Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

• individual, not community
• example of American tradition of self-made man (rags to riches story and did it all by himself)
• individualism throughout narrative
• preface by Garrison (adds credibility. abolitionist)
• audience=white northern abolitionists
• "wrtten by himself"
  literacy demonstrates humanity
  emphasize that he has a voice
• 2 turning points
  
  1. learned to read
  2. fight w/ covey

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

• All about her relationships w/ others
• writes her own preface
  -audience=white women of North
  -parallel between women's rights and abolition
• -targets notion of shared experience as mothers
• Cult of True Womanhood
• -19th century southern idealology that defined womanhood
  -4 elements
  
  1. piety
  2. purity
  3. submissiveness
  4. domesticity
     -typically applied to white women
     -Jacobs strategy: show how slavery as an institution prevents black women from fulfilling their roles within the cult of womanhood
     -hopes gender will trump race
  5. -Jacobs appeals to the bond of womanhood as a cross-racial tie that joins white women to the antislavery cause
     
     • motherhood
       -sacrifices: helps her children by taking herself away from her children
       -role in life = mother
       -marks her path to freedom
     • escape and freedom
       choice vs. subjection
       -assertion of her humanity
       -not subjected to Dr. Flint's torture in the garret
       -mental freedom enabled her to w/ stand the physical ailments
       (mental and psychological hope)
       -freedom
       free of fear (psychological freedom
       free will/free to make own choices
       her freedom had to be bought
       (shes not allowed to declare herself free)
       (resents that this should ever be an issue)
       freedom = home of her own w/ her children

1. 124
   Cincinatti
   Denver and Sethe and Baby Suggs
   -Baby Suggs= 1st to live here rents from Mr and Miss Bodwin (white abolitionists)
   Paul D (after Suggs dies)
   Beloved
   Stamp Paid and Ella (help runaways)
2. Sweet Home
   Kentucky
   Mr and Mrs Garner = white owners
   Paul D/A/F (brothers)
   Halle (last name = Suggs; mom = Baby Suggs)
   Sixo
   Schoolteacher (white; Mr. Garner's bro-in-law; comes to help when Mr. G dies; educated; brings 2 nephews; dehumanizing slaves and teaches this to nephews; he was writing a book; continue cycle of misinfo; she made the ink)

Beloved

-claiming yourself = act of humanization
 means you have a sense of self
-love is a claim
    same language as slavery
    sense of ownership
    where do we draw the line? how much is too much love?
       - theme = excess
       - Paul D says Sethe has too much love & its  dangerous
    slaveholders claim to own their slaves
    mothers claim their children
    husbands claim their lives

Community
-Paul D in prison
    "chain gang"
    community prevents escape
    storm comes and work together to escape
-When Beloved is sucking the life from Sethe, Denver turns to        community for help (Lady Jones- eacher)
    women decide to come rid 124 of Beloved (can be seen as       exorcism or Sethe's baptism)
    sounds welcoming her back to the community (after she kills Beloved and is walking w/ Sheriff, community = silent)
    community embraced her this time around and she did the right thing (direct anger towards attacker not victim (baby))
    Sethe thinks about 28 days of unslaved life and felt a sense of community

As a mother
-mad about the milk being taken (symbol of motherhood)
-calls her children her best thing

• shows up right after Paul D kicks out ghost
• Here Boy disappears
• knows about the earrings
• 3 vertical scratches = where Sethe held her when she slit her throat
• How Sethe knows:
  
  • -Beloved sang/hummed lullaby that Sethe sang when she was alive

stream of consciousness: writing everything as you think it
disorganized/flashbacks/circular/confusing

all claiming "mine"
-Sethe and Denver claim Beloved
-Beloved claims Sethe
-all trying to own someone else = dangerous

Denver

-scared of Sethe
-her and her brothers lived in fear; would they do something to make her kill them?

