Gerard Dillon, the little green fields, C. 1945, oil on canvas, 40.5x89 CM, National gallery or Ireland, Dublin

Résumé du document

“To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.” This saying from the modern Irish artist Daniel Patrick Moynihan…

Extraits

[...] Doing so, she presents at the same time, her rights to speak as a professional observer and as a black descendant. She mixes the arguments. Murray appears to be legitimate to introduce that forceful speech in front of the Congress because of her social position. We may also observe that, by the frequent use of the pronouns « we/us », she emphazises on her connections with the American nation. Therefore, she personally perfectly embodies the fight as a model, reinforcing its crucial power. [...]

[...] She also observes that race discrimination, especially towards black people, due to the specific slavery history of the country, has been long considered as the top one priority. She argues that this struggle cleared off another important matter, which is discrimination against women. She refers and blames the history timeline which postponed the fight for human rights equality. She then also notices that the period-which is the seventies- is also marked by a global and growing claim from all minorities onto their lawful rights to be accepted and treated as equals. [...]

[...] Two years later, thanks to her contribution, a law preventing any sex discrimination will be enforced in the United States. Here is a strong and permanent connection with the activist's personal fights as she experienced race discrimination in her personal life, through her father's fate, and in her early studies. Her father died after having been beaten by a white guard. But she also fully symbolizes the many changes occurring in a crucial period of the American society. Pauli Murray personally early embodies the gender question, which represents the social moves in a traditionally structured society. [...]

[...] Within her identity, masculine appearance and neutral-gender changed name, she early symbolizes the next fight for a global gender consideration and personally promotes a few decades ahead the upcoming social tricky question of « gender ». This proves two things : outside the official and traditional questions of race and sexism, some modern questions started to unveil in the early seventies, carried by some respected personalities. We may then conclude that the seventies, thanks to their liberation waves, definitively represent a large opening on the next decades' social matters. [...]

[...] To make it short, this Pauli Murray's speech stands for an official exercise in order to highlight urgent social questions considering both racism, sexism and minorities' rights, through a legendary figure whose authority and personal fight make these themes more relevant. She uses precise and expert arguments recalling America's history and personal considerations mixed together to forge a deep and strong demonstration, which has been since Martin Luther King and his expressive and direct speech, the American identity, aimed at triggering off a social awareness to take immediate action. [...]