Raising Crown Heights Post 6

        Estivel Garcia

        “I have tried everything; I don’t know what else to do. Nobody listen to me!”
These are the last words of an African American teenager who was desperate, disappointed and bound to commit violence against the society in the poorest neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York. Living around a Jewish community who also were discriminated by whites, a young black boy discovers that his white history teacher is dealing drugs in the school (It’s an irony and a contradiction because he traits blacks like animals, and he is extremely racist). In the other hand, there is a dilemma between Jewish and African Americans in the building where he lives. The Jewish man that collects the rent is racist and he’s blaming blacks as irresponsible, dirties, and that they had contaminated the neighborhood with drugs, but the irony is that, he also consumes drugs and he had a black man living in the basement with poor condition in the darkness like an animal. The same happen to blacks, they are judging Jewish for their misfortune too.

        The mother of the young black boy tells him to find a job, to forget school for later, because they need money.  This is a straight connection to Little Scarlet and Easy Rowling’s son, who forgot about school and went to work because the society and the educational system pushed him to do so. As we discussed in class, cash and anger forced the boy to steal a white woman’s purse for money. This woman is a Jewish news reporter who struggles to recognize her own race; she also wants to know the causes of boy’s behaviors. Psychologically, we can see how behavior and anger leaves the house and head to streets, causing the riots. The same way the necessity pushes people to act violently in and out of home. The system is corrupted, and teachers and even the principal of the school were dealing drugs with their own students. His sister was murder because of the influence of drugs around the neighborhood and no one did anything, he tried to make justice by himself so he and the rest of the students kidnapped the teacher in the room. Police and nobody didn’t care about a death African American woman, and they didn’t care about the feeling and voice of a black man. “”You can scream whatever you want, but you won’t be heard because you are black.  They will believe a white man” the teacher said.

Poem Little Scarlet... Post 5

Estivel Garcia

We have discussed a lot of themes in Little Scarlet’s book and Easy Rawlings investigation about Nola’s death, but one of the topics I was most interested was Harold’s guilt. The poem found by Rawlings (Page 152). It said….

“Dirty girls get much in their eye

They eat maggots and die

Break brains bad things bad things

They all die down in my pantry”

It was evident that Harold killed Nola. Each of these words represent Nola’s shot in the eye, “eat maggots” (white man) and the deathly strangulation (break brains). The police targeted a white man as responsible for Nola’s death, but ironically, during such race riot, during such period of violence between two races, the main responsible was a homeless black man, a poor African man from the streets who knows how to write a poem and kills people (especially black women) without suspicion. Harold seems to have an interesting background throughout his life because he’s not illiterate. In some way, Harold punishes black women for being around with whites. Black and whites were segregated, riots and violence were in people’s blood, and Harold was attacking the enemy (whites) by killing black women who becomes the lover of the people who discriminate them. But “revenge” is the word that describes the actions against his own community. As we discussed in class, I believe it’s very true that sexual attraction, touches and the union of two lovers from different races and skin color had the power for revolution.