Beloved

-no punctuation/weird spaces
-reminds of us a child
-mimicks the way we think
describes a passage on a slave ship from Africa to America
-Middle Passage
-slaves packed in like Sardines
-no time to exercise
-at sea, slaves would die, be piled up and dumped at sea

not herself
-in others' bodies
-rememory
giving voice to unremembered slaves who suffered

Douglass and Jacobs

true story of a slaves journey from slavery to freedom

themes

    dehumanizing effect of slavery
    opposition

draws from

sentimental fiction
    melodrama, heightened emotional responses to events and people, thereby inducing similar responses in readers
    ex: direct addresses to the reader ("Oh virtuous reader!")
         melodramatic language
         destruction of family unit
         violation of womanhood (rape)
         rags to riches success (material success)
spiritual autobiography
    protestant literary tradition
    traces a person's movement from sin to redemption (spirtual success)
    providence tradition: belief that one is chosen by God- that one's life is a divine mission
   

Local Color/Regionalism Movement

Setting
Characters
Narrator
Plots
Themes

Civil War to the end of the 19th century

fiction and poetry that focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region

dual influence

• romanticism: feeling of nostalgia/sentimentality
• realism: document everything/specific descriptions

authors tend to exhibit condescension towards their subjects

Setting

very important. place and time. emphasis on nature and the limitations it imposes. integral to the story and may sometimes become a character in itself.

Characters
concerned w/ character of district or region rather than the individual

characters may become character types

marked by adherence to old ways, by dialect and by particular personality traits central to the region

Narrator
educated observer from outside the region
learns something from characters while preserving sympathetic/ironic distance from them

serves as a mediator between rural folk of the tale and the urban audience
Plots
"nothing happens" in local color stories

includes lots of storytelling

Themes
antipathy to change
tension between old and new ways
    -typified by: urban and old-fashioned rural
                      North and South
                      intruder

Regional (southern) type of local color

written by whites in decades following Civil War

    -sought to recover forms of racial power that were being dismantled by reconstruction

romanticized images of plantation life
    -images of content slaves and benevolent masters

used black dialect to illustrate education levels (intelligence) of slaves
    -phonetic orthography: writing things how they sound

Setting
    ruined plantation
    a site of desolation and loss
    plantation overgrown and destroyed by mercantile growth
    plantations were good w/ slavery

Characters
    told by ex-slave who reminisces fondly about the bravery, kindness and aristocracy of owners and recalls rituals of life before the war

Charles Chesnutt

subverts the plantation tradition (mastery of form)

    -white owner (Dugal) portrayed as powerless when he can't catch the slaves who are eating the grapes and has to get help from conjure woman (Aunt Peggy)

    -Uncle Julius outwits the white narrator

Uncle Julius = trickster

• African American takes a white literary form and uses it for their own purposes ("masters it")
• Takes white plantation tradition and turns it on its ear
• Reforms the slave world created by whites who transformed African Americans into chattel
• Chesnutt's world of slavery illustrates the impressive strength, resilience and power of African American slaves
• Does so within the white literary form

• Uncle Julius
• originated in West African folktales
• character who survives by wits, guile and charm (not physical strength)
      -outwits, not outstrengths
• master of disguise and verbal technique- uses power of language
• often animals

Best known as dialect poet, but 2/3 of his output was written in standard English

• A Negro Love Song
• An ante-bellum Sermon
• When Malindy Sings
• We wear the mask
• Sympathy
• The poet

• dialect
• speaker = black preacher
• audience = slaves
• rich language and invents words (Bibleistic)
• preaches about freedom that Lord will bring
• parallels their sitch to story of Moses in the Bible
• preacher says only telling story from bible so whites don't get suspicious

• Dunbar
• doubleness/two-ness
      -uses opposition/contradiction- sense of balance
• "we"
      -speaks to a universal theme
      -reaction to an oppressive society
      -slaves/black artists/freed slaves/oppressed ppl/teenagers
• mask
      -black face (literally)
      -stereotypes
      -smiling because that's how they were expected to be
      -why wear?
          certain expectations
          mask = false projection and hides true self
• tone
      -solemn
      -negative
      -regretful- not a choice
      -frustration (! at end)
• debt = wearing of the mask
      -this is what white society makes us pay if we want to participate in society with them

• Connection with We Wear the Mask
      -imprisonment
      -mask = figurative
      -sympathy = literal
• Pray for freedom
      -freedom = death (ultimate freedom)
      -song = plea for death

• Johnson
• authentic representation of African American speech
• moving away from limitations of dialect
• use vivid descriptions

