¶ … prejudice is bad actually convince the reader?
A Buddhist monk, famous among his peers for the calm and serenity he constantly expressed, received the visit of a young man one day. The latter had come intent on disturbing the monk's peace and reputation and began attacking the master with a conglomeration of verbal expressions that even the foulest of men would have bowed their head in shame. Each word that came out of the young man's mouth was one more colorful than the other. And no remark that he addressed to the monk had anything but a pejorative sense of direction. As the young man went on to gesticulate vividly in a body language that matched his most "candid" acts of expressing, the Buddhist monk did nothing but gently smiled, causing the young man to build up more steam. Exasperated and drained out of energy, the man finally gave up and asked the master about his secret. The Buddhist monk replied: "If someone comes up to me and offers me a present, and I refuse it, to whom does the present go then?" In other words, the hatred, aggressiveness, and venom returned to sender. The conclusion of the story is that the young man inflicted malice upon himself, by having to retain the venom of his behavior within him. The moral would thus be that, if someone tries to hurt another -- not including physical injuries in this context -- all that someone has to do is simply let the assailant assimilate his own venom. Otherwise stated, just as a rubber ball always bounces back from the wall, so would the harm directed unto another return to sender if it is not held on to and nurtured.
How does this story relate in any way to prejudice? Moreover, how does it relate to Brent Staples, Maya Angelou, Jamaica Kincaid, and Zora Neale Hurston's essays on their personal experience(s) with prejudice? The answer is that we are not all Buddhist monks. And because we are not all Buddhist monks, there can be no expectation that one is able to simply allow the effects of certain harmful situations to bounce back while being least if at all affected. Because the truth is, prejudice affects and it affects on a level that transcends momentums and conscientious affliction. Staples, because of others' impressions of him, felt compelled to develop coping mechanisms to "smother the rage I felt at so often being taken for a criminal." (2) Whistling "bright, sunny selections" as he strolled along the streets of New York at night became the regular habit because white women mostly, as he related in "Just Walk on By," took one slight look at him and instantly labeled him a "mugger." Staples realized that his warbling of classical music eased the tension in people when they met the tall, black, young man who appeared to them as threatening. Maya Angelou, listening to the white man's allusive speech at her graduation, felt crushed at the realization that people, who were neither black, nor red, nor yellow, but indeed white, expected no more from the rest than "to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense." (30) Jamaica Kincaid, having been instructed repeatedly and from as far back as she could remember, to regard England, the colonizer, with piety, in a manner similar to religious dogmatism, revolted against the country. She will not lose this impression even at experiencing England first-hand, years after her childhood faded and she visited the country herself. Zora Neale Hurston felt alienation for most of her adult life because, as she implied, music does not play the same for blacks and whites. Whereas "the great blubs of purple and red emotions" (3) infuse her spirit and make her feel as though she "is in the jungle and living in the jungle way," (3) the jazz beats leave no other impression on a white man standing beside her but that the music is "good." The white man in Hurston's essay, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," is in the proximity of Hurston's world but not exactly inside. Whereas he makes use of merely physical senses, Hurston lets herself be carried away by rhythms of the jungle and sensations transcending the realm of reality and she understands the gap because the man "has only heard what I felt." (3) The man is thus unable to experience the music in a manner similar to Hurston because, as she perceives, his world is different from hers. In a world where the color of the skin is judged, Hurston experiences intermittent...
Prejudice If you walk in to a bookstore or browse online you will find hundreds, in fact thousands, of essays, books, articles, and speeches about prejudice. Obviously, most of them are against prejudice and before you begin reading any of them, let me tell you that chances are good that they will contain phrases like "don't have prejudice against people," "prejudice results in downfall" or "prejudice is a bad thing,."
The present generation generally concludes that pop-culture is devoid of developmental benefits (as it ironically becomes more and more consumed by it) due to its reliance on sensational sensory related stimuli such as depictions of violence, sex and special effects. Video games tend to supply ample portions of all three. Johnson and his supporters contend, however, that there is ample evidence proving that video games foster interactive learning, multi-tasking,
" A woman, although not receiving an inheritance, knew that she would at least be under the roof of her husband. Johnson, in her book, Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel, characterizes Austen as a novelist who "defended and enlarged a progressive middle ground that had been eaten away by the polarizing polemics born of the 1790s." She also states that Austen was a product of her times. She agrees
Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West by Patricia Nelson Limerick. Specifically it will contain a book review of the book. "The Legacy of Conquest" is a new look at the settling of the American West, from the 19th century to the Reagan era. She has a new take on how the West was settled, and does not look at it as a frontier, as most
Daughter of Time "Everybody knows that Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet kings, murdered his two nephews. But everybody could be wrong -- according to Scotland Yard's Inspector Grant, who studies 500-year-old evidence to try to determine who really killed these two heirs to the British throne…" (Harris, 2001, p. 1). On the initial page of author Josephine Tey's book, The Daughter of Time, the author (whose real name is Elizabeth MacKintosh
Scientology Introducing a New Religious Movement, one must be as objective as possible. I, for instance, could choose to tell you that L. Ron Hubbard founded the Church of Scientology in 1954 and marketed it as an organization for social reform that essentially became the global force it is today, with (young, professional, stylish, racially-diverse) adherents providing positive sound bites on Scientology.org that promote (in naturalistic, community-oriented settings) the religion as
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now