“Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of White Privilege” In Peggy McIntosh’s essay, she addressed several issues that are considered to be very important ones. She speaks of how whites are given hidden privileges, yet they don’t even realize it. I believe that the purpose for her writing this, was to bring out in the open the issues of oppression with regards to the dominant race and their “unearned privileges” that they are so oblivious to. McIntosh compared this situation to how men are more privileged and advantaged, and women are at a more disadvantaged state. In comparison, she also stated that men do indeed admit to a woman’s disadvantage, yet a man will not agree to being more advantaged, because they too are oblivious to this fact.
Why waste our freedom to vote? Blacks fighting to vote, being discriminated, and finally having the freedom to vote. Women getting beaten, killed, and getting fed unwillingly, just for fighting their right to vote. Does this come across anyone’s mind when they decide not to vote on Election Day? John W. Dean’s words inspire, in this speech he gave on February 28, 2003 “While compulsion of any kind is a restriction, so is the compulsion to drive only on the right side of the
The War in Iraq Isn’t it interesting how the media portraits the war in Iraq? It’s always the negative points and never the good ones. There is so much disbelief and lying about our military and government that it is disgusting! Everyone believes that this war is pointless and stupid, however it needed to be done to make an example! The United States is the strongest government in the world and the media puts it down so very hard.
Jack Pine 11 August 2011 Mr. Singler English 102 What the “Huck”? N-Bomb! Mark Twain's novel, Huckleberry Finn, published over a hundred years ago, has stirred controversy from racism to censorship due to some of the vulgar language. Although, one of his greatest books of all time many educators and parents support the removal of Huck Finn from elementary and high school curriculum's because of the abundant use of the ‘n-word’ used approximately 219 times through the novel. The derogatory term makes it hard to appropriately depict the true meaning of the book to a group of children without raising countless unspoken questions.
White people believed they were superior to the blacks and barely viewed them as human beings. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee writes accurate descriptions of how racism was ingrained in the daily lives of Americans such as Aunt Alexandra whose response to Scout as to why she cannot play with a black boy is "Because- he – is – trash, that’s why you can’t play with him". Alexandra is not giving Scout a real reason why because she has no reason other than she grew up with society telling her black and white children could not play together and was brainwashed into believing it. Another situation that shows the shocking segregation is when Cecil Jacobs asked a question about why the Jewish were persecuted in class "But that ain’t no cause to persecute ‘em. They’re white aren’t they?"
Ken Kesey One Flew Over The Cookoo’s Nest Essay Dane Klenk 10/20/11 Honors English Sparks Dane Klenk 1st page In Ken Kesey’s award winning novel “One Flew over the cuckoo’s nest”, he shows his anger for the lack of rights our government has given our society. He was angry at how our government had blatantly disregarded our right to freedom of speech, right to vote, and unlawful to discrimination with regard to race, religion and sexual preference. In essence, Ken Kesey tried to move society to stand up for equal rights. Ken Kesey expresses his anger through a mental institution, where Nurse Ratchet controls the patients like mindless puppets. He creates a symbolic world where Nurse Ratchet disregards the rights of her patients, subjects them to undeserved punishments, and controls every aspect of their day-to-day lives, and exacts her revenge on the would-be hero McMurphy.
He criticised the ruling arguing that it would do nothing to change the hearts and minds of southern white racists. He believed that it was counterproductive. It had just infuriated white citizens and whipped up tremendous opposition to Civil Rights. He claimed that his decision to make ‘Earl Warren’ Chief Justice was ‘the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made’ Civil Rights Organisations: They began the fight for
Equality Opportunity’ in that the burdens of racism can only be overcome by taking race into account. Affirmative action also aims to reflect the racial diversity of the nation, the ‘Equality of Results’, within schools, the firm and the workplace. Despite being mainly supported by Democrats, and rejected by Republicans President Nixon played a significant role in affirmative action by instituting ‘set aside’ policies to reserve a certain percentage for minorities. The main advantage of affirmative action is that is leads to a greater diversity in societies main institutions, arguably this would not be achieved had things been left as they were. It is also argued on the basis of righting those previously wronged, by opening areas of education and employment that would not have previously been available to minorities.
As Dijk (2004) stated in his article on racial discourse, in reference to older and more extreme expressions of prejudice, “Since today just blatant forms of verbal discrimination are generally found to be ‘politically incorrect,’ much racist discourse directed at dominated ethnic group members tends to become more subtle and indirect” (p. 352). As has been suggested, images like these, both in bookstores and on the internet, do not overtly attack or esteem any particular race, but they indirectly indicate clear divisions of image. Dijk (2004) described this phenomenon as a specific strategy, “According to the overall strategy of positive Self-presentation and negative Other-presentation, neutral or positive topics about Us are preferred, whereas the negative ones are ignored or suppressed” (p. 353). This kind of social arrangement creates still more difficulties for social workers because it clearly aligns them against the people they are trying to
He defends and speaks for not only Twain but also “Melville, J. W. DeForest, and George Washington Carver,” all other writers who did not conform to the standard portrayal of blacks as the unintelligent, insensitive, inconsiderate individuals Jefferson painted them to be. It would be easy to say that Smith is an “abolitionist” and against slavery, but it is more important to consider that he comes from a modern viewpoint. In 1984, nearly a century after Twain first set his pen to the task of authoring Huckleberry Finn, slavery had been outlawed for nearly one hundred and twenty years. Racism, undoubtedly, still existed, but for most of the literary intelligentsia, such as Smith, the subject of the “right and wrong” in slavery was not a matter of debate. The debate surrounding the essay is in judging Twain’s depiction of the “negro” Jim and its relation to past and present racial discourse.