Racial Intergration

Racial Intergration

Our ancestors lived in a time of slavery and segregation. There was no unity between mankind unless the skin color was the same. There was no equality between man and woman and there was no justification to why anyone would be treated superbly unless they were white. It was thought that black people were diseased, filthy and inferior. Over the years, it took people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and Harriett Tubman to make a statement and help change the future for all other races, not just African Americans. Today, although racism still exists, it is illegal to discriminate against anyone for any reason to include race. Literary works such as Alice Walker’s The Welcome Table, Nadine Gordimer’s Country Lovers, and Aurora Levins Morales’s Child of the Americas give feeling and meaning to the different angles of racial segregation and acceptance. These literary pieces open one’s eyes and heart to what has been experienced by many if not by one personally.
The Welcome Table by Alice Walker is a story about an old, African American woman who is looked down on by the white community. On her way to church, she was stared at with disgust, with pity and with fear. Once inside the church, it was made clear that she didn’t belong and was not welcomed there. “Under the old woman's arms they raised their fists, flexed their muscular shoulders, and out she flew through the door, back under the cold blue sky” (Clugston, 2010). Upon being thrown out, the old woman saw Jesus approaching and soon walked away with him. She walked herself to death and yet no one ever spoke of the ragged old women. No one cared what happened to her for she was just an old black woman who stepped in to the house of God, the God of the white race, a place in which she didn’t belong.
It is stories like these that make you wonder of the cruelty that was endured by many in the past. Alice Walker made it clear in her short story the feeling and thought that many had toward...