Johnson

African American National Anthem

• Johnson
• story from Genesis of creation
• anthropromorphism
      -personifies God
      -has body/eyes/gets lonely
• standard english
      -except "down in a cypress swamp" and "I'll make me a world"
• subtly implying God = black
      -ended poem as you would a sermon/prayer
      -1st word: And

one of the first to see black folklore as a mine for literature

became fascinated with commonfolk

• Long Gone
• Southern Road
• Strong Men
• Slim Greer
• Sam Smiley

• Sterling Brown
• Steady beat; control speed of song
• each stanza = different person
• elipses (...)
      -poem never ends

• Slim Greer, by Sterling Brown
• outlaw, renegade
• folk hero
• resembles trickster
      -survives by wits
      -outsmarts opponents
• differs from trickster
      -never animal, always male human
      -relies also on speed to save him; runs from trouble

• 1925-1929
• notion of "twoness"
      -divided awareness of one's identity
      -double consciousness
      -WEB DuBois
• "New Negro"
  African Americans break out of their past stereotypes as biologically & culturally inferior
  New image that defies those sterotypes
• Common themes
  alienation
  marginality
  use of folk material
  use of blues tradition
  problems of writing for an elite audience
• more than a literary movement
      -included racial consciousness
      -Back to Africa movement - Marcus Garvey
• Why Harlem?
      -remarkable coincidences and luck provided lots of real estate in the heart of Manhatten
      -African American migration from South to North

Criteria of Negro Art

• Art = voice against racism
• African Americans start to look at painful past in positive light and remember the good things
• Color line
      -positive of having no color line: post-racial society
      -negative of having no color line: have to erase past
      -if no such thing, have to afford same opportunities
• ALL ART IS PROPOGANDA
      -consciously used to promote an idea
      -heart of his argument
      -art as argument of your perspective
      -supports black race
      -white art has always been propoganda for whites/against blacks
      -it's time to fight back!
• Does not agree with:
      -there is value in art for art's sake
          (says all art is used as some sort of argument)
• successes attributed to fact that they're American, not fact that they're black
      -goes back to erasing color line when convenient
• talks to white audience
      -tells them they will pay for a certain type of art so that's what blacks create
• whites come out on top in "melting pot"
• way for blacks to prove humanity = literacy
      -to assert humanity, must be recognized as artists
  

• 3 line stanzas w/ repitition- like work songs
• some spoken words
• singing about everyday life
• sad and tired
• drawn out sounds- slows down song
• steady beat
• catharsis: emotional relief

The Negro-Art Hokum

• promoted assimiliationism
      -blending in
      -melting pot
      -blacks should assimilate into white culture
• blacks and whites are not different
      -raised in a way that emphasized racial diffs were not important
• there is no such thing as black art
      -black artists use traditional white literary forms
      -black art looks like white art
          (ex: Chesnutt and Dunbar)
      -shaped by same forces in society
      -live under same circumstances

• idea of conjure
      -belief that natural world has powers
      -Mama Day/Ruby
• Georgia Seacoast Islands
      -slaves worked here
      -after emancipation some of these islands became populated solely by ex-slaves
• Shakespeare
      -Ophelia: Hamlet-drowns herself
      -character named Miranda
      -George's favorite book = King Leer
• 1001 Arabian Nights
      -King marries women then kills them next morning
      -Scheherazade tells him stories for 1001 nights
      -notion of female creativity and imagination
      -importance of storytelling
      -ability of a woman to save not only her own life but life of many others
  

• see it in 2 different ways- like narration in text
• bridge goes straight into middle line of South Carolina and Georgia
• background is black and details are white (usually opposite)
• only important people/places represented
• cut off SC and GA and have overgrown/lush plants and flowers

• Sapphira Wade at top, no man (Bascombe Wade = owner)
      -7 sons
       names = old testament prophets
• Last son = Jonah Day
      -7 sons
       names = new testament
• Last son = John Paul
      -marries Ophelia
      -kids: Mama Day, Abigail and Peace
• Abigail
      -3 kids
       Peace, Grace, Hope
• Grace
      -1 daughter
       Cocoa
• Hope
      -1 daughter
       Willa
  

• Age 20
• African slave- 1st generation in America
• resistant = strong character/rebellious
• "delving in witchcraft"
      -invests her with a sense of power over whites
      -force of nature
      -cannot be controlled by her owner
• sold to Bascombe Wade
• Midwife and nurse
      -emphasis on womanhood
      -matriarch of family; governs how things go in family (Mama Day and Cocoa)

