Comparing the Loss of Innocence in Cullens Incident and Naylor’s Mommy

Loss of Innocence in Cullens Incident and Naylors Mommy, What Does Nigger Mean? Unfortunately, a question that many African Americans have to ask in tykehood is Mommy, what does nigger symbolize?, and the answer to this question depicts the racism that still thrives in America (345). both Gloria Naylors Mommy, What Does Nigger Mean? and Countee Cullens Incident demonstrate how a countersignature like nigger destroys a childs innocence and initiates the child into a world of racism. Though the situations provoking the racial slur differ, the condition nigger has the same effect on the young Naylor and the child in Cullens poem. A racist society devours the light childrens innocence, and, consequently, the white children embody the concept of racism as they consume the innocence of the drear children by stereotyping them as niggers. The word nigger causes the young Naylor and the child in Cullens poem to begin viewing the world in terms of low and white, and the racial epithet establishes an invisible barrier between the sorry and the white worlds. Neither child ever indicates the color of the people he/she speaks of. Naylor gives her most in-depth physical description of the child that calls her nigger when she recalls that she handed the written document to a little male child in back of me (344). Naylors vague description gives the appearance that the young Naylor sees no important distinctions between the male child and herself. However, the fact that the little son calls her nigger proves not only that the boy sees a major distinction between himself and Naylor, but also that the boy is white (344). The child in Countee Cullens poem gives a as well color-less description of the Baltimorean boy as he/she say... ...my grandmothers living room took a word that whites used to signify ineptitude or degradation and rendered it impotent (346). In this response to the derogatory term, Naylors essay offers a tool to fight racism and a means of hope f or the innocent minority children which Cullens Incident lacks In the do by of socialization in a racist society, a child whitethorn lose innocence, but a child may also imbibe strength and character by rising above any racist stereotypes society applies to him/her. Works Cited Cullen, Countee. Incident. African-American belles-lettres A Brief incoming and Anthology. Ed. Al Young. bare-ass York Harper Collins, 1996. 398. Naylor, Gloria. Mommy, What Does Nigger Mean? New Worlds of Literature Writings from Americas Many Cultures, second edition. Eds. Jerome Beatty and J. Paul Hunter. New York Norton, 1994. 344-47.