essay

Running head: A LESSER COMMUNITY

A LESSER COMMUNITY

A lesser Community

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Through time, the black community has always been considered a minority in the US, interspersed with this view as a minority community, is also, first, a cataclysmic discrimination as a race in the earlier years, and a de facto segregation in the more recent times. All in all, underlying in all these instances of discrimination and the facto segregation is the lack of recognition as a race with its own part to play in the history and life of a nation.

This is particularly brought out in the following two poems, each bringing out, in a way, these realities through the hands of time. In her poem “ At the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, South Carolina, 1989 ”, Lucille Clifton brings out the non-recognition of the slaves as a people despite the much they did to build a nation, nobody remembers them for the part they played, rather, as a minority people… “nobody mentioned slaves but somebody did this work… some of these honoured dead were dark some of these dark were slaves”.

On the other hand, Sekou Sundiata, through his poem, “ BLINK YOUR EYES ”, brings out the facto segregation of the black community in the modern world, they are judged according to certain preconceived and discriminatory ideologies based on the color of their skin… “New York City, they got laws can’t nobruthasdrive outdoors, in certain neighborhoods, on particular streets near and around certain types of people. They got laws. All depends, all depends on the skin, and all depends on the skin you’re living in.”