Slightly Slipshod Synthesis, Somewhat Shortly Sorting Sources’ Symbolic Suggestions

Everyone has something unique to offer us.  What a person is on the surface should not prevent us from appreciating them for who and how they are.  Many of the pieces we have read, including The Scarlet Letter, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and Black Men and Public Spaces, suggest that every person should be accepted – by both himself or herself and by others – because each person has individual abilities and natural gifts to offer, and discrimination based upon what a person is can jeopardize the well-being of both the one oppressed and any who oppress.

To provide QUICK examples (because I really need to work on using brevity):

·         In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne repeatedly remarks on all the good Hester does to help others.  She has so little in terms of material wealth, and yet she gives any excess to the poor, who often refuse her charity or accept it with bad grace because Hester has been labeled a sinner.  However, once the townspeople learn to look past what Hester is – an adulterer, as her scarlet A originally stands for - and begin to look at Hester for who and how she is, they rebrand the Scarlet Letter and its wearer, saying that the A stands for Able.  The townspeople are then able to gladly accept the efforts that they had previously denied themselves the benefits of.

·         In The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, “Victor” tells of how he is hated by others for his Native American heritage.  He is a brilliant kid, far ahead of the rest of his classmates, but instead of valuing Victor’s intelligence and appreciating his heritage, his teacher attempts to punish him for it, and orders that he shorten his hair to be like normal white people.  Despite this, Victor remains proud of his heritage, and by the time he graduates, he describes his hair as “longer than ever” (Alexie), representing how he decides to accept what he is as part of how and who he is: someone who rises up and does his best despite adversity.

·         In Black Men and Public Spaces, Brent Staples reveals the ambiguity of the labels “oppressor” and “oppressed” when he explains how the “victims” of crimes aren’t only those directly harmed by them, but those who are discriminated against as a result of such crimes’ habitual perpetration by people of certain groups.  Staples is the kind of person who would try to help someone in danger, but says that he only has to walk into a dangerous situation to risk getting killed in the name of “self-defense”.  People see what he is – a black male – and it often prevents them from seeing who he is: a kind, gentle person who would much sooner help than harm.

Darn it – so much for brevity.

I think I’ll stop writing now, before I overdo this any further.

Have a splendid day, and remember to appreciate people for how they choose to be.  We cannot change what we are – that is out of our control.  However, we all make decisions daily about how we want to be, and who we aspire to be.  I am a person who tends to write way too much.  But now, I choose to be a person that knows when to stop speaking. (shut up now, me!)  Who do you choose to be?