its distinctive features and similarities with other non-standard English varieties. The similarities with other varieties are evident

Once they arrived, they were brought to a slave market and usually auctioned off to the highest bidder just as cattle and horses were auctioned off. The slaves then spent their lives of servitude helping white farm and plantation owners in their agricultural operations. The slaves weren't typically compensated and lived in deplorable conditions. Slavery helped many white land owners become rich, and the southern colonies, which turned into

Regardless of age, the desire for freedom remained. It is known that older slaves sometimes aided younger slaves to escape. Some of the aged also escaped to freedom. In some instances masters did not pursue older slaves because of their lower economic value. However, this was not always the case, as some older escaped slaves were still valued, and were advertised in the newspapers. Some owners granted their older slaves

A appreciate the fact that this English course also included sections on writing effective narrative papers. I found narrative papers to be fun to write because they involve storytelling and rich descriptive language. I feel more creative writing narrative papers, which is why I prefer writing them, as opposed to research papers. When we write narrative papers, I can draw from personal experience, which makes the writing process easier than

English Poems The problem regarding racial equality can be traced as far back as the African-American slave trade of the 1400s. But even after the Civil War and the Reconstruction of the United States, there is no denying the fact that a racial tension still exists between "whites" and "blacks." Many authors, artists, and poets have portrayed this tension, sometimes even going as far back as inspiring their audience through language