Forrrrrrrr sho

The content of these narratives really deepened my knowledge of how slaves felt during these awful times.  I never realized how horrible some of the events that regularly happened to slaves could be so horrible.  Louis Hughes, a slave, was traded around numerous times before finding an owner that actually kept him.  Due to this constant shipping, he was separated from his mother at a young age, and could not rely on his father for support, for he was a white slave owner. 

Louis was terribly lonely and had no one to confide in.  Personally, I never would have been able to grow up into the person that I am today, without the care given to me by my parents and friends.  Louis had neither.  These first hand accounts show the feelings associated with slavery and give us some possible reasoning for the extreme actions that they sometimes took.  I now have a better understanding of why Jim ran away, having been separated from his family and treated poorly.  Also, reading this slave narrative helps me to appreciate Huck’s actions more and more because of how daring he was to actually help a slave escape and put his own life in danger.

I found an article dealing with prison statistics in California.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/31/RVGNGN44B71.DTL

Just hearing the numbers and percentages of the people in jail makes me very upset.  With the population of the United States being about 20% African-American and a slightly smaller percentage for Latinos.  However, two thirds of the people in these jails are of the two minorities.  This article goes as far as saying that this is a type of slavery.

The right claims that prisons reduce crime, but California’s crime rate was decreasing before the prison boom took off. The left argues that prisons are the “new slavery,” designed to provide cheap labor to mercenary corporations…

Unfortunately, I am aware of the racism that still takes place in our country today and throughout the world.  However, I am simply outraged that people will be this up front about it, and we will potentially enable terrible history to repeat itself. 

I found a very interesting article online that dealt with the issues of racism.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/weekinreview/10nagourney.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

It was about the likelihood of seeing a black president, and also talked about seeing a female president.  Some very interesting facts were brought up in the article that I hadn’t really thought about until before reading it.  For instance, Geraldine Ferraro, a female senator, thinks that a female president will be much more likely to happen than having a black one. 

“I think it’s more realistic for a woman than it is for an African-American,” said Ms. Ferraro. “There is a certain amount of racism that exists in the United States — whether it’s conscious or not it’s true.”

She goes on, stating that women are more than half of the nation’s population, far outnumbering the black population.

However, having said all of this, there is a very good chance that Barack Obama will be our next president.  Unfortunately, part of his campaign will have to be making himself appealing to the white population.  Some seem to think that he already has;

He has a warm and commanding campaign presence that, as he showed in Illinois, cut across color lines.

This upcoming election looks to be a very unique one and I will be interested to see what the final results will turn out to be.

This assignment should be an interesting one.  I don’t know too much about the actual lives of slaves.  Back in seventh or eighth grade we read Frederick Douglass’ narrative and found it very interesting to find out about the personal life of a very successful former slave.  I expected them not to be treated well, but some of the stories that Douglass had to tell were really horrible and unbelievable.

  All I really expect from these narratives are really just more of the same type of similar stories.  Their individual life stories will obviously be different but I’m assuming that the terrible living conditions under which they’re working will be fairly comparable.  The other slaves probably won’t turn out to be as successful or famous as Douglass but it will be interesting to compare them. 

In A Lesson Before Dying Grant is the only schoolteacher in the town.  Many of his kids are destined to fail and end up working in a farm.  However, real people that lived through this time had very different experiences.  Roceal Duke says,

“The idea of not going to college never crossed most of our minds.”

This quote is the exact opposite of Grant’s thought process.  Grant’s former elementary school teacher told him that the only option if you’re a black in the south is to leave.  Grant got very upset at this comment, but knew that there had to be some truth to it.  The kids only come to school 5 and a half months instead of six due to the fact that they have to work.  The superintendent of schools told Grant to focus on learning the Pledge and bible verses and nothing else.  He figures that blacks only need to know the basics of education because they won’t be doing jobs that require it. 

This quote completely contradicts Grant.  There might be only one of his students that will end up going to college.  For Roceal Duke, he claims that college was described as mandatory.  Parents would expect it from their children and the teachers expected it from their students.  Duke goes on to say that he was later enrolled in typing class.  This makes it seem like his and Grant’s surroundings are very different.  Grant doesn’t even have enough chalk, while Duke was learning how to use a keyboard.  It seems odd, but it did happen during the time period.