Category
A - Response D
The
passage I selected is the entirety of pgs. 90 & 91, the chapter titled
"the fabric store."
I think
this passage captured an important element of racial segregation-- that people
can be discriminated against even without overt restrictions against them.
Woodson writes the chapter in an ostensibly gradient-like format. It seems as
if she goes from most to least segregated, beginning with the places that the
family are lawfully blocked from entering. She starts by listing them:
"some clothing stores, some restaurants, a motel" (90). This is the
baseline-- the most apparent form of segregation-- places that the family
literally aren't allowed to go in simply due to their race. However, Woodson
shows that the five-and-dime store, although it is desegregated, is just as
problematic. She mentions that the grandmother refuses to let the children go
in since "a woman is paid... to follow colored people around in case they try
to steal" (90). Here, Woodson exposes a more subtle and insidious form of
segregation. Without being directly barred from entering, the family members
are nonetheless blocked because they are treated unfairly-- as if they were
inferior. This creates an invisible wall that separates the family from the
white townspeople. They can either do what the grandmother wants and refuse the
store, or go in while being made to feel lesser for simply existing as they
were born. It seems that this form of discrimination is what Woodson focuses on
in this chapter. While the first form is clearly problematic, the narrator
doesn’t go into detail explaining the problems she has with those types of
segregated stores. This juxtaposition between the two bits of exposition allows
the second form, the less obvious one, to be inspected as if it were at least
as dangerous as the first, thereby drawing attention to something that readers
may have missed otherwise. Finally, Woodson concludes her chapter by giving an
example of the ideal. The fabric store is a place where the white storeowner is
willing to talk to Jacqueline's grandmother without any discrimination in her
attitude and treat the family as if racial discrimination wasn't a thing. In
closing, Jacqueline says "At the fabric store, we're just people"
(91). It's simple, direct, and shows that there really isn’t a true form of
separate but equal—that people need to just be treated like people.
Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown Girl Dreaming. New York: Nancy
Paulsen, 2014. Print.
Great job on this! Yes, the vignette of the fabric store was very interesting to read about, especially when Jackie closed with the one lady who viewed their family as actual humans, asking about their lives.
ReplyDeleteHi Liren,
ReplyDeleteNice insight about the gradient approach to telling these stories of segregation. The line that stuck out to me about the Fabric Store was when Jackie tells us her grandmother was allowed to run her fingers over the cloth before she purchased it. That act of touching is a moment when her full humanity is recognized by the shop keeper. This pattern of replacing overt segregation with more hidden forms of segregation was the South's go-to move during the Civil Rights Era, and this is a particularly poignant example of it.