As I read through the short story, “Black man and White Woman in
Dark green rowboat”, I immediately thought about the Disney movie “Holes”. In
the movie “Holes” there is a background story as to why everyone is out digging
holes in order to find the treasure. It dates back to a time when a black man
could never even touch a white girl let alone kiss her. The story takes place
in camp green lake where Sam, an African male, goes fishing in his boat every
afternoon and begins to fall for the white woman, Kate Barlow, as he helps fix
her schoolhouse. They both fall for each other and one night he kisses her and
a fellow towns person saw that and reported it to the rest of the town. The town
then processes to burn down the school and go after Sam Their plan was to
escape on his boat but the townspeople got to him to quickly and killed him.
In both instances
there is tension between the interracial relationships. The situation in the
movie was a lot harsher than of that in the short story. In the short story I
felt as if this was the time where people were beginning to warm up to the idea
of interracial relationships because the mother of the white woman said she
liked the black man and thought it was great but if her dad was alive at the
time he would have hated it as he despised black people.
This just shows how people jump to quickly to conclusions and don't even give
people a chance. In that time period if the color of your skin was not white,
then you would have no say in what people thought of you no matter how hard you
tried to explain yourself or introduce yourself. I honestly felt bad for the
black man in the short story and I was a bit confused on the ending. The girl
goes away to her mom to have the abortion but why does she want it if she says
she loves the black man and that the mother also likes him?
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