• Emphasis on orality
      -storytelling and conversation
      -George and Cocoa's conversations
      -island's voice
          ("we" = community)

• "Reema's  boy couldn't listen, like you"
      -tells us we're going to get a conversation
• "The only voice is your own"
      -your voice is privelaged in this text
      -puts reader into the story; helps make it mean something
      -critical for oral nature of this book
      -Naylor wants you to ask questions and interact
• QUOTE
      -there is no real Truth
      -everybody's voice will interpret it differently
      -always 2 sides (good thing)
  

• Many unanswered questions
• Myth
      -7 sons in 1000 days?
      -things that can't be explained empirically
      -many ways to think of it
• What they know
      -Bascombe Wade death (tombstone)
      -they have land (deeds)
      -seven sons
  

• "it was just our way of saying something"
      -if you don't know, you're an outsider (like us readers)
      -as an insider, people know what you're talking about based on context (current example: "screw")
      -creates a community/culture
• Reema's boy = outsider
      -approaches logically
      -longitude/latitude = 81/32
      -Naylor pokes fun @ academia
  
• something disruptive
  intervenes in lives negatively
• "And the way we saw it, America ain't entered the question at all when it come to our land: Sapphira was African-born, Bascombe Wade was from Norway, and it was the 18&23ing that went down between them two put deeds in our hands"
      -to cheat someone
      -a deal; illegitimate/shady
• sex

• December 22nd- around Christmas and Solstice
• Exchange gifts
      -traditionally from the eart; mostly food
      -younger generations are buying things
• Island voice doesn't like that youngsters are buying gifts
      -Mama Day understands culture is a living, organic being and will change
      -"Even the youngsters who've begun complaining about having no Christmas instead of this "old 18&23 night" don't upset Miranda. It'll take generations, she says, for Willow Springs to stop doing it at all. And more gerneations again to stop talking about the time "where there used to be some kinda 18&23 going-on near December 22nd." By then, she figures, it won't be the world as we know it no way- and so no need for the memory"
• "And them being short on cash and long on pride, Candle Walk was a way of getting help without feeling obliged"
      -help people who had a bad harvest
      -community > individual
     -notion of exchange
• "lead on with light"
• Mama Day ends candle walk at the other place
      -Abigail won't go with her because painful memories
  

• "her" = Sapphira
• "him" = Bascombe Wade
• Sapphira Wade breaks Bascombe's heart
• Mama Day's mom (Ophelia) broke her father's heart (John Paul)

Mama Day takes Cocoa to the graveyard

Moss = example of a tradition you do so often, you don't question it

2 graves missing

Sapphira: disappears

Ophelia: drowns and body not recovered

• Quilts = metaphor for ways of thinking about African American culture/past
• woman activity
• different pieces sewn together
      -individual v. community and past v. present
• "A bit of her dady''s sunday shirt is matched with Abigail's lace slip, the collar from Hope's graduation dress, the palm of Grace's baptismal gloves. Trunks and boxes from the other place gave up enough for twenty quilts: corduroy from her uncles, broadcloth from her great-uncles. Her needle fastens the satin trim of Peace's receiving blanket to Cocoa's baby jumper to a pocket from her own gardening apron."
      -weaves in tiny pieces of family history
      -connect Cocoa and George to family history
• George wants to hang it on the wall
      -outsider
      -artifact
      -show it off
• Cocoa wants to put it on the bed
      -insider
      -used
      -Abigail and Mama Day want great grandkids conceived under it

• female intuition
       -can read signs (ex: realizes George isn't coming to island)
      -can read people (thereapist-ish)
• housewife
      -connected with life-giving
      -some people believe she has the power to give life
• herbal healer
      -knows every plant on island and what to use it for
       -knows how nature works
• all these things connect Mama Day  back to Sapphira
  

• Mama Day cooked sunflower seeds for Bernice
• Plant white seeds when she gets her period
• Plant black seeds when mother-in-law (Pearl) is mean
• Bernice will believe what she wants to believe
• like she'll "will" herself pregnant

Mama Day recognizes Bernice has to be the one

Mama Day recognizes her powers are limited

Bernice's belief in Mama Day's powers will help her get pregnant

Bernice thinks Mama Day got her pregnant

• also know this because she didn't let people call her son "chick" and she had someone else deliver her baby (embarassed)

"With the red rays filtering again through the bottom of the pines, she finally stretches out her hand to touch the broken face of the other woman. Go home, Bernice. Go home and bury your child."

