Comparing the Loss of Innocence in Cullens Incident and Naylor’s Mommy

Loss of Innocence in Cullens Incident and Naylors Mommy, What Does Nigger Mean? Unfortunately, a question that numerous African Americans have to ask in childhood is Mommy, what does common racoon mean?, and the answer to this question depicts the racism that still thrives in America (345). Both Gloria Naylors Mommy, What Does Nigger Mean? and Countee Cullens Incident demonstrate how a word like nigger destroys a childs innocence and initiates the child into a origination of racism. Though the situations provoking the racial slur differ, the word nigger has the same effect on the young Naylor and the child in Cullens poem. A antiblack society devours the unclouded childrens innocence, and, consequently, the white children embody the concept of racism as they consume the innocence of the black children by stereotyping them as niggers. The word nigger causes the young Naylor and the child in Cullens poem to begin viewing the world in terms of black and white, and the racial epith et establishes an invisible rampart between the black and the white worlds. Neither child ever indicates the color of the people he/she speaks of. Naylor gives her most in-depth physical description of the child that calls her nigger when she recalls that she reach the papers to a little boy in back of me (344). Naylors vague description gives the appearance that the young Naylor sees no important distinctions between the boy and herself. However, the fact that the little boy calls her nigger proves not only that the boy sees a major distinction between himself and Naylor, but also that the boy is white (344). The child in Countee Cullens poem gives a similarly color-less description of the Baltimorean boy as he/she say... ...my grandmothers living path took a word that whites used to signify worthlessness or degradation and rendered it impotent (346). In this response to the derogatory term, Naylors essay offers a incision to fight racism and a message of hope for the innocen t minority children which Cullens Incident lacks In the process of socialization in a antiblack society, a child may lose innocence, but a child may also gain strength and character by rising above any racist stereotypes society applies to him/her. Works Cited Cullen, Countee. Incident. African-American Literature A Brief Introduction and Anthology. Ed. Al Young. juvenile York Harper Collins, 1996. 398. Naylor, Gloria. Mommy, What Does Nigger Mean? New Worlds of Literature Writings from Americas Many Cultures, second edition. Eds. Jerome Beatty and J. Paul Hunter. New York Norton, 1994. 344-47.