The Ethics of Living Jim Crow

The main idea of this article is to illustrate to the readers "rules" of which the African Americans were to abide by when in the presence or talking to whites. The author talks in detail about each experience he had dealing with lessons he was taught in everyday life. He starts with being a child and recalling how his friends and him would throw cinder back and fourth at eachother while hiding behind brick pillars and one day white children came along and threw broken bottles and milk cartons, causing injury to the author. When he told his mom about the incident, he got beat and was told never to play "war" again. Another big topic addressed in this article was how to respond to a white man by using Mr. before thier names and in general the way of which white males were being spoken to. He describes how he wanted a job to learn new things and when he asked, he was verbally repremanded and next was threatened and told never to return to work. While at his other jobs he witnessed an older African American women being beaten for not paying her bills and than being picked up by the police for acting drunk. The author also observed white males disrespecting African American women (by smacking their butts etc) and truly being helpless to do anything in the matter. Wright also saw fellow African American workers being fired, chased away and told never to return, and also an African American women who gave birth to a very light skinned child (which implies she had sex with a white man, whether it was rape or consensual wasnt specified) and the white males making jokes about how a white man must have scared her during pregnancy and that is why the child is lighter skinned. Later in his life he moved to Memphis which he portrayed as being a more acceptable place. A fellow employee let him use his library card to check out books, and instead of juggling boxes and trying to take his hat off on the elevator, a white man did it for him. I really liked this article because it was a story that implied in it what we are learning in class. Even years after Lincoln "slave" was still very much used. Maybe not so much as a word, but it was like having slavery without the term. Blacks still were being beaten, killed, and abused. They had to obey whites and speak to them as if they (blacks) were inferior. Also African Americans it seems were not allowed to learn new things, and were never to speak up if a white person did something unethical, like throw broken glass bottles. The authors job at the hotel was just to wait on the prostitutes, which is funny if you think about it because today being a prostitute is in my opinion very inferior as oppose to an African American working in a hotel. At the end of the article Wright talks about how his friend told him once that if it wasnt for the police and hate crimes specifically geared towards African Americans, there would be "nothing but uproar here". I interpret that like saying if African Americans werent killed or beaten for standing up for themselves or speaking back to a white person, there would be a lot that African Americans would say about their treatment and environment of which they pretend to be so happy in as to avoid beatings.

Zinn chapter 9: "Slavery without submission, emancipation without freedom"

In this article I think Zinn is trying to tell his readers that although the ending of slavery caused a lot of other reconstruction in America, it really became the only choice. Zinn also mentions that this decision is a "safe one" and in fact a "profitable one". As African Americans learned to come together and revolt against their owners and the country, whites became scared of what could happen. The article asks many different questions, all of which being good and succeed in sparking thoughts of readers. He asks one though which we have talked about a little bit in class, on page 130 Zinn asks "How can slavery be described?" and he continues to say that to some people who have never experienced it, being slavery, that it might be diffucult to describe but in 1932 historians saw slavery as "perhaps the Negro's necessary transition to civilization". I also found interesting in this article how a former slave described his "happiness" as an act to "keep down the trouble", in class we also talked about this, how whites thought the African Americans were alright with being slaves because in t.v. shows and such African Americans were always smiling and such. The article summarizes how the African Americans had to fight, sneak and die for freedom. Zinn also discusses the fact that even after the slaves were "free" they still had to depend on whites for jobs, food and shelter, because to be "free" African Americans had to own at least 250 acres of land. And even after they were fighting in the war, the blacks were payed three dollars less while they did the dirtiest and hardest jobs and whites would attack them when they were off duty in Northern cities. On page 144 Zinn quotes historian James McPhearson "without their help, the North could not have won the war as soon as it did, and perhaps it could not have won at all", later Judah Benjamin stated that "if slaves will make good soliders, our whole theory of slavery is wrong". In my opinion as African Amerians became more intrigrated into the American society whites started to realize, they were just as competent and able to do what the whites had. But why after blacks had fought in the war and proved they were capable of holding their own didnt they earn respect from whites? Could some whites have wanted to respect the blacks but instead took the path of least resistance? Soon amendments were passed finally stating that African Americans were citizens of the United States. Of course there was still discrimination and unfair treatment of African Americans, on page 148 of Zinns article, he talks about how seventy thousand African Americna children were going to school in 1876 whereas none had before. That was a big step, long time overdue but unfortunatly with every step forward we were still many back. Segregation became widely known. I liked this article because it gave a quick yet detailed description of all that the African Americans had to go through to be accepted by whites. I still think it is sad that people who worked harder than any plantation owner could be treated so poorly in a country who advertised the idea of dreams and freedom.