• physically large - strong presence
• self centered/selfish/bully
• jealous of women with Junior Lee
• practices conjure
      -uses it against people
      -Miss Frances (Jnr. Lee's ex) dies
      -bag of stuff directed at Cocoa

• Cocoa's makeup = too dark
• Cocoa is self-conscious about her lighter skin
      -growing up, all the little girls were dark-skinned
• Cocoa is to blame in this fight
• Most of her peers have already married
      -a lot of pressure going into the party

• Engineer
• Logical, sees things in black and white
• Orphan
      -mom = prostitute, grew up in boy's home
• "Only the present has potential, sir"
      -Mrs. Jackson
      -never looks to future
• don't depend on others
• not comfortable with large families and communities

• Use people's hair in mixtures (like voodoo doll)
• Tradition to take hair and burn it so noone can do conjure on you
• We know something bad will happen Cocoa because Ruby has her hair now
• Rubs nightshade into Cocoa's head
      -to cure, Abigail and Mama Day cut off hair and rub charcoal on hair
      -also caused Cocoa to have hallucinations when she looked in mirror

"for a brief moment Miranda allows herself to wish that it wasn't so, that she'd never left to go beyond the bridge and still belonged only to them. She had fought for her life when she was theirs and she could fight for it again, give up her own if need be. But what ain't so, just ain't so. Baby Girl done tied up her mind and her lesh with George, and above all, Ruby knew it. But Ruby don't know me, Miranda thinks, she can't know me or she wouldnda done this."

"How bad is it gonna be?"
"How bad is hate, Abigail? How strong is hate? It can destroy more people quicker than anything else."

"But I believe there's a power greater than hate."

"Yes, and that's what we gotta depend on - that and George."

"That boy is from beyond the bridge, Miranda. We ain't even got his kind of words to tell him what's going on."

"Some things can be known without words."

"With or without, how is he gonna fight something he ain't a part of?"

"He's a part of her, Abigail. And that's the part that Ruby done fixed to take it out of our hands."

• If Ruby had just put a curce on Cocoa, anyone could cure her
• Comes down to whether or not George can believe in things that can't be explained.
• George could save the day if he believed
• Whatever is going on, we know that George is instrumental in fixing
      -Ruby is smart because she knows an outsider will have a hard time

"Ya see, I had given him something that he just couldn't believe in - and him disbelieving, whether I'd offered him a miracle or not, guaranteed it to fail."

"We're going to be fine because I believe in myself"

"That's where folks start, boy - not where they finish up. Yes, I said boy. 'Cause a man would have grown enough to know that really believing in himself means that he ain't gotta be afraid to admit there's some things he just can't do alone. Ain't nobody asking you to beieve in what Ruby done to Cocoa - but can you, at least, beleive that you ain't the only one who'd give their life to help her? 'Cause if you can bring yourself to believe just that little bit, the walk you'll take to the other place won't be near as long as the walk back over to that vat of tar."

Dr. Buzzard talking to George

Wants George to see power of belief

don't believe conjure/magic, but see that her family and community love her just as much

We both have different ideas of how to help Cocoa

Hoping he'll choose her way

Carry walking stick and ledger

trying to connect him to Day family/men and bring him into folk

• Mama Day goes the the well and unboards it
• Hears Sapphira talk: "let me go with peace"
• know Grace fell in because she was going towards coins

• Sapphira wants freedom
• Ophelia wants to go be with daughter
• Connecting to the pain these 2 men felt.
• These men believed in themselves and power of their hands
      -like George (similar fate?)
• All Mama Day wants is for George to give her his hand so they could form a bridge for Cocoa
      -bridge between past and future
      -if join together, that would save Cocoa
      -to do this, George has to believe it's possible this will help
      -faith (believing in something you can't see)
• Unlike Bascombe and John-Paul, George has to give himself over to a larger belief than himself
• Individual (George) v. Community (Cocoa rooted in power of community)

Reasoning takes over

That's just silly; these are my hands and I have the power to help Cocoa

• George finds peace
• (after Cocoa grieves, she finds peace)
• Ruby gets what she wanted
  -George gone to make Cocoa suffer
• What kills him is his inability to partake in community

