The Jungle of Racism - Madisyn Rideau

Madisyn Rideau 

Professor Harris 

ENGL 2016- 44378

3 December 2021

The Jungle Of Racism 

From Tigers and Jaguars to snakes and spiders, the jungle presents so many different forms of potential danger. Surviving just one day would prove to be very difficult.Well, is that truly different from the potential horror society places black people in on a daily basis? Constantly in a battle against society, fighting for equality each day. That is the life of a black person. Some may ask how a jungle has any correlation to racism or the struggle African Americans face on a daily basis, and I am here to explain just that. 

What is the main characteristic to have in the jungle? If you said survival, you are correct. There are many predator- prey relationships inside our ecosystem. For example, jaguars are predators to sloths just as a tiger is a predator to a zebra. These predators survive each day based on the lives of their prey. Similarly, white people have subliminally survived off of the lives of black people for years. They were often used for entertainment, work, and even personal gain. Without black people, whites wouldn't have known how to truly survive. With that being stated, let’s consider this, Who takes the role as predator or prey? Initially, it is easy to believe that black people are prey who are constantly using different forms of defense to get through each day against a predator (white society) but is that the only truth? No. Black people can also be viewed as the predators, the ones who hold the true power within the jungle, while the white society lives each day in constant defense from the thing they fear the most, a powerful black community. 

Similar to the repetitive action found between a predator and its prey is Afro-pessimism. Afro-pessimism is the continuation of black oppression, leaving black people in a constant state of “death”. Slavery will continue to repeat, although it may come in a different form, it will remain. An example of Afro-pessimism can be found in the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison. Sethe kills her baby to protect it from the gruesome reality the baby would have to face had it been fully raised in society. Sethe has been exposed to the repetition of racism since she was born, and she believed that death was a greater freedom than placing her child through the negative lifestyle racism would have brought upon it. Oppression may not specifically involve working in cotton fields or the lynching of black Americans, but its affects are still prevalent in society today. Black women feeling the need to straighten their hair to be viewed as equal, black men being stereotyped as thugs and menaces to society, black men and women shot at and killed by the same system designed to “protect” them , are all examples of those affects seen in society daily. Although it often goes unnoticed, Afro-pessimism is a cycle found in life that can be found just as frequently as the repetitive idea of predator vs prey in society. 

Strong, courageous, intuitive, and powerful are ,in reality, characteristics of black people. Savage, pickaninny, uneducated, and brute are what whites have categorized blacks as for centuries. We are the “Kings of the Jungle” suppressed by the mass multitude of white power. Black people have been getting picked apart and judged simply because of how we look, from our different shades of brown, to the texture of our hair ,white people have deemed us as animals and savages. For example, in 1906, the New York Zoological Park featured an exhibit with an African-American man and a chimpanzee. Several years later, the Ringling Brothers Circus exhibited "the monkey man," a black man who was caged with a female chimpanzee that had been trained to wash clothes and hang them on a line (Plous & Williams, 1995). White people considered this a form of entertainment being that they considered us to be similar to the animals they placed them in cages with. Another example of this savage-like concept can be found in Stamp Paid’s speech about the diligent strength of black people on page 99. He states, 

“ The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believed could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the jungle grew inside” (Morrison, 99).

Stamp Paid simply shed light on the fact that for so long black people feel the need to propve themselves equal to white people yet found found themselves disappoint and stuck in a state of stagnation. This is an example of the animalistic comparison whites have placed on black people. Blacks were constantly ttrying to prove their human qualities and similarities to a group of people who already considered them as property. Morrison’s use of the word jungle here is very interesting. He is referring to the internal damage that racisms leaves behind in the lives of black people as a jungle. The jungle isnt just about predator vs prey and survival, the jungle can also stem from within.

After walking through the jungle of racism, it becomes difficult to see life as anything other than this scenario. The predator needs food just as much as the prey needs to live so When will the cycle end? Despite the many tragedies and dangers black people have faced, the black scoiety has grown in many ways over the years and will continue to grow. Black movies are becoming more popular, black artist are become more culturally accepted, black artist are making history for those around them. The jungle may not get easier, but the King will always win.

Works Cited 

“تکبر: Books Library: Online Book Database: Ebooks: Free: Read: Download: Learn.” Books Library | Online Book Database | EBooks | Free | Read | Download | Learn | Free Educational Material in Our Online School. Thousands of Books, Booklets, Articles of Many Renowned Scholars / Authors on More Than Hundred Different Topics in Top Languages of The World., 3 Oct. 2015, https://books-library.net/files/books-library.online-12222233Xb2Q3.pdf

Cunningham, Vinson. “The Argument of ‘Afropessimism.’” The New Yorker, 10 July 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-argument-of-afropessimism.

 

“In 1906, The Bronx Zoo Put a Black Man on Display in the Primates' House.” Mental Floss, 9 Apr. 2012, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/30399/1906-bronx-zoo-put-black-man-display-monkey-house