Racial Separatism, Nadine Gordimer, Alice Walker - Essay Example

? Compare and Contrast, Nadine Gordimer, Alice Walker Introduction Race: Racism has existed throughout human history. It may be described as the hatred of one person by another or the impression that he or she is less than human for the reason that their skin color, language, traditions, religious conviction, origin or any item that by all accounts reveals the essential nature of that person. Racism can also be defined as the conviction that a particular race is better or more substandard than another, that one’s social and good individualities is predestined by his or her innate biological characteristics. It has influenced wars, slavery, the creation of nations, and legal codes. Racial separatism on the other hand is the impression, usually based on racism that different races ought to keep isolated from one another. This is plainly seen in Gordimer’s ‘Country Lovers’ which revolves around two lovers; an interracial couple not allowed being together by the ruling of South Africa during apartheid. In as much as interracial couples face complexities all over the world, specific situations considering apartheid had serious problems for Paulus and Thebedi. The interracial couple in ‘Country Lovers’ is aware of the risks of being together but wish to get involved yet with Paulus as a member of the white ruling class while Thebedi an unfortunate and defenseless black. Alice Walker’s ‘Welcome Table’ alternatively is centered on black women who want to escape and be freed but are deprived of that freedom by the society they live in and by their spouses. Black men are exposed negatively and are seen to be the oppressors of black women. In the two stories, the writers talk about racism and discrimination of some kind. Thesis statement Both writers clearly show the sufferings experienced by the black women and how they lived in fear during those specific periods. Racism is not a typically shown in both of these stories, but the two writers approach the issue from slightly different perspectives. As a result, both stories present and hit brutalities and hypocrisy of racism but in extremely different ways and with remarkably different emotional effects. Analysis ‘Country Lovers’ by Nadine Gordimer and Walker’s ‘The Welcome Table’ both condemn racism and illustrate tragic typical outcome. Nevertheless, the stories fluctuate to some time not only in the circumstance within which every story was written, but also the manner by which they are written and general emotional impact it creates on the reader. Gordimer’s story was written in South Africa under the evil apartheid government that used command and power tools to propel extreme conditions of living on all blacks in South Africa even as they protect educational, economic prospects and assets as a limited privilege of the South African whites. As Bloom puts it “The segregation laws stated that blacks and whites were to be separated, but equal. In reality the equality between races did not exist. For instance, educational institutions for blacks were usually underfunded” (Bloom, page 43-45). However, during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s black people became more involved and dared to stand up for equal rights and ask the questions they did not ask in 1927 (Bloom, page 132).Without doubt, this form of immorality since 1950 is well interrelated to a perceptive of Gordimer’s story as the sexual relations between communities of diverse races an unlawful act at the time. On the other hand, Walker’s story is set in United States during the post civil rights era, but Walker worries herself with the rural African –Americans who have not been able to enjoy the freedoms put on by the civil rights movement and who are predestined to life overseen by the legacy of slavery. In both stories hypocrisy of racism is revealed. In Walker’s ‘Welcome Table’, we find that the name itself is ironic for the reason that the African-American old woman, dreamy and almost sightless, is committed to attend the service at the nearby church, the large white church, lodged in the separated setting of the South. The story revolves around her connection with God; this, for her, is above and past the regulations recognized by Southern principles. With her mind occupied with private prayer she brushes past the preacher and sits shaking on the front pew of the cold church. Unsurprisingly, there is no welcome and the sight of her infuriates the worshippers. Her presence is distinguished to be a violation of privacy, which they oppose to believe they still kept. The principle is that she ought to worship with her own people. As white fear is revitalized, this shows the white perceptions of black people. They are committed to hide behind principle and shake her pliability; hence she is thrown out. The reverend tells her: ‘Auntie, you know this is not your church?’ As if one could choose the wrong one” (Walker, page 83). This undoubtedly disrupts her worship. We leave the hypocrites sharing an oration on God's unbiased love. Once the old woman is out on the doorstep, Walker marries the realist detail to her imagination. She now sings a sad song until she realizes that Jesus is coming leisurely along the highway. Jesus is exactly like the 'white' image on the picture that she has of him. “Except that he was not carrying in his arms a baby sheep, he looked exactly like the picture of him that she had hanging over her bed (Walker 1984, page 85)”. She is told to follow him, which she obeys, singing and gesturing excitedly step after step without feeling any bit of tiredness. On they walk as the ground becomes as cloud; and on and on they walk without stopping … The old woman, seen pointing upwards and smiling, looking at the sky, has fallen dead on the highway. The ‘Welcome Table’ is an intriguing image, it is a hint of the table on the last supper, which represents Christianity by altar where spiritual unity is renowned and where Christians go eat bread and drink wine. The table also represents heaven and its plenty where the old lady believes she will spend her afterlife. The lady enters the white church where she is thrown out; there is no welcome table, regardless of the Christian ideas of love and forgiveness for everyone. Like Klinkowitz (2001) puts it, “If you are a Christian, a sincere one, do you think Jesus was present in that hypocritical white church? Or is he out there on the road with the old dying lady?” On the contrary, in Gordimer’s story, racism in the form of the hypocrisy is more private regardless of the support of legal codes and equipment of the apartheid system they have. As an adolescent boy growing up, Paulus merely follows his natural feelings by his attraction to the black lady, Thebedi. There is striking virtue and alluring sensuousness to the depiction of the physical desire he had for her, but as he gets older and becomes more conservative, outgoing, he betrays her without guilt and eventually murders the child they had together to save himself from action under the immorality Act. Because his hypocrisy is private, wicked and egotistical, while the hypocrisy in the ‘Welcome Table’ is more general and founded on the times of slavery and oppression of African –Americans in the United States. In both stories racism is revealed in the form of economic oppression of blacks. In South Africa it was a determined aim of the apartheid system to refute South African black’s economic advancement. In the ‘Welcome Table’, members of the white impostor do not see a weak old lady; but judges the old woman based on an indiscriminate supposition regarding the black. The narration reflects the attitudes the old woman is met with by the congregation, as the narrator only guesses what the old woman says or thinks based on stereotypical attitudes towards black women. When looking at her, the congregation saw a cook, a maid or mistresses, professions that resemble the jobs entitled to slaves. The congregation also judges the old black woman based on their own fears, therefore has the men throw the old woman out of the church. Walker’s irony is apparent when she states “As if one could choose the wrong one” (Walker 1984, page 83), emphasizing that to God they are all equal regardless the color of their skin. In ‘Country Lovers’ too, there’s an economic and social partition that separates Paulus from Thebedi, his father is the local proprietor and he gets sent away to school which is the beginning of growing away from each other. Thebedi is predestined to a lifetime of tiresome jobs and like all Africans under apartheid is deprived of access to education. The social and economic gap between the lovers is inconceivable; living conditions in Kraal are an absolute disparity to the facilities and luxuriousness of the farmhouse. Both stories also expose racism with an idea of social embarrassment. In Gordimer’s ‘Country Lovers’ there is the terror of miscegenation which leads to the murder of the baby, but there’s also Paulus’ fear of prosecution not just for murder of the baby, but for sexual relations with Thebedi in the first place. For Paulus father the whole incident seems more of social embarrassment. Similarly in the ‘Welcome Table’ there’s an element of social embarrassment ;the white church goers do not know how to deal with the old black lady who has strayed mistakenly into their house , but there’s also a more instinctive, racist fear of unknown. “The other many of them- the white congregation, saw jungle orgies in an evil peace, while others were reminded of riotous rebel looting and raping in the streets (Walker, 1973)”. In neither stories are the white people seeing human beings like themselves and then feeling the natural human compassion one would extend to another human being. Walker uses the word “centuries” to illustrate the long period of oppression and mistreatment suffered by African Americans. Having been turned out of church, the old woman meets Jesus and talks to him cheerfully until she dies by the side of the road. It is ironic because