Literature as a lens: examining racial injustice in America through African American texts

Abstract

The paper explores how the contemporary problems of the black community mirror those of the old ones. It uses African American literature to find a connection between problems from years or decades ago and the ones currently occurring. Now these cruel problems could never be understood by simply looking at a statistic; as we know, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” So this paper uses literary texts as a lens to delve into today’s problem, as only authors, in this case African-American ones, could hold up the true suffering and pain of the black community in the black-related problems of the past without any sort of distortion. When we look at these problems from a numeric standpoint, the victims are just numbers to us, but from a literary standpoint, they are not just numbers but living, breathing beings who are in pain and suffering. To further understand the suffering of the blacks in contemporary times. The framework of Critical Race theory was applied as it shows racism is encoded in different areas like law, wealth, education and so on. Now statistics are not completely absent, as they would have been used to enhance my message and deliver it home. The paper focuses on four major areas, which are mass imprisonment, police violence, economic disparity, and racial injustice. For addressing each of the major issues, separate literary texts, different real-world recent incidents, and diverse data have been utilized without a few exceptions. The paper also utilizes theories such as Weber's monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, Marx's critique of capitalism, and Panopticism by Michel Foucault to make connections and enhance the understanding of the issues at hand. Keyword: