Maya Angelou Research Paper

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Jacalyn Dailey Maya Angelou Racism in the 1900’s was a very cruel and violent time. Even though slavery has ended, and people are learning from their mistakes in the past, there are still major problems happening in today's world. Racial stereotypes was a huge problem in the 1930’s and Maya Angelou was faced with many racist and prejudice factors that greatly impacted her life. Maya also had her own view on “white folks” and “white folks” perceived African Americans in a very racist way. The 1930’s and 1940’s was a hard time, especially during the Great Depression, and on top of that Maya had to deal with racism at a very young age. “It was our people falling. It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree. One more woman ambushed and raped. A Black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps. It was a white…show more content…
She even says this : “Wouldn’t they be surprised when one day i woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blonde, would take place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn’t let me straighten?”(4). Maya is saying that white folks are beautiful and she wishes she could look like them. She is almost putting a stereotype on white people saying they all have long blonde hair. Thats not the only thing Maya perceives of white folks. She also has disgusted and hatred feelings toward racist white people. “Every person I knew had a hellish horror of being ‘called out of his name’. It was a dangerous practice to call a Negro anything that could be loosely construed as insulting because of the centuries of their having been called niggers, jigs, dinges, blackbirds, crows, boots and spooks.” (105). Maya feels humiliated, and mocked when the white woman she works for decides to call her Mary. She feels stripped of her dignity because the name she was born with was gone and it does not feel right to be called another

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