Brodkin: "How Jews Became White Folks"

In this article I think that the author is really trying to say we have come a long way since the beginning of the 1900's but are still a long way from acknowledging the success of those who are a different race or culture besides "white". Throughout the article the author provided many examples of what she was trying to say. In one paragraph on page 40 Brodkin talks about Madison Grant and how Grants book hits on the idea that he is most afraid of race-mixing among Europeans. He thought that a cross between a European and a Jewish person made that individual all Jewish. Also Brodkin on page 41 says that "By the 1920's, scientific racism sanctified the notion that real Americans were white and that real whites came from northwest Europe." The article continues and talks about how Jews were confined to a small number of occupations and excluded from the mainstream corporate world. Then on page 43, the author asks a really interesting question, "did money whiten?" that is a great question because even today we can look at the rich and even famous with more respect than we would someone of the same race who was poor. But, she uses the past tense did, and I wonder DOES money whiten? Later in the article it talks about affirmative action which was suppost to promote access to education or employment for the minority. In this particular article though, Brodkin describes affirmative action as helping the men of Euro-origin. And although this policy was suppost to help the underdog in reality it was not. Should this be a suprise? If this is was a time where African Americans are still being discriminated against, how can a policy fix all the problems that people ignore everyday? If a developer can publically announce that he will not be selling any units to African Americans how can this policy be taken seriously?! In the last section of this reading the author says "Instead of seizing the opprotunity to end institutionalized racism, the federal government did its level best to shut and double-seal the postwar window of opprotunity in African American's faces." In my opinion she sounds angry. Which she should be, not only is the supposibly "land of the free" discriminating a race that just fought in a war next to whites she herself knew what it was like to be discriminated against really for a reason that she had no control over. At the same time, it angers me too. It just shows ignorance, back then and today, because we wonder why things are the way they are and in actuality it is because we created it.

exercise 2 analysis paper

My position for this paper is that the English created the difference in America. Because they were exposed to difference other than white men with guns, they did not know how to handle change so instead the idea of "less than white" was created. This lead the Indians and African Americans to be classified into groups and discriminated against. I will also be comparing and contrasting how the Indians and African Americans were treated. For this analysis paper I plan to reference and tie in and use quotes and ideas from Zinn chapters 1 and 2 and also Johnsons chapter 6 and 8. I am going to use the authors ideas and concepts in their articles to back up my position on the issue. From Zinn I plan to incorporate his information about Columbus and his first encounter with the Indians to Jeffersons encounters with both the African Americans and Indians into my paper and from chapter 2 his idea that racism is not natural but a product of human choice. From Johnson chapter 8 I plan to incorporate his concepts such as "Deny and Minimize" in the paper. Also from chapter 6 of Johnson I wanted to bring up the idea that we are shaped by family, schools, religion, and teachers and that from all of these institutions we learn to distinguish.

Rosenblum and Travis: "The Meaning of Difference"

