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Critical Race Theory Essay

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Critical Race Theory, or CRT, analyzes the affect racism has on culture and society.
CRT examines appearance and race dominance through out cultures and how it affects individuals of different races. Analyzing a literary work from a Critical Race perspective explores the ideas of racism in an attempt to understand what social and cultural forces causes racism.
I chose to analyze John Edgar Wideman’s short story Little Brother from a race theory standpoint because of the presence of racial slurs in the literary work. The short story, which is told entirely in the form of dialogue, is about a family who grew up in the same house for most of their lives and although they are not all still in that home stays very close. The story is a conversation between two sisters, which contains mostly small talk between the two about the family. The portion that caught …show more content…
Learn! ,by Hugo Martinez-Serros, we see a different type of racism. Jose Maria Rivera, also called Chema, is a Mexican immigrant whose life resolves around language and grammar. He spends most of his days reading and critiquing any literature work he can get his hands on. This may seem like a good learning experience for Jose, however he does not understand some differences between the Spanish language and the English language. He believes he is right all of the time even when his son tries to explain the difference, “ “But you cant say that, that’s Spanish, its not said like that in English,” his son explained to him in Spanish. “Who says you cant?” If you understand what you’re doing you can do anything you want to with language. But you don’t understand!” “I’m tellin’ you, Pa, no es ingles.”” (p. 263). Jose becomes races towards whites when he is told he is wrong. “ Chema was confident that the typewritten letter would impress its gringo reader.” The word “gringo” is a racial slur towards whites. Although directed towards different races both short stories have a presence of

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