Select a student with fewer than two reviews (so that every student gets two reviews). Copy and past the “Questions for peer review,” below, into the reply section. Answer each question as thoroughly as possible. (5 points each/10 points total).
Use the following questions to direct your peer review:
Questions for Peer Review
Title of essay:
Date:
Writer’s name:
Peer reviewer’s name:
1. This Essay’s Critical Lens is:
2. The Essay’s Claim is:
3. The Essay’s focus is on:
4. Does the Essay have Sufficient Backing?
5. Does the Essay Cite all Sources?
6. Does the writer make a case for why this critical perspective helps to understand “Elethia””?
This was my favorite part of the essay:
These places in your essay are not clear to me:
The one additional change you could make that would improve this essay significantly is:
Andrew Segal posted Oct 16, 2021 4:17 PM
This page automatically marks posts as read as you scroll.Adjust automatic marking as read setting
Andrew Segal
English 1102
Professor Kassorla
October 15, 2021
***DRAFT*** “Uncle” Becomes a “Thug”
Alice Walker’s short story, Elethia, employs a Jim Crow era stereotype of Black people as a foil against which the story progresses and the protagonist stands out. Walker uses the “Uncle” figure – commonly portrayed as good-natured, subservient, and happy – wholesale, having the white proprietor of a restaurant display an “Uncle” figure in the window and name the restaurant accordingly. By 1982, when Walker published her work, the stereotypes of Blacks had been changing following the social upheaval of the civil rights movement twenty years or so before. By then, the jovial, subservient “Uncle” was no longer a major vein in the stereotypical portrayal of Black people; these images were being increasingly supplanted by new ones promulgating a vision of Blacks – especially males – as violent and criminal. Walker, a long-standing activist voice against the injustices of racism, was undoubtedly aware of this change happening around her. From among the many Jim Crow caricatures with which she could have crafted her story, the affable “Uncle” figure spoke loudest. She chose “Uncle” because it could best evoke the reader’s consideration of the state of the then popular stereotypes of Blacks in American society. The choice pushed her readers to recognize that these opposite ends of character caricature – docile on the one hand, and violent on the other – are equally implausible, offensive, and dehumanizing.
Prior to the Reconstruction Era, Black people were largely depicted as meek and mild. “The images of buffoonery, blissful ignorance, and juvenile angst were seen as the primary traits of enslaved Blacks. … White actors popularized minstrel shows, depicting stereotypes of Black life as foolish, messy, and overall comedic.” (Smiley 4). These portrayals began changing during Reconstruction due to increasing pressure by newly freed black people on the social, economic, and political rights and privileges of Whites. As Blacks began to develop their own communities and social systems, including business districts, educational facilities, and political publications, portrayals by Whites of Blacks took on an increasingly aggressive tone. By the time the Supreme Court ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson cemented the “separate but equal” approach of the Jim Crow era, there had developed an array of caricatures of Black people, several of which delineated the supposed brutish nature of Blacks. Chief among these was the “Nat”, a stereotype that portrayed “African and African American males as angry, crazed, revengeful brutes with a bloodthirsty hatred for whites” (Negative Racial). This stereotype went by various names, such as “Black Beast” and “Black Brute”, before settling upon “Nat” after the bloody insurrection by the slave, Nat Turner, in 1831. Following the Jim Crow era, the upheaval of the civil rights movement and the politicization of fear about crime and the War on Drugs added criminality to the intensified centrality of violence as the primary stereotype of Blacks. (Negative Racial)
At a superficial level, the choice of the “Uncle” figure in Walker’s work might seem nothing more than one derived for the purpose of plot exposition. If there were to have been a restaurant fashioned after one of the Jim Crow caricatures, certainly the “Uncle” stereotype would have been an obvious choice. The “Uncle” figure has a history of association with food, to wit: Uncle Ben’s rice and Aunt Jemima pancake mix. But Walker’s works tend to be stories on a mission. They are designed to throw light on injustice, to reveal the subjugation of the poor, voiceless, and oppressed. An “Uncle” figure, more so than any of the other Jim Crow caricatures, draws forth from the reader a comparison of the more traditional stereotype with the more modern “Thug” image that was building around the time of the story’s publication. A good fraction of Elethia tells about how the real Albert Porter was in fact very different from the “Uncle” stereotype. The real man was angry, confrontational, and stubborn, while the caricature was jovial, docile, and harmless. Does that not draw out of the reader consideration that the caricature of the Black “Thug” might well belie someone of rather a different character in real life? That the image of violence and criminality disguises the reality of more normalized human dispositions such as we all might have? Alice Walker’s choice of the “Uncle” figure in Elethia helps heighten her readers’ awareness that the latest iteration of Black caricature is no less false, harmful, and debasing than any of those from the Jim Crow era.
Works Cited
ETHNIC NOTIONS Transcriipt. http://newsreel.org/transcriipts/ethnicno.htm. Accessed 14 Oct. 2021.
Negative Racial Stereotypes and Their Effect on Attitudes Toward African-Americans – Scholarly Essays – Jim Crow Museum – Ferris State University. https://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jimcrow/links/essays/vcu.htm. Accessed 14 Oct. 2021.
“Racist Images and Messages in Jim Crow Era | Video | The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross | PBS.” The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/video/racist-images-and-messages-in-jim-crow-era/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2021.
Smiley, CalvinJohn, and David Fakunle. “From ‘Brute’ to ‘Thug:’ The Demonization and Criminalization of Unarmed Black Male Victims in America.” Journal Of Human Behavior In The Social Environment, vol. 26, no. 3–4, 2016, pp. 350–66. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2015.1129256.
Taylor, Evi, et al. “The Historical Perspectives of Stereotypes on African-American Males.” Journal of Human Rights and Social Work, vol. 4, no. 3, Sept. 2019, pp. 213–25. Springer Link, https://doi.org/10.1007/s41134-019-00096-y.
