the modern american dream

"...I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren." - Barack Obama

 To me, these words exemplify perfectly what it means to be a modern American. Even though slavery was abolished over 200 years ago, and the Civil Rights movement ended a little over 30 years ago, racism and prejudice are still present in today's society. However, modern America is trying as a whole to eliminate these prejudices and move forward as a group. What makes us truly American is accepting that we are all different - except for our ideals for the future.

Frederick Douglass

I was surprised when reading The Narrative of Frederick Douglass to find that it is just as much of a public argument as it is a private account. Douglass introduces the reader to his own situation—his birthplace and the fact that he does not know his own age, then generalizes from his own experience, explaining that almost no slaves know their true ages. Next, Douglass takes this detail of his experience and analyzes it. He points out that slave owners deliberately keep their slaves ignorant, and that this is a tactic whites use to gain power over slaves. This structure recurs throughout his Narrative: he presents his personal experience as a typical slave experience, and then usually makes an analytical point about the experience and what it tells us about how slavery works and why it is wrong. The main tactic of Douglass’s antislavery argument is to analyze the institution of slavery and show how and why it works. The analysis would then demystify slavery and reveal its brutality and wrongness, leaving the readers with no choice but to want to remove the institution. This seems to be an excellent tactic of argumentation, stating facts and analyses that no one can really doubt, and then planting seeds of thought in their mind on how wrong the other side is.

conversations on freedom

Some notes Erik and I took today:

How do we make people free?

Jefferson—free-est when ruled by wisest, free from obligations

Zinn—focuses on how Americans treated other people, freedom is not oppression

Anne Hutchinson—come to America to be free, oppressed anyway

Zinn and Anne Hutchinson talk about non-oppression as freedom, Jefferson justifies

+/- freedom

AH part of white settlement, Jeff mad about provlamation line, Zinn oppressing NA

Jefferson: The common man can be freed by being ruled by the wise.

Zinn: Oh yeah? What makes a man wise? Being white? Rich? A male?

Jefferson: Yes, all of those. Wealth makes him free from financial obligations; wage slaves could never be free. White race makes him free from slavery.

Anne Hutchinson: Males shouldn’t rule society. John Winthrop was not wise, but jealous of my influence. Freedom means living a morally good life. You must be free to determine what a morally good life is based on your own religious views. Religion shouldn’t be hierarchical and rule based.

Jefferson: Women are tied down with children and domestic duties. You cannot truly be free, and will impede the progress of a democracy.

Zinn: Women are only unfree because men enslaved them. Indentured servant women were frequently raped by their owners. Say, Jefferson, didn’t you have an affair with a slave girl?

Jefferson: I’m free to do what I choose because I’m a rich white male!

Zinn: You were also oppressing Native Americans by taking their land to progress your white western democracy. Part of your justification for revolution was wanting to cross the proclamation line. And Anne Hutchinson, were did the land for the Puritan settlements come from?

Anne Hutchinson: The settlements were necessary to provide a place were people could be free to live a morally good life free from the corruption of the Anglican church. Freedom is not the absence of oppression, but the presence of pressures to keep you on the path to holiness.

Jefferson: Yes, society can be improved by having the wise rule and requiring the uneducated to live well.

what constitutes a good conversation?

Throughout the day, we have many different conversations with people. But how many of them are actually good conversation? I think a good conversation is one where everyone involved is able to listen and feel free to ask questions or disagree; where not everyone has to have the same opinion. A good conversation influences the thoughts of the participants, even after the conversation is over, encouraging them to reflect on it and let it impact the rest of their day because it was that meaningful or interesting. People should be open minded and willing to accept new ideas, instead of insisting that only their own are right. On the other hand, people should not be afraid to speak up and voice their own opinions. The best way for a conversation to be good is to have different opinions and ideas come out into the open and be able to float around for others to hear out, whether it's to agree or disagree.

white is might?

Not the best picture, but it's the "Magic is Might" statue from the Ministry of Magic in HP7: an elevated witch and wizard sitting on a throne, crushing naked Muggles (non-witch/wizards). Interesting how status and racism comes across in many cultures - even those that are mythical. The statue is supposed to represent that pure-blood witches and wizards are superior to Muggles or half-bloods, and the other creatures like House Elves, goblins, giants, etc. It's similar to the idea that whites felt superior to black slaves, or the Native Americans in early colonization, and how Hitler felt the Aryan race was superior to pretty much everyone. These "superior" groups wanted to oppress the "inferior" and elevate themselves to be more important and have more power and control. Our reading last night and discussion in class today were interesting, realizing that slavery wasn't always about racial superiority, but more about economic reasons that then turned into prejudice and racism.

home is where the heart and soul is

According to Uptons's "From an American Icon," houses are an integral part of a family's identity.

"The house owes its importance to its association with the family.  All the indigenous and immigrant cultures who have lived in what is now the United States have identified the family as the core institution of their societies, although they have defined it in very different ways.  However they are defined, families are complex institutions.  Shared values bind them, but internal divisions distinguish their members as individuals and according to their assigned roles, as spouses, parents, children, servants.  Equally important, families have histories - gene pools, genealogies, family stories and traditions: they are constellations of memories that surface in surprising ways from one generation to the next."

Buying a house is one of the most important things a person does in his life, almost the same as getting married or having a first child. It marks a milestone in life and the mark of a new family moving away from their established families, embarking on their own individual journey. People raise children, entertain hobbies, entertain other people, entertain themselves in a house. Everything inside of it is individual to that particular family, and the architecture and landscape, as well as the furnishings and items inside of the house, help to tell the story/history of that family. We know so much about people in American history due to the things found in houses, and the way the houses were constructed. Houses are an amazing dense fact used to describe American history and life.

Monticello

In 5th grade, my teacher took us on a field trip to Monticello. I remember walking around outside - it was a gloomy day and everyone was running around in the mud. Last night's reading brought me back to everything I saw back then, but it made me wish I could go there now, after reading the history behind the architecture and landscape. I would like to notice the architectural details Jefferson installed and analyze the reasons he did so - to make a political statement, to create an identity with the "American House," because he was inspired by neo-classicism and French architecture.  It would be so enlightening to actually see the things we read about. That's one of the things I love so much about living near DC - a lot of the things I read about in history classes are the things I have access to see almost any day I want. Maybe I'll go to Monticello this summer...