Stereotypes Racism and Racial Stereotyping

He states that not only educational and health issues are what they should fight for. The discrimination against African Americans was also done by the government. He states that for thirty years, Southern legislators and legislatures had led a legal war against African American people. They disfranchised the Negroes, denied them in school, hospitals, and access to tax-supported facilities and public accommodations. Golden, 1964: 38 He also tells about white men who lynched African Americans and who regularly defiled African American women were not prosecuted, as the Southern government refused to. Those treatments were considered good things by the Southern politicians as they “boasted of their parental love, knowing all the time that their strategy would help maintain the status quo ” Golden, 1964: 39. Furthermore, Golden writes another facts regarding racial discrimination experienced by African American people in daily life. In 1960, African American people had to buy shoes in a store owned by Whites because there where no shoe stores owned by African Americans. They had to pay expensives price to buy shoes. Another discrimination happened in church as they had no proprietary rights, although they spoke the same language as Whites. Golden states that “the colored man’s church, mainly Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian, was controlled and dictated to by white men who deprived Negroes of religious autonomy” Golden, 1964: 41. African American people had to make their own way to fight the racial discrimination, so they made some of their people become lawyers. They had to do that because it was needed to guide and guard their rights on the law and justice fronts. Again, Golden states that these African American lawyers were the vanguard who initiated the legal study and interpretation of civil rights. By understanding the history of African Americans above, it can be concluded that their struggle and fight for their rights could only pay off when they were accepted by Americans, especially White Americans. Their successes in getting the freedom leads the Americans to realize that they also have powers, in many aspects.

D. Theoretical Framework

This part will explicate the contribution of the theories applied in this analysis. The writer uses the theory of character and characterization, the relation between literature and society, theory of identity, and racism and racial stereotyping to help this research for answering the problem formulation. The distribution of theories will be explained in the following paragraphs. The writer uses theories of character and characterization to obtain a better understanding of the depictions of Clay in the play related to this study. Using these theories, the writer will be able to explicate the nature of the depiction in the play. The relation between literature and society is used to help the writer understand the connection between literary work and society in the play of Dutchman with the society of African Americans in the real life in the 1960s.