100 Years Of Degradation
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100 Years Of Degradation
Students were assigned this essay as an inside look at oppression and racism
from the last one hundred years, told by two elderly ladies in the book, Having
Our Say. 100 Years of Degradation There are several books that have to be read
in English 095. Having Our Say is one of them. My advice is to read this book
while you are still in 090 or 094, just to get the advantage. These are some
things that you will discover in this extraordinary biography. This book is
tough to take as humorous, because it’s heart-wrenching to look at racism in
America, but Having Our Say, manages to pull off the feat. Having Our Say really
makes you think and tries to somehow reflect on the past as if you were actually
there. As a white male, I am amazed at how these two African American sisters
were able to live through over one hundred years of racism and discrimination,
and then be able to write about their experience in a humorous, yet very
interesting way. Having Our Say chronicles the lives of Sadie and Bessie Delany,
two elderly colored sisters (they prefer the term colored to African-American,
black, and negro), who are finally having their say. Now that everyone who ever
kept them down is long dead, Sadie and Bessie tell the stories of their
intriguing lives, from their Southern Methodist school upbringing to their
involvement in the civil rights movement in New York City. Sadie is the older,
103 years old, and sweeter of the sisters. The first colored high school teacher
in the New York Public School System, Sadie considers herself to be the Booker
T. Washington of the sisters, always shying away from conflict and looking at
both sides of the issue. Bessie is the younger sister, 101 years old, and is
much more aggressive. A self-made dentist who was the only colored female at
Columbia University when she attended dentistry school there, Bessie is the
W.E.B. Dubois of the sisters, never backing down from any type of confrontation.
As the sisters tell the stories of their ancestors and then of themselves, and
how they have endured over 150 years of racism in America, they tend to focus
mainly on the struggles that they encountered as colored women. Bessie brings
laughter to the book with her honest, frank, and sometimes, confrontational take
on life. Much of the humor arises from the interactions between the sisters
because of their opposite personalities. The Delany sisters were greatly
influenced by their father. With their father being a mini...
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