• Hughes
• in a blue bar
• speaker = listener
• 1st line: "droning a drowsy syncopated tune"
      -by adding the word syncopated, he syncopates the poem
• tone = melancholy
      -"I ain't got nobody"
      -"I can't be satisfied"
      -"moan" : diction meant to describe sound
      -long vowels (sound melancholy)
      -ellipses
          ex: "He did a lazy sway..."
          slow us down
          indicate some improv (like work song)
• "The stars went out and so did the moon"
      -morning
• "he slept like a rock or a man who's dead"
      -release through catharsis
      -ends poem with death
      -singing blues served its purpose for tonight but he'll be back 2 days later

• Hughes
• speaker = black
      -"I" could be singular or represent blacks as a whole
      -how know?
          title
          geographic location
             Euphrates/congo/Nile/Mississippi
             all sites of persecution
              sense of divinity-been around for so long (vast history)
              sense of pride: hardships in each place
                                    triumphed and perservered
• Rivers
      -shape landscape (blacks have changed civilization)
      -water associated with life
      -civilizations rise up around rivers because they need water to live
      -"my soul has grown deep like the rivers"
          collective past
          idea of trying to reclaim/rewrite past/history
          sense of permanence
              carve landscape = permanent part of cultural landscape
          even though they change, they're still there

• Hughes
• why are dreams deferred?
      -societal racism
      -conditions under which they live (ex: economics)
• invokes senses
      -raisin: texture
      -sore: visual
      -stink
      -crust and sugar over: taste (too sweet; excess)
• if constantly deferred can it ever exokide?
      -"or does it explode"
      -call to action

• Brooks
• context: Little Rock 9 (integrate schools)
              violent time - threatened
              Defender sends reporter
• Reporter expects to find turmoil/violence against blacks
• Reporter finds that whites are just like everyone else
      -you would think anyone who would do these things would be weird/different)
• "I scratch my head, massage the hate-I-had"
      -went to find monsters, but found humans
      -hate he had for monsters he can't have anymore
      -implies this could happen anywhere, it just surfaced here (that's the fear/scary part)
• "The lariat lynch-wish I deplored. The loveliest lynchee was our Lord."
      -lamenting that it's happening; sorrow
      -Christ died for sins of others
      -black people are being sacrificed for the eventual good of African Americans

• Brooks
• We = 7 pool players
• Golden Shovel = pool hall
• We lurk late/strike straight
      -mischief
      -pool table shot/good fighters
• Sing sin
      -not ashamed/bragging
• Thin gin
      -drink
• Jazz June
      -sex w/ a girl named June
      -love summer
• die soon
• message = these pool players die early
                  live fast, die young
• elementary diction
      -are they really this cool?
• die soon = only line not ending in "we"
• mob/group mentallity
      -if taken away from group, not as cocky/wouldn't write this poem

• The Sky is Gray
• Ernest Gains
• 8 years old
• gets treated like a man- coming of age theme
• doesn't understand everything happens to him
      -naive and innocent
      -he reports and we interpret
      -ex: bus w/ colored and white seating
            he just accepts it without knowing why
            as readers we judge: "oh awful, Jim Crow laws"
      -symbol of justice
        just notices that its different, while we are outraged
        he doesn't realize discrimination

• If he doesn't come back, James is the man of the house
• Mom teaches him that he'll eventually be the man of the family
• Self-reliance
• not okay to be a crybaby- be a man
• Lesson about sentamentalism and how much you can be sentiment
      -don't get attached; so poor, may have to kill a pet
  
• harsh lesson; the world is cruel
  

• The Sky is Gray; Gains
• sounds like something a father would say
• father recognizes manhood
• pronouncing James a man
      -ambivalence
      -preparing him for tough reality he's gonna be living in. he is a man; dress clean, don't accept handouts
      -he's only 8! childhood is over for him

• The Sky is Gray; Gains
• preacher is mad because the student questioned God
• student says people only believe because the white man says to
• student wants people to question things for themselves
      -this is why his generation is being sent to college
• preacher is upset because student is shaking the foundation of everything he stands for
• preacher has accomodationist viewpoint: let's all get along, not make waves
• preacher hits student and student says forgot other cheek and hits him again
• James admires student
      -how he dresses and that he has a book w/ him