{"id":23,"date":"2026-02-09T00:46:45","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T07:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/wingyun\/?p=23"},"modified":"2026-02-09T00:47:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T07:47:35","slug":"black-shack-alley-systemic-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/wingyun\/2026\/02\/09\/black-shack-alley-systemic-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Shack Alley: Systemic Racism"},"content":{"rendered":"

This reading overall made me feel sad and exhausted. Not in a dramatic way, but because Jose’s life was just… reality. It was precisely the coming of youth, and the cards were never in his favour. Knowing that this novel was in part autobiographical makes sense to me. I think the most saddening character to me was M’man Tine. As a poor, black woman, she had long accepted her fate, so she decided to pour all her efforts and hard work into Jose instead. Although she seems harsh from Jose’s point of view in the beginning of the novel, as readers, we can see the hours she puts into her work – which is why she gets so mad when she initially comes home to see a broken bowl and Jose’s torn clothes. In a way, this reminds me of my own parents and grandparents. While I know that they want the best for me (in their mind), I often feel frustrated because that’s not what I<\/em> necessarily want for myself. I also get scared because I don’t want to disappoint them or avoid living up to their expectations, similar to how Jose wants to frolic and have fun, but also wants to be seen as a ‘good child’ without the consequences of being too rambunctious (yelling and beatings).<\/p>\n

M’man Tine seems to think that the only way Jose can have a good life is to escape Black Shack Alley, lest he suffer the same fate she did. This desire looks like pushing Jose into school, entering the bacculereate. However, when part 3 of the novel started, I felt heavy once more. When Jose was only offered a quarter scholarship, where they would have to pay the rest in order to ‘redeem’ or ‘benefit from’ the quarter scholarship, his mother talked about how they were doing this on purpose.<\/p>\n

“They are too wicked! It\u2019s because we\u2019re black, poor and alone in
\nthe world that they didn\u2019t give you a full scholarship. They fully realise that I\u2019m an unfortunate woman and that I couldn\u2019t pay for you to go to the lycee. They know only too well that giving you a quarter scholarship is the same as not giving you anything at all. But they don\u2019t know what a fighting woman I am. Well! I\u2019m not giving up this quarter scholarship. You will go to their lycee!” (p. 125)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This situation made me think about how prevalent systemic racism is, and how you can never truly avoid it. While M’man Tine thinks Jose will live a better life (I can’t disagree), the circumstances he has to suffer under are similarly dismal. Giving into this scholarship would practically be giving into their ‘taunt’, but Jose and his family have no other choice. So, they have to continue suffering under this system of cylical racism instead of ‘escaping’ like M’man Tine wishes. As they say, out of the frying pan and into the fire? It makes me sad because this is what reality looks like, and it’s difficult to truly<\/em> escape from these systems without giving into them for your own benefit.<\/p>\n

So, I would like to ask: Do you see Jose’s pursuit of education as ‘liberation’ the same way his family does?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This reading overall made me feel sad and exhausted. Not in a dramatic way, but because Jose’s life was just… reality. It was precisely the coming of youth, and the cards were never in his favour. Knowing that this novel was in part autobiographical makes sense to me. I think the most saddening character to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107553,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,10],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-black-shack-alley","tag-zobel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/wingyun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/wingyun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/wingyun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/wingyun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107553"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/wingyun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/wingyun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/wingyun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/wingyun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/wingyun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/wingyun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}