The mini-painting, Cover Girl, reflects both the blindness of society to cruel biases and the stereotype of the role of women in society. The flowers covering the girl’s eyes represent how people only see what they want to see, and cushion the harsh daily reality of unequal treatment of many different people, including racial differences, differences in sexuality, etc. The flowers float in front of the girl’s eyes to show that she is not voluntarily numbing reality, but the flowers are held in place in front of her for her own good and happiness. It shows that ignorance does mean bliss in society, and that’s how a system of oppression being held in place. This connects to Kindred because the system of oppression is continued by blindness and acceptance, just like the girl in the painting is blinded for her own sake and happiness. Sarah, a slave at the plantation, says that “things ain’t bad here [the plantation]” and that she can “get along” (145). This connects back to my experiences as a young girl living in a liberal area because personally, it is blinding to be in such an environment. During election day, I thought that there was no way that any person could support someone who could think such unfair, cruel, demeaning things about another person, but I was let down because of how protected and unknowing I was about people who think a different way than myself.
Slavery is a contradictory subject in American history because “one hears…of the staid and gentle patriarchy, the wide and sleepy plantations with lord and retainers, ease and happiness; [while] on the other hand on hears of barbarous cruelty and unbridles power and wide oppression of men” (Dubois 2). Dubois’s The Negro in the United States is an autoethnographic text which is a representation “that the so-defined others
Phillips writes that the defining characteristic of a ‘Southerner’ is a feeling of white racial solidarity which casts all other social considerations in the shade; it is the “cardinal test of a Southerner.” When Phillips touches upon the subject of non-slaveholding whites, he emphasizes their zeal for the primacy of white civilization as an end unto itself. He relates two contemporary accounts of non-slaveholders, one a tinner and the other an overseer, to demonstrate this fervor but pointedly devalues their economic attachments to slavery, writing, “Both of them, and a million of their non-slaveholding like, had a still stronger social prompting: the white men’s ways must prevail; the Negroes must be kept innocuous.” Phillips rejects out of hand the sway of overt pecuniary motives against the weight of racial ones and this rejection is so absolute in part because “it is otherwise impossible to account
He greets them with a reserved yet cheerful, “Mr. President, Friends, and Fellow Citizens…” (117). He remains respectful of those in authority, while simultaneously conveying to his audience that he, a black man and freed slave, shares in their celebrated citizenship. Douglass, however, does not limit his correlation with the audience there; he then goes so far as to address them as “friends”. This greeting and introduction perfectly prefaces the righteous ridicule that is to come. These men, products of the free town of Rochester, are oblivious to the absurd juxtaposition that is present before
In the essay “Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America” Barbara Fields states:
Mr. Douglass had many experiences during his time enslaved that would have been typical for a Southern slave. His early childhood was like most Southern slaves in multiple ways. The master and slave relationship was designed to make slaves feel “… broken in body, mind and spirit” (Douglass, 74). Like all slaves, Mr. Douglass and his fellow slaves “were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and woman, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep and swine. There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination” (Douglass, 58). Furthermore, in order to perpetuate a system of inequality slave families would be treated differently than white families. For example, to “hinder development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection” (Douglass, 20). Slave masters
In early nineteenth-century Charleston, homeowners owned slaves, businesses owned slaves, and as did some of the free African Americans. This was the same for many cities in early America however time progressed and soon American cities abolished slavery albeit Charleston did not. Charleston, South Carolina, a very Southern city, was well known for its aristocratic classes of wealthy people and its large population of slaves. The civilians were known for their Southern pro-slavery views and hatred to those who oppress their beliefs of slavery, specifically the Quakers; abolitionists of slavery and for women’s rights. My life setting here in Canada is contradicting to those of the early nineteenth century lifestyles. In Canada, we believe in equality for colour and gender alike while in Charleston this was the flip. Sarah Grimke, a woman of Quaker faith belonging to a family of pro-slavery, is not only berated for her long time views of slavery but also for her goals and dreams for women. Upon Sarah’s arrival from her new home in the North to her old home back in Charleston a woman stated but was soon cut off, “You’re the Grimke daughter, aren’t you…the one who-…She’d meant to say the one who betrayed us.” (Kidd
This is hypocritical in that the white men make these values and traditions a staple of their lives, yet when it comes to slaves, they seem to go away. He also believes that, though he will use “the severest language”(Douglass) he can, he firmly believes that “not one word shall escape me that any man whose… not blinded by prejudice, or… a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just”(Douglass). So he sincerely believes that the average human being also knows that the treatment of slaves is unjust and unethical, but they choose not to act on these thoughts. His view, coming from the eyes and thoughts of slaves across America, show how hypocritical the nation actually is in both one sided values and not acting upon their knowledge that what is going on is wrong.
