Color Purple

In this letter, Celie is telling Nettie about a conversation between her and Shug. In the conversation, Celie says that she is done with God. Shug starts to defend God and gives Celie new ideas about God. Before, Celie had seen God as a white man with white robes and a white beard. Her God was the white God. Shug explains to her that God isn’t just a man in the sky, God is everything. She describes God as “It.” It is okay with everything that they do, even the things that some people would think is sin, because It created everything and wants people to enjoy them and every emotion that goes with it. Shug says that everyone just wants to be loved, and so does God. She finds God in nature, and sees God whenever she walks through a field of purple wildflowers. God wants to please them too, not everything is about pleasing God.
At the end of the letter, Celie tells Nettie that she likes this idea of God, but is having trouble chasing the old white man out of her head. Celie talks about rocks, and says that she ends up just throwing the rocks. This shows that she feels anger. She had earlier denounced God because her life was so bad, and she didn’t understand why he had let all of these things happen to her. When Shug spoke to her about the God she knows, Celie realized ideas she had never thought about before. She is angry because man has always been in the way of God, and she has always had men on her mind. She wants to start thinking about God and keep man out of her head. She wants to start thinking about God being in nature and stop thinking about men.

Fires in the Mirror

The movie made me very uncomfortable, but I think that was one of her intentions. I felt as if she was always yelling, and I got so stressed out while watching it. Every person that she interviewed was important to the entire movie because has something important to say about their race, identity, religion, or the situation in Crown Heights.
The situation itself with the Jewish man and the young black boy that died was very sad and full of turmoil, especially with the other Jewish man being murdered. This is why I think she tried to stress the viewer out.
I really like how she acted out the people on both sides. She seemed unbiased because she presented the views from the Jewish community and the black community verbatim of what the interviewees said. The story was very confusing and it made me mad at the Jewish man when I listened to the black side, and mad at the black community when I listened to the Jewish side. It was hard for me to pick a side because the situation is so confusing. In my last blog I wrote about how I felt more compassion for the Jewish people because although the young black boy died, it was an accident. A group of black men killed Yankel Rosenbaum just for being a Jew.
It was good to hear this story from both sides, because with most situations, you are unable to hear both sides of the story. I believe that Anna Deavere Smith was very efficient and thoughtful in how she presented all of the different views.

Crown Heights

The part of the documentary we saw today was very confusing and stressful. It was the section with a Rabbi, a Reverend, and a teenage black man who was on the scene.
They were all talking about the same incident, but I was able to hear all the sides of the story. It is hard to side with either the blacks or the Jews because there were so many things involved in it.
However, I do know this: The Jewish man did not purposely kill the young black boy. It was a car accident. Incidents like this happen all the time. The group of black men that killed Yankel Rosenbaum purposely did it. They purposely killed him because he was a Jew, even though he had nothing to do with what had happened with the Jewish man and the young black boy.
Riots broke out in the black community because of the young boy’s death. But no riots broke out in the Jewish community because of Yankel Rosenbaum’s death. In the riots, many people were hurt, and there was a large amount of damage to cars and property. This is why I sympathize more with the Jews than I do the black community.
The Jewish man had to live with the guilt of accidentally killing the little boy forever, and it wasn’t his fault that he was taken away in the Jewish ambulance. He got out of the car to help the boy, and was immediately attacked by angry bystanders.
The teenager points out that Jewish people never get arrested and that the police are always bothering black people just because they are black. But, the way that he described the white man treating the black man is just how they are treating the Jewish people.

Malcolm X

Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X varied a lot in their approaches. Martin Luther King Jr. wanted the races to work together to find peace. He was all about being passive. He was never violent. He went about his movements by marches, sit ins, and other peaceful approaches. Malcolm X is more radical. The piece we read started out when he was in jail, where he learned how to read. He became Muslim and started to believe in the religion strongly. He focuses on being against the white man and the way they treated the blacks. He was strongly against the white man, even calling him the devil. He was pretty much saying that the white man’s only purpose is to keep the black population down. Malcolm X didn’t believe that the whites and the blacks could coexist peacefully.
One thing that I found very interesting, and I somewhat agreed with was when Malcolm X talked about how before they tried to gain civil rights, they needed to achieve human rights. If people treated African Americans as humans, civil rights wouldn’t even be an issue. If people didn’t look down on other people and thought they didn’t even deserve to be treated like a human because they were different, everyone would treat each other better. Malcolm X wanted to be equal to the white man, but he didn’t want them to be together. MLK Jr. wanted everyone to live in peaceful harmony.

