Anne Moody's Coming Of Age In Mississippi

“The Coming of Age in Mississippi” has covered many stereotypes of how black women are perceived. For Anne Moody, her identity as an African American female weakened her individuality, in addition too her diligence; Anne Moody’s perseverance resulted in her powerful transformation of abandoning the rules of how African American women present themselves. From the past to the present, African American women had a hard time proving their identity to the cultural norms people established in their community, in the media, in the white society and surprisingly enough in the black society because of limitations and pressures created on them.

Environment can have an enormous influence on identity and for Anne Moody we observed how her experiences …show more content…
It was reflected in the past and present, from discriminating against skin color, how they look, being uneducated, etc. In the “Coming of Age In Mississippi” skin color is an issue that African Americans deal with and racism inside their own community. For example, Raymond’s mother, a mullato doesn’t necessarily care for Anne Moody’s mother because she is dark-skinned and when Anne Moody was considering applying to Tougaloo College although her roommate informs her that you need to be light-skinned and rich to attend, she immediately refused that decision. This internalized racism affects Anne Moody’s identity because she didn’t consider herself having the privilege the lighter skinned African Americans had because she is dark skinned, she puts herself down and questions well if I wasn’t dark-skinned, maybe I would be able to have the joy in doing things my own race could do. The article, “Skin Tone and Stratification in the Black Community” by Verna M. Keith and Cedric Herring discusses the difference in skin tone in the black community and how it makes a difference in the opportunities given in society. The article states, “ Fair-skinned blacks had higher levels of attainment than darker blacks on virtually every dimension of stratification. During the 1960s, however, blacks experienced unprecedented social and economic progress. Racial differences in …show more content…
The portrayal of black women remains a representation of how people see them; treat them and how they observe themselves. From how they wear their hair, how they look, how they dress, their assets, skin color and ethnicity, they are being picked apart from things that serve no importance of how a black woman should be respected. In the article, “Mentoring and Mothering Black Femininity in the Academy: An Exploration of Body, Voice, and Image through Black Female Characters” by Devair and Rhonda Jeffries it examines the social construction of the identity of black women in the media. For example, most of what we see on the media is never accurate about black women; it is used to tear a community down because of the past racial attitudes. The article says, “A pressing issue is the lack of Black women’s voice and presence in both media productions’ illustra¬tion of them and the scholarship about them. Therefore, much of what is consumed by mainstream culture is a skewed, caricatured perception of Black women created by those outside o f their demographic”. (127). I believe the past has significance in the present about how black women are perceived in the media since it continues to put exclusion on black women and we continue to not stand up for how we should be characterized therefore, our identity becomes invisible to the