NO! Rape video

In class we watched a video that talked about rape, they went over statistics and talked about the details and psychological aspects of rape and the false assumptions about rape.

I said in class the thing that I felt was the most powerful was the stories told by two women who talked about their experiences with rape or attempted rape. I won't retell the stories as I couldn't do them justice, but hearing the experience from someone else was erie and it gave me more realism that this is a big issue and it's something that should never happen to anyone.

Interview 2

This is an interview with and elderly lady I know that talked to me about what her life was like growing up.

What is your name?

Roncque Applebee

Where did you grow up?

New Albany, Mississippi

What were your parents names and occupations?

Marques and Deola Applebee

Do you have any siblings? Yes or No, names?

No siblings

What was your life like growing up as a black girl in New Albany?

I grew up in a small house in the middle of nowhere, today there’s traffic and houses everywhere but when I grew up my surroundings changed, my school changed, I had my first encounters with white people when my father would get gasoline for his car, I noticed that white people looked different than my family did but I didn’t ask about it.

Did you ever encounter racism? Explain?

It started when I was in school, I would be called the N word but I didn’t understand it at my age yet, I grew up trying to be respectful but I felt I received no respect

What, if anything, do you remember your parents telling you about race?

I talked to my parents about it when I started school, I had not been around that many white kids,  

What did your parents tell you or instill in you regarding being a woman, specifically a black woman?

I remember one day that I came home and I was sad because I had been made fun of and looked down upon by whites, my mother told me there was nothing wrong with me and that they just didn’t understand, it was a large misunderstanding of people, I did the best I could to not let it get to me.

Did you graduate and attend college?

In high school I met a guy named Dennis, we got married a year or two later, I wondered what I should have done then but I became the stay at home wife so no I didn’t go to college.

Did you have any children?

Dennis and I had two kids and they’re about to finish college themselves now, I felt it was my duty as a woman to have children and to have a family, I knew if I had kids that they may have to go through the same sort of things I did, but that was after blacks had their rights so I knew it would be a better life for them than me.

What do you think about people dating outside of their race?  Black men marrying white women and black women marrying white men?

I’m not really for it, races should stay their race, they have disagreements but neither side is wrong or right they just need to stay in their place and respect the other race for who they are.

  What issues do you think most affect black Americans today?

Today Obama has a lot on him, I don’t necessarily agree with all his decisions, he is setting an impression for all black people that are judged wrongly by his decisions.

Interview 1

 I had an interview with a lady I know that helps me take care of some things at her hospital, I asked her a few questions about growing up as a black woman.

What is your name?

Dorothy Walker

Where were you born?

Ripley, Mississippi

Where did you grow up?

Memphis, Tennessee

Do you have any siblings?

I have two siblings, Marcus and Telisha.

What was your life like growing up as a black girl in Memphis, Tennessee?

I grew up with my brother and sister in our Uncle’s house outside of town,  we didn’t have much back then, it was in the 1970’s we didn’t even have a T.V. until I was fifteen years old.

Did you ever encounter racism? Explain?

When I grew up there was obvious tension between races, I never encountered many problems but it felt there was an unwritten rule that if we didn’t bother one another then there would be no problems.

 What do you remember your parents telling you about race?

My parents died in a car crash when I was eight, I was taken in by my uncle and aunt, they told me that I may be seen differently from others but that didn’t make me less important, when I was older and I started dating my Uncle became very clear that I was not to date a white boy, I didn’t really ask why I just did as I was told.

Did you attend school?

I went to an all black school but it changed to a mixed school when I was in the 8^th grade, and I graduated in 1982.

Talk a little bit about those days...

Well when the school became mixed there was some confusion and we didn’t get along at first, I was cautious of those white boys because they would give me looks or talk to me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable, eventually I realized they didn’t mean any harm.

Did you graduate and attend college?

I graduated college and I am a nurse at the hospital I work for.

So what is your official title? You’re a bachelor of what?

I’m not sure what it’s called now since that was about 30 years ago but I think now it’s a Bachelor of Science in Nursing

What it was like living as a black woman? 

I’ve met some patients as a nurse and some of them have given me a hard time, most of them are older men and most men that have given me a harder time are white, black men seem more kind to me, I think it really depends on the person because I’ve met either black or white men that are rude or kind.

Are you friends with white women?  

I’m friends with a few white women, I have more black friends than white friends, I figured that was normal for most people.

 What type of relationship do you have with black men or white men?

I’m more attracted to black men than white men, I think it just makes sense seeing as how I’m a black woman, I don’t think races should get together unless their truly in love and that’s it.

Nikki-Rosa

Poetry's not my thing even though I'm a English minor, most the poetry I read I'll come to a conclusion and my professor will tell me something totally different, but here I go anyways:

my analysis is of a black person recollecting events in the past that outweigh the happy moments, but at the end she says Black love is black wealth, meaning they were rich because they were happy that they were together despite all the hard times being a black person in that time.

I think it's a symbol of hope that yes things were bad, they could be much worse, and that she was able to get past the bad and that white people wouldn't understand that because they don't treasure the same things.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

I read about this when I was in high school and I remember that a black woman would not give up her bus seat for a white man which got her arrested, and that led to a move by black people to stop riding the bus for a while which led to a huge loss of money by the company. I think that Rosa Parks not giving up her seat took a lot of courage for that day and age when there was white dominance. 25,000 black people rode buses at that time, and like everyone they had to pay to ride, losing thousands of customers was a wake up call that was effective by eliminating the rule that blacks must give up their seats for whites.  I believe this was the first step of how the Civil Rights movement began.

Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights movement was a separation of black and whites such as separate dinning rooms, restaurants, drinking fountains, ect. This lead to Civil Rights groups such as SCLC, SNCC, and eventually the Civil Rights acts. This was a interesting time for America as things were changing, people were able to speak out about what they believed such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. and people were listening and demanding freedom. I think figures like Malcolm X and MLK were speaking in a way that even white people agreed with and they knew that they had to be good examples so people would take their words seriously, I think that was very important as they wanted to create unity between the races.

The Great Migration

The Great Migration seemed liked something that was a logical thing to happen, as the numbers of deaths and lynching grew so did the desire to