As the cultures of the United States shape minds every day and the people of the United States can not live their lives a single day without experiencing some form of culture clash it is important for teachers to be fully aware of the differences in opinion between their students and the potential clashes that can happen.
One of the best pieces of literature to explain this phenomenon to the students is “The Man who was almost a man” This extremely short story actually has a lot of good material in it for our purposes. The story depicts the life of a young man and the difficulties that he experiences as his life seems to fall apart after one bad decision he made. Because of the culture and situation he’s in, his life seems to balance on a knife’s point and has no leeway to make any mistake. The difference of his culture to the other culture of people that he lived around was the fact that the other people could make mistakes and not have them haunt them forever. Namely, the other culture had forgiveness and grace, but Dave did not.
Similarly in the movie Fences, we see a black family who seem to live under no sense of forgiveness. That a single mistake is held against them forever. And they consistently complain about how the white families live differently and can have flaws and mistakes and nobody cares.
In our culture today we have a lot of colored students who live in a situation where there is no grace for them at school. First offences for colored students have always been treated significantly more severely than first offences for white students. This inequality cannot stand and must be treated differently.
Perks of the Job 