Anna

how do we find the slave narrative project on the blogs?

 ”But the key is in the idea that the racial differences, such as they may, make one group superior to the others and thus destined to rule.” -Mr. Wasserman

When I read this I was able to put racism in perspective. Racism is not just whites being racist towards blacks, its any race feeling superior or inferior to another. And it doesn’t matter which race it is that is superior or inferior, but one race always seems to feel inferior/superior to another. In Iraq I feel that the Iraqi’s feel inferior to the Americans, because our soldiers are there being their policemen. We are there controlling large parts of their lives, and, very obviously, we are superior to many people there. Many people probably never saw this as a form of racism, but it is exactly what racism is; which shows that racism still does occur in our world to different extents.

I was not able to watch the video clip off of my computer for some reason, so I’ve decided to write a blog on what I’ve come to notice about satire in the book.

When I started reading this book I saw satire as more of just a funny joke, that caused no harm and everyone knew it wasn’t meant to be hurtful. Although, in Huck Finn. I’ve noticed satire to not be what I had defined it as. In this book I find satire to be a lot more offensive, and not really as funny. It’s been hard for me to notice satire in this book since I don’t see Mark Twain’s satire as funny. Other people are able to easily notice it, and realize when Twain is making a joke, but for some reason I automatically take it as Twain being a racist instead of him using satire. The type of satire used in this book just seems to be very different from the type of satire I see on television and in movies. Maybe satire has changed from when Twain wrote the book. Possibly, when he wrote it satire was used to express certain racist things that were wrong, rather than today satire isn’t really used to express what’s wrong as much as it is used to make others laugh.

Brayden Writes:

“One wrong desicion that has a hard impact and everything begins to slowly shatter and then finally completely come apart.”

I entirely agree with what Brayden has said. Although Brayden and I have different opinions on whether or not U.S. troops should be removed from Iraq, it is important that our country make the correct choice. Brayden was able to sum up the problem the U.S. is having when deciding to take more or less action in Iraq. When the U.S. acts upon moving troops in, or out, of Iraq it is a very critical decision. A decision that could affect other country’s, including the United States, because we don’t know how the Iraqi’s will respond to the United States actions. We have already become weaker, and some wrong decisions have led to a small ‘shatter,’ but we need to find a way to become stronger so everything does not ‘completely come apart.’

“…we assert that the violent, racially motivated acts on this campus are symptomatic of a pattern of violence and institutional racism at Cornell University. It is only through addressing the root causes of this crisis that we can hope to avert future tragedies.” -Students Hold Rally Against Institutional Racism (Stacy King; First speaker at rally held at Cornell)

http://www.ithacanews.org/news.htm?newsID=16 (I didn’t know how to make the quote a link.)  

There was a racially inflicted stabbing that occurred in March of this year at Cornell. This article shows that, although we don’t think racism occurs today, it truly does. And we like to think that if racism was occurring at the high school that it would be stopped by the teachers, but at Cornell the problem was the teachers. Students of Cornell came together to demand that the administrators take proactive steps to address issues of racism and violence. Students had a rally to make their faculty aware of what a problem it was. Even after the rally, it was addressed that the administration was still failing to address problems of racism, despite what the students wanted. It’s interesting to me that the students are more aware of racism, than the teachers who had taught them how horrible it was. This raises interesting questions in my mind. Are our teachers only teaching us that racism is wrong because they have to? Or do they truly think racism is wrong? And are some of them even racist themselves?

I personally feel that this is the hardest assignment we have yet to have. Satire is a really confusing word, and I feel that there is really no way to explain it. I do have certain concepts in my head about it and I’m willing to try to express them, but excuse me if I get a little confusing because I myself am confused with the whole word and its meaning.
I think that Satire is so popular because people find it to be funny. People and groups are interested in using humor to criticize social problems to make themselves feel better about certain situations. For someone who is against slavery, they would maybe make a T.V. series, or a movie, with a lot of racial jokes. Because this person knows that maybe if we can find humor out of something so horrible, than maybe it wouldn’t be a political issue anymore, and people would only see racism as a joke. But than you get into the conflict as to why something such as Scary Movie isn’t Satire. I don’t think its satire because its not addressing real life issues, its making fun of other movies, not something that our country is economically dealing with.
I do enjoy shows such as Family Guy and find them to be very funny, but when I sit here and try to explain why I find these movies so entertaining it begins to annoy me. And I begin to get upset with myself for finding pleasure out of such rude and politically incorrect shows.

I thought that the conditions that Frederick Douglas explained were poor, and unfair. The whole idea of slavery, and the fact that they receive much less than their owners in both food and clothing, seems unconstitutional to me. Today if this was to occur in our country, no one person would be able to have more opportunities than another; in the time that Frederick Douglas was writing about the slaves they were not given the opportunities that their owners were because of their color. Which makes us, the readers; realize how horrible and unfair slavery was.
Although Frederick Douglas describes the whole situation of slavery poor, it could have been much worse in some ways. I’ve always been told to be grateful for what I have. This is the same case with the slaves. The slaves were not fed very much and they food was not very good, yet they still received food. And although their closets were not overflowing with clothes, they still had clothes. And although were they lived was probably not very nice, they still were given somewhere to sleep. This in absolutely no way justifies slavery. Although it shows that when things were the worst for the slaves, that they could have been even worse.
Frederick Douglas also addresses how the slaves were very disadvantaged in many ways. Especially the newer slaves, since the master expected them to manage everything. Slaves had to do everything on their own with no help from anyone. The worst disadvantage for a slave, in my opinion, is they are never given anything in exchange for their work. If slaves were given money than they would be able to buy their freedom eventually, but they are not paid. Frederick Douglas allows me to understand the slaves as being related to a housedog today. And I would never pay my dog, similar to how the owners would never pay their slaves.