Questions tagged [race-issues]
Questions related to race, including both racism and its condemnation.
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Censorship of African-American characters in "Tintin in America"
From the Wikipedia page on Tintin in America:
For the 1973 edition published in the U.S., the publishers made Hergé remove African-American characters from the book, and redraw them as Whites or ...
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What was the ethnicity of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights?
Though he was brought home by Mr. Earnshaw following a journey to Liverpool, there is no definitive answer to his ethnicity. Liverpool by 1740 had surpassed Bristol and London as the slave-trading ...
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Understanding the use of the word "Negress" in the Kilmartin and Cox translation of Solaris
I just finished reading Kilmartin and Cox's translation of Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, and one particular passage stood out to me. I'm hesitant to ask a question about the Kilmartin and Cox translation, ...
user111
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1
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Contrasting depictions of Asians in Tintin
In The Blue Lotus, Tintin talks to Chang about various 'silly' stereotypes held by Westerners.
The story is pretty thoughtful in its representation of Asians.
But in earlier adventures, Herge drew ...
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3
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Why are there so many references to Moneylenders and Jews in 19th century fiction?
In 19th century fiction, there are a lot of references to moneylenders as "Jews". For example, in "Framley Parsonage", by Anthony Trollope, Lord Lufton says "the pocket-books of the Jews are stuffed ...
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Why does Modesta Gómez demand payment from the indigenous girl?
In Rosario Castellanos's short story "Modesta Gómez," we see how a girl named Modesta with bright dreams for the future has them destroyed first by a wealthy family and then by her working-...
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Why is the colour of Caliban's girls important?
I recently read Nalo Hopkinson's short story "Shift", which is freely available online. The central character is a reimagining of Shakespeare's Caliban, a Caribbean black man who finds white women to ...
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In Wister's _The Virginian_, why is calling a white man white considered a compliment?
In the second chapter of Owen Wister's The Virginian, what appears to be a factual statement about the titular character's race is described by the narrator as a "high compliment":
“Yes, ...
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2
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Is it whitewashing to depict Blaise Zabini as white?
I was reading about a little kerfuckle in the Harry Potter community over the character of Blaise Zabini, who was revealed in The Half Blood Prince (more than half way through the series, despite ...
user111
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+50
Account of picking up a black hitchhiker who then wanted to be let out
I remember decades ago reading a book with the following vignette, set in the 60s. The white male narrator is driving through the countryside and picks up a hitchhiking young black man. The rider is ...
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Why is "The Vanishing Half" set in Louisiana?
Author Brit Bennett's new novel has hit and stayed on The New York Times fiction best-seller list for months as of now. I have not been able to get a copy. Reading the reviews and synopsis makes me ...
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4
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1
answer
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What is Baldwin referring to by the "magnificent twenties"?
In his Many Thousands Gone, James Baldwin wrote
We cannot, to begin with, divorce this book from the specific social
climate of that time; it was one of the last of all through the
thirties, ...
- 41
4
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0
answers
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Is "Uncle Tom's Cabin" read in American high schools?
I have read that Harriet Beecher Stowe's work (published 1852) is not encouraged by the educational establishment in the US because of the stereotypes it presents of black people as ill-educated and ...
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How can we approach analyzing Singer's treatment of race in his works?
While reading A Friend of Kafka (1970), a book of short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer, a few passages struck me as odd, especially concering race (and the use of the word "Negro" in ...
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2
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Was Mark Twain a racist?
The question had come to my mind after reading Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; I knew he more often had put Indians as his story villains, but I wasn't paying attention to it till I read that ...
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3
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1
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Why are the prisoners that have become too weak to work referred to as "Moslems" by the Nazi guards?
I read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl around half a year ago or so, and something I've been left wondering is why the Nazi/SS guards refer to men who no longer are fit to work due to ...
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2
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Regarding Sally Andrews' first tannie Maria story, have there been questions about racism?
I've recently finished reading Recipes for Love and Murder by Sally Andrew, and most of it has left a delicious taste.
The one piece that I'm left wondering about is a secondary character, Piet ...
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2
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1
answer
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"Chieftain" and Toussaint's ethnicity in Wordsworth's "To Toussaint L'Ouverture"
Wordsworth's "To Toussaint L'Ouverture" apostrophises the eponymous freedom fighter as "O miserable Chieftain!" (line 5). In "Black Heroes/White Writers: Toussaint L'Ouverture ...
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2
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1
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Where and to whom did Toni Morrison give this speech?
Afua Hirsch in her book, Brit(ish) writes that Toni Morrison gave a speech in 1975 saying:
'It's important to know ... the very serious distraction of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you ...
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Book about a white mother who kills her black son (with her other white son)
I remember reading this perhaps during elementary school.
While this wasn't the entire plot of the book, one of its major points was a mother who slept with a black man and had a black son. She and ...
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1
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Does "Jerry Was a Man" present a positive or negative view of civil rights?
"Jerry Was a Man" is a short story by Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1947, ten years before the 1957 Civil Rights Act in the United States. The story follows a court case where it is being ...
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