Mrs. Harrison believes that black people have to earn the white people’s respect, trust, freedoms and equality. Mrs. Harrison says to Bob, “You mustn’t think in terms of trying to get even with them, you must accept whatever they do for you and try to prove yourself worthy to be entrusted with more” (52). She states that if black people work hard enough, the white people will reward them. She also wants the black community to wait for the white people to “give” them something better, to accept what the white people “do for them.” She compares the idea of black and white people equality to communism. She tells Bob that he needs to make himself worthy of respect. “You know yourself, Bob, a lot of our people are just not worthy, they just don’t deserve anymore than they’re getting” (52). These comments illustrate how class has a great influence on Mrs. Harrison’s point of view on race. Without having to work and being rich, she is ignorant of the racial discrimination that a day to day skilled worker of Bob’s color has to go through. Like her daughter Alice, Mrs. Harrison has been given special treatment by the white people for her lighter skin, and her social and economic class.
It is yet another day I live and walk this earth. About 2 years ago an election occurred where two parties --the Democratic and Whig Party--had split because of the slavery issue occurring in our nation. As you know, I am against slavery and believe that keeping men, women, and children as slaves is morally wrong. I, for one, would not like to be treated like crud and taken away from my dear family. Why is it that the South believe they are happy in unsanitary and cruel conditions? Blacks are people too, just like us, there is no need to treat them like they are anything less.
When one travels in the country they learn the differences in the way people act or the way they are treated. Moving from Colonel Lloyd’s plantation to Baltimore, Frederick experienced the difference in how country slaves and city slaves were treated. 10. “A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with a slave on the plantation. He is much better fed and clothed, and enjoys privileges altogether unknown to the slave on the plantation. There is a vestige of decency, a sense of shame, that does much to curb and cheek those outbreaks of atrocious cruelty so commonly enacted upon the plantation.” (64-65). Slaveholders in the city took pride in treating their
Buccola, Nicholas. "Each for All and All for Each: The Liberal Statesmanship of Frederick Douglass." Review of Politics 70.3 (2008): 400-419. Print. The author talks about how Frederick Douglass slavery led him to appreciate human interdependence and reject liberalism. Douglass’s aim was undoubtedly liberal but he thought these aims could only be realized in a community of individuals who felt strongly about one another. The author’s idea is to explore how Douglass faced these challenges and liberal statesmanship.
Thus, in this book Lydia blames the South and the north for the existence of slavery and was calling for any eradication of racial discrimination, brazenly defending interracial marriage; this work was the first anti-slavery work in America in a book form; in the meantime, the sales of Lydia’s work in other areas went straight down, the subscriptions to Juvenile Miscellany were cancelled and Lydia was stipulated to resign as editor. Thus, Lydia became the object of national detestation and one of her friend Mr. Greenleaf states that no one had suffered so significantly for her principles. Thus, Lydia lost her livelihood, her reputation, and her reputation almost overnight, Lydia scandalized her Boston friends when she was describing Northerners’ prejudice against blacks and the segregation that existed in Northern
This duality, this mixture of something wonderful and something equally terrible really captures for me the state of the country during the Reconstruction period. A lot of pulling and pushing. The african-americans had been freed but to what purpose? Even when granted the Fifteenth amendment allowing black males the right to vote, they were still disenfranchised through state laws which kept them from voting through legal loopholes and to top it off, none of this did much in the way of women's suffrage. Again, back to the pulling and pushing struggle. Sort of like "two steps forward but three steps back." When thinking of the Reconstruction era one must also remember the violence that lingered on. The formation of the Ku Klux Klan was birthed in that era and from that violence. Such a prolific group full of hate and detestable rhetoric that lingers on to this day. One good example of that violence is given in our text when it describes the events of Hamburg, South Carolina on July 4th, 1876. The violence of one-thousand armed white men obliterating one-hundred african amercan men. I would be remiss not to recall the freedmen bureau, the many charities towards education as well as the government
Miss America is a yearly pageant that goes on for any girl between the age of 17 to 24. There is a lot of people that enter this every year. Six beautiful and wonderful women have won from Oklahoma. Their life was so amazing when they found out they have won, some of them didn’t even know what to do. There is so much stuff they have to go through to get to enter in the pageant. After they do enter they are very busy with everything trying get to get ready for the big day. Miss America is a pageant that has been going on since 1921. It is something that some girls look forward to for when they are in High School or just got out of High School.
Harriet Jacobs, a black woman who escapes slavery, illustrates in her biography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) that death is preferable to life as a slave due to the unbearable degradation of being regarded as property, the inevitable destruction of slave children’s innocence, and the emotional and physical pain inflicted by slave masters. Through numerous rhetorical strategies such as allusion, comparison, tone, irony, and paradoxical expression, she recounts her personal tragedies with brutal honesty. Jacobs’s purpose is to combat the deceptive positive portrayals of slavery spread by southern slave holders through revealing the true magnitude of its horrors. Her intended audience is uninvolved northerners, especially women, and she develops a personal and emotionally charged relationship with them.