Sonny

Sonny first starts going to drugs because his life is hard. He is unhappy and he has no release to help him through his hard times. Someone turned him onto drugs because they said that it feels good. Sonny’s life is bad and so he figures that it would be a good idea to start doing drugs because it makes him feel better. Heroin and his drug habit become his escape from reality. It helps him get away, because he doesn’t know how else how to.
Earlier, his brother did not understand why Sonny played the piano so much, but when he finally sees his play, he realizes that music is his release now. The music that Sonny plays allows him to express himself. It is his new escape. People listen to music to make them feel better. And it is certainly a healthier way to express yourself than drugs. Sonny has struggled in his life, and it helps him express in music in such a way that it helps other people too. His piano music is full of emotion because he has struggled so much in his life.

Ethics

The ethics in my life has been taught to me mostly by my mom, who is responsible for who I am today. Ever since kindergarten, I’ve been taught to treat others how I would like to be treated. It’s true that the Golden Rule is one of the most important rules.
My mom is a strong believer in karma and she has taught be that if you do the right thing, it will come back to you. I’ve never been a bully, and I feel I have always been welcoming and friendly to people who needed it.

Growing up, I was around my brother a lot, and I saw who his friends were. He used to have a friend in junior high that I hated, and who used to be so mean to me. We would get in actual physical fights and it would end up with him hurting me. I knew that if I was the older sibling I wouldn’t be friends with people that wouldn’t even respect my sibling, or even hurt them. They are not friends anymore, and I don’t know where that guy is now, but last time I heard he was getting into a lot of trouble. I learned what types of friends I wanted to have by seeing what types of friends my brother had.

The basic ethics I have been taught are to be able to differentiate right from wrong. When I see something that I don’t think is right, and I’m sure that my mom wouldn’t think is right, I stay away from it. Of course, I’m a teenager, so I do what I want a lot of the times but I make sure that I am being responsible and not causing harm to anyone.

My peers and friends don’t influence my ethics as much as my family did growing up, because by the time I started making a concrete group of friends, my ethics were already established. However, I know that if I ever do something out of line, my friends will call me out and set me back on track.

Hughes and McKay

The poems that we read in class by McKay were mostly sonnets. They followed a strict style of writing. It was very interesting how McKay wrote his poems this way, because it was a very high level of poetry that requires a certain intelligence that people wouldn’t expect of an African American. McKay wrote sonnets very well to show people that he was educated and intelligent. Sonnets are what people like Shakespeare wrote. It is difficult to write a sonnet because every syllable in every word in every line is important to the poem as a whole. Langston Hughes did not write a majority of his poems as sonnets, but his poems were beautiful as well. His poetry was much more informal than McKay. We read a couple of his poems, including Negro Speaks of Rivers and Theme for English B. In Negro Speaks of Rivers he talks about how his ancestors have seen so much history happen and that he is part of his ancestors because they are in his soul. And all of what his ancestors have done and seen has made his soul grow deep like the rivers. Langston Hughes’s poems were easier to relate to, and although some of his poems were angry, it was productive anger.
In McKay's poem, To the White Fiends, he talks about how the white men have done very evil things to the black man, and the black man is just as capable of doing those same cruel things, but they won’t because they don’t want to be savages just like them. Both of these poets write about what it is like to be a black man through their poetry.

Booka T.

Booker T. Washington provides the answer of staying South to the debate we looked at in Douglass’s Life and Times. Booker T. agrees with Douglass that the newly freed blacks should stay in the South. He thinks that the black people should make it work with the South. Black people of the time wanted to look elsewhere to solve their problems, but Washington says, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” He stated that it was necessary that they stay in the South.
Booker T. Washington says, “No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field, as in writing a poem.” (pg. 595) He says this because there is just as much dignity and virtue in staying and working fields in the South as there is in the North writing poems. At this time, the economy was driven by the labor in the South. If all the black people went to the North, then the economy would suffer.
He argued that the white needed to cast down their buckets too to give African Americans a chance. He said that blacks were 1/3 of the population and as a whole, Americans could not succeed with the African Americans because they are a huge chunk of it. Washington says that they are the people that have taken care of white people’s children, worked for them, and built the city that they live in, and they would all come together to make process. Even though whites and blacks don’t have to like each other, everyone has to come together. Both whites and blacks had to be willing to work.
Washington explained that by everyone going to the North is like saying that freedom doesn’t work in the South and that their rights don’t count just because the southern whites refuse to recognize them. This is why he says that this is an opportunity and that they should stay put and make it in the North.
He thinks this will work because he believes that helping others is what makes oneself most happy. He thinks that that is the most important thing, and he believes in cooperation, but this is not always how things work out.