the Jesus who appears to her is blue – eyed and Aryan and is based on a picture that the old black lady stole from the bible of her white employers. This image of Jesus is a construction of the dominant white culture as concierge point: Walker’s short story demonstrates the difficulty of freeing Jesus from a racist, Euro-American ideology, this white blue-eyed Jesus escorts her but we are not told if her encounter is really redemptive or not, or if Jesus can be unraveled from the pages of the white slave owners Bible. As readers, we are left to set up our own response to the ending. Has Christianity been used a social control to offer African-Americans a spiritual outlet for their frustrations? Even if that is the case, the old lady does at least die happily, although outcast by the society that has used her and her ancestors. Conclusion Although both stories highly share similar concerns, they are written remarkably differently. Gordimers story is longer; more detailed and takes place over several years. We see a relationship growing and changing, the characters are named, personalized and therefore, when Thebedi breaks down and cry in court, we most likely feel empathy for her. By the same token, we are more likely to be emotionally engaged by Paulus’s act of betrayal and the murder of his own son. However at the end of the story Gordimer distances us from the characters by concentrating on judicial procedure in court and reporting of the case by newspapers. By contrast, Walker writes more briefly with confines to one day. Walker does not use names and gives her story a timeless, general feel bringing to the fore the old lady to a position of every woman or at least, every American woman. The ‘Welcome Table’ has elements which take us back to the parables in the bible. In its much ironic setback of social roles, expectations and events, this story uses the formal structure of parable suggests it’s from the biblical heritage of Walkers church going childhood. Biblical parables are made to teach. Does Walker’s story have the same function? It would appear to teach us a lesson about the importance of compassion to the oppressed, but it is also clearly critical of the so called Christian values of the white church from which the old lady is ejected. Christian doctrine suggests that love of one’s neighbor is important. Jesus in the New Testament has nothing to say about race and formal or informal segregation. The “Welcome Table” is a dreadful story in many ways; however, the human and imaginative spirit which seems to be central in Alice Walker’s short stories seems to survive. The old black woman, who is tossed out of the church, does not seem to be devastated by it. She sings, walks with Jesus, even though she dies we believe her spirit is endless. Walker suggests that life goes on, and that this was just an episode that will soon be forgotten, if not already. “The people in the church never knew what happened to the old woman; they never mentioned her to one another or to anybody else” (Walker 1984, page 86-87). This is manifested in the countless experiences where many African Americans were exposed to discrimination. During the Civil Rights Movement in the1960’s, many African Americans participated in demonstrations about the discrimination they faced. Their efforts resulted in an improvement for many African Americans in the USA. In 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act which outlawed discrimination based on sex and race. The act banned segregation and it would be brought legal actions against segregation (The National Archives. Web, access date: Nov. 11, 2010 and D. Simon 2002). However, though manifested in the law, discrimination continued and so did the riots. With the Voting Rights Act signed into law in 1965 that stated that every American citizen no matter race or color where given the right to vote, a new era began (Bloom 184 and 221 and D. Simon 2002). Of the two stories Walker’s ‘Welcome Table’ is rather more successful because of its shortness and its parable-like nature. Gordimer‘s story though sharing the same idea of racism, has a slightly different impact because it is a story of love gone wrong , love denied by social conditions, love prohibited by the ruling. References Walker, A. (1973). In love & trouble: Stories of Black women. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Gordimer, N. (1979). Town and country lovers. Los Angeles, Calif: Sylvester & Orphanos. Klinkowitz, J. (2001). You've got to be carefully taught: learning and relearning literature. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Walker, A. (1984). In Love and Trouble, Stories of Black Women. London: The Women’s Press Ltd. Bloom, J. M. (1987). Class, Race and the Civil Rights Movement. Indiana University Press : Bloomington. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (n.d.). National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved November 26, 2012, from http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/civil-rights-act/ Read More