The Legacy of Healing Essay Example
The Legacy of Healing Essay Example

The Legacy of Healing Essay Example

Available Only on StudyHippo
  • Pages: 3 (624 words)
  • Published: February 5, 2017
  • Type: Essay
View Entire Sample
Text preview

In this text by Keith Gilyard, “A Legacy of Healing: Words, African American, and Power,” is a text that shows how African Americans and the names that we were called and given in back then [and now] are just a prime example of every race. Also it shows that when someone speaks or says something intimidating, it may give that person power but most of the time it’s just the word that does that to someone. The word Nigger is still used today and is “one of the most potent words used today,” according to Gilyard and I believe it is.

Rumors run big and are a huge role in power hungry people, for example there a rumors going around stating that there is an ingredient in fast-food chicken that sterilizes Black males. When people here thi

...

s they will most likely believe it and a huge uprising will start about businesses that sell chicken. Another big one is that the Reebok sneakers were distributed in South Africa to teach and to help them learn how to survive.

In a way this is believable and in his text Gilyard goes on to explain why he and his wife fell into this rumor and believed it was real. This society creates rumors that start statewide debates, in which shows that Words and Language can pertain a huge amount of power if used correctly. Gilyard talks about several different historical people that use their words to overpower the owners or abusers that intimidated them or that were in power over them.

For example this young girl named Frado was abandoned by her mo

View entire sample
Join StudyHippo to see entire essay

at a young age and sent to a family were the mom beat her and whipped her profusely for being accused of pushing the daughter of her new family in a stream. Well one day Frado was reading and talking to the family that liked her and the mother yells at her because she is “taking too long to do her chores. ” As the mother of the house raises her stick to beat her, Frado screams out that if she is struck one more time, she will not work for her again.

The mother was surprised and stops right then and there. I added this brief story in here because just the strength behind Frado screaming out and using her powerful words over powered the one who supposable had power. The topic of African American schools is a topic that has been talked about for several years now and has been looked over because they have a certain quota or expectation to them.

Schools today speak upon Black English and the fact that we have our own language because we switch subject and object pronouns in the way we talk, or we express plurals and possessives differently. They say that we have poor performance because of this and that our knowledge of the English language is slim because our dialect isn’t the same as theirs. Our language is no different we just speak in a different way and when it comes down to being proper and correct we have the knowledge to do so.

If you look back to the movement of Blacks and African Americans, you will see that next

to churches, southern school colleges were key. Most of the movement was college students who became successful threw learning and becoming more intelligent in the English language. I agree with Gilyard that difference in the dialect of African Americans and Americans does not have to do with academic success in schools, that it is the lack of knowledge and meanings of the language that was held from us for so long so the “White Man” could have more knowledge then us.

Get an explanation on any task
Get unstuck with the help of our AI assistant in seconds
New