In the article “The Meaning of Difference” by Rosenblum and Travis they address important issues. In the second paragraph they say “Nonetheless, similar processes are at work when we ‘see’ differences of color, gender, class and sexual orientation”. Basically they are saying that the only difference between me and the next person is what we see. They continue to break it down throughout the article and I think that is their main point, we can only be considered different because of what people observe, not because of what we actually are, human. On page 17 of the article Rosenblum and Travis state that American means white and anyone who is not white are presumed as immigrants “recent arrivals” and told to go back where ever they may have come from. It is really sad to say that we do, do that. When I was in grade school we would have foreign exchange students come to our school for a year and instead of welcoming him or her I would witness some peoples disgust whenever they walked by them. This isn’t welcoming someone, it is prejudice. To their skin color, their accent, their heritage and background and how they may look. Also in the article Rosenblum and Travis talk about what constructs our society, things like race, sex, gender, social class and sexual orientation and how it is important because it binds people together and puts them into groups. Rosenblum and Travis continue talking about different types of people and the way they are portrayed. There are Essentialist and Constructionist orientations which essentialists are people that believe we are what we are and so we are observed as the way we are. And the Constructionists who believe in master status and that we chose to be what we are. Also talked about in the article is how the Census creates categories of people. I found this to be interesting because I didn’t know that the Census did that, I thought that we were added as a whole. We also dichotomize, which is splitting something into two parts and than classifying them. When Rosenblum and Travis say that dichotomizing is splitting things into two groups, couldn’t it be more than two? There are defiantly more than two religions or countries we all could have come from. I was interested to read closer to the end of the article how we can dichotomize ability and disability. Farther down in the paragraph the authors talk about how disability can be treated not as a defect within the individual but that disability is created by environments that lack physical design and social support that make life worth living. I don’t know about that. So pretty much what is being said is that disability is different than what we think it to be? Disabilities in any case are sad and misfortunate but that doesn’t mean that life is not worth living, or the person feels that life is not worth living. I like Rosenblum and Travis because although I had to read the article twice, it is detailed and breaks down American society. I also liked that we got a worksheet to do if we needed help or to help us understand better. Some of their ideas I find to be very logical and make good sense, while others I had a little bit of a hard time understanding.

Analysis Paper Topic

For my analysis paper I chose a topic pertaining to Johnson chapters 6 and 8. I like this topic idea because it deals with the fact that we will always have problems in our society until we start owning up to our own ideas and beliefs and taking responsibility instead of putting it off on other people just because they are willing to state their opinion. I am not really set on a specific title yet but I really liked chapters 6 and 8 because they were easy for me to understand and literally represent true problems to our idea of ending discrimination and control in our society. There are also other texts from our reading that I could tie into my paper but the majority of reference will come from Johnson chap 6 and 8. I am completely open for ideas or suggestions.

Quiz 3

The author in this article concludes that if we (as Americans) have a problem with the way things go in this country as far as equality in race, beliefs etc and we chose not to do anything to better that, than we can simply leave the United States because we have the right to. Overall the author is making the argument that we should not dwell upon the unfair hand our great ancestors were dealt years ago, and that women should open their eyes to all the advantages that just like men, we have. She also makes an argument against homosexuals stating that she doesn’t know why they feel that they have to announce it to everyone all the time, and instead they (like straight people) should just keep it to themselves if they want to be treated fairly. I think that she is also trying to make the point that we are all equal, and instead of singling out one group of people for appreciation, we should all be appreciated for who we are. Closer to the end the author talks about how we should stop being so sensitive to what other people may say or do against a certain race or group. This article connects with Johnson’s concept of sick and tired from chapter 8. Johnson’s first sentence in this paragraph pretty much describes the author of the column, he states, “It’s not unusual for whites to comment on how sick and tired they are of hearing about race. ‘It’s always in your face’, they say. I ask how often is ‘always’ and what does ‘it’ consist of?” In the case of the article that the class was given to read it was not only race the author was complaining about but also gender, sexuality, and politics. I think that Sarah Barnes can defiantly be put into the category of “sick and tired” mainly I get the idea that she is indeed “sick and tired” when she says “Just don’t go around complaining that you got dealt a bad hand in life, when it is the individual that can make or break their own situations.” Can I get an “I’m sick and tired?” Personally sometimes I do feel like some issues may be over exaggerated in the sense of how they are public ally displayed but never upset me enough to write a column about it. I think that is because just acknowledging people when they are rallying and trying to understand maybe where they are coming from is a way of accepting who they are and maybe understanding what they are trying to put out there. I don’t think that people who rally intend to make people mad, I think that a lot of people are just narrow minded, and being exposed to many different issues concerning race, gender, politics, sexuality etc may be overwhelming for someone who came from a small town or something. Pretty much if I don’t want to hear it, I don’t listen that’s all there is to it, most of the time those people aren’t out there to cause chaos on campus, but to show others that may be gay, for example, and haven’t come out yet that there are people and support for them available. The author makes good points, but at the same time I don’t think she has any sympathy for other people.