How does the narrator initially view the white Brownie troop? Does herbackground influence her initial perspective? Consult the text for examples
What will be an ideal response?
- As they get off the bus at camp, the white Brownie troop is immediately branded by the black girls for no reason other than their skin color. Their experiences at their school—located in the suburbs of Atlanta—reinforce such stereotyping, especially since there is only one white student at Woodrow Wilson Elementary (par. 13).
For example, when the black girls joke around in school with the idea of what behaviors are, or are not, particularly associated with “Caucasians,” their own prejudices are highlighted. They tease a boy for his unstylish jeans; they belittle anyone different from them. They use the word “Caucasian” so often that it loses its meaning altogether: “if you ate too fast you ate like a Caucasian, if you ate too slow you ate like a Caucasian” (par. 12). These earlier prejudices carry over into their view of the white Brownies.
Their assumptions about white girls come from TV commercials and from impersonal encounters with white people; none of them have any authentic relationships with any white girls or boys. Because whites are the minority group in the south suburbs of Atlanta, the girls confess that “it was easy to forget about whites. Whites were like those baby pigeons: real and existing, but rarely seen or thought about” (par. 14). But at camp, the black girls are forced to deal with a group of ten girls who look different than they do. Their “envy and hatred” is based on jealousy and longstanding resentment, because they are forced to look at the white girls’ “long, shampoo-commercial hair, straight as spaghetti from a box” (par. 14). A war theme is set up early when the black girls declare the white girls to be “invaders” (par. 14) who were “doomed from the first day of camp” (par. 1).
The reader’s (and the narrator’s) sense of the situation is initially clouded by Arnetta’s dubious accusation that the white girls called Daphne a “nigger,” a word that triggers in the troop (and the reader) hurtful racist associations. Packer is such a good storyteller that by the time we get to the restroom scene, we, like the black girls, focus only on the offensive nature of the word “nigger,” which arguably none of the white Brownies ever said. That word has become a convenient reason for the fight that was planned before any girl in Troop 909 ever opened her mouth. Ask your students to reread the opening paragraph to see that the true motive for the fight has little to do with words, and everything to do with the skin color of the “doomed” Troop 909.
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écouteurs / toi
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(1) According to a study conducted by the United Nations, Americans work much longer hours than Europeans. (2) In the United States, about 86% of men and 66% of women work more than 40 hours per week. (3) In contrast, few Europeans ever work over 40 hours per week, and full-time workers in several European counties, such as France, work as little as 30-35 hours per week. (4) The average American
puts in 1,800 hours per year on the job; in some European counties, full-time workers put in as few as 1,400 hours per year. (5) Companies typically give their full-time American employees only two week's paid vacation every year whereas they give European workers 4-6 week's annual vacation leave. (6) European counties have laws that guarantee workers a minimum amount of vacation time and limit the length of the workweek to a maximum of 48 hours. (7) The United States, however, has no such laws for its workers. Does this paragraph compare, contrast, or both? A) compares only B) contrasts only C) compares and contrasts
El aimará es uno de los idiomas andinos que se habla en Bolivia.
A. cierta B. falsa
What is the Error Function?
What will be an ideal response?