Equiano and Smith

Odaulah Equiano and Venture Smith are both native Africans who were born within their tribes in different parts of Africa. Both of these men were the sons of chiefs or important elders in their tribe. Smith does not go into much detail about his tribe, yet Equiano gives much detail about the culture and beliefs of his tribe. Smith explains the polygamy in his tribe, but that’s about it. He also talks about what happens with his mother when she takes him away. Equiano on the other hand, gives a lot of detail about his native tribe. Equiano is eager to talk about his tribes’ rituals, like the different sections for dancing. He also explained in detail the role of the elders and how they punished people. A difference in Smith and Equiano is that just by reading the beginning of both stories, Equiano values his tribal life much more than Smith did. I thought it was interesting how they kept the same values when they were captured and thrown into slavery. They kept the values they learned from their tribe, like their honesty and optimism. Equiano gave much more detail about his life and little things, like the long ship ride to America. He explained everything, like a commentary. All Venture Smith said was it was long, a lot of people died, and he was bought. They differ because in the end, it seemed to be that Smith was mostly worried about his monetary achievements. He was so excited for the price in which he bought his sons, and the two for one deal he got on his pregnant wife. When he recounted everything he had done, he explained how he had been taken advantage of and lost this much money, how his chest had burned and he lost this much, how his son died and his “investment” of buying his freedom was wasted, and so on. At the end of Equiano’s story, he learned about the religion and the traditions of the new people he came into contact with.

Protest Songs

Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round was sung as a protest song during the civil rights movement. The protest song talks about how nobody, no jailhouse, or no sheriff will scare them into not sticking up for themselves. We all know that during the Civil Rights Movement, the African Americans struggled to get the same equal rights that everyone else had. This is an important value- the value to stick up for yourself, your rights, and your freedom no matter what is pushing against you or oppressing you. In this song, they refer to the freedom land and that they are all talking and marching towards it. On their way to equality, they make sure they speak their mind and that they are heard.

In We Shall Overcome, it states the simple line that “We shall overcome.” This protest song was also sung during the civil rights movement. It talked about the “inevitable victory of all Americans over racism and prejudice.” (pg. 45) Although African Americans have gained the same rights as others in our country, they still face prejudice and racism. This song is about the hope that one day it will all be different. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who sang this song during the movement knew that one day their dreams would be achieved, even if they were not around to see it, just like John Henry.

These echo back to the older works like John Henry, Shine, or Stakolee because they are all sticking up for themselves. These relate to John Henry, Shine, and Stakolee because they didn’t let others keep them down, and proved their worth, just like the African Americans did in the times of these protest songs.

John Henry

The story of John Henry is about a man named John Henry, who was born a slave and grew up as a slave. He was described as a strong and giant man. He worked as a steeldriver, which was a job involving the very dangerous and strenuous activity of driving the nails into the railroad tracks. John Henry said that he would die with a hammer in his hand. Steeldriving was all he has known since he was a little boy. In this story, John Henry challenges a steam drill driven by a white man threatening to take all of the steeldriver’s jobs. He feels like he must prove himself against the steam drill, as well as the white man. John Henry wants to prove his worth against whatever oppression is against him. In the end, John Henry defeats the steam drill, but he dies from exhaustion. Even though he dies, he has proved himself against the white man and the steam drill.
Even though the times of John Henry and “The Message” and “N.Y. State of Mind” are very different, and deal with different things, they all have a similar theme.
Each one of these ballads or songs deal with a young man in a horrible situation. For John Henry, this situation is the daily conditions he faces in his dangerous job as a steeldriver. He works so hard everyday just to survive, and the work he does involves his entire body.
In “The Message” and “N.Y. State of Mind”, the speakers go through their lives with their daily struggles as well. Even though these struggles are different than John Henry’s, they are still difficulties that these speakers face everyday. The entire message is to still try your best even if people, or something, is up against you. It shows the value of persistence, trying very hard, and perseverance. It is a bit different in “The Message” than it is in “N.Y. State of Mind” because in “The Message” the speaker is trying not to go past the edge. He is trying to keep his cool and keep doing the right thing through his struggle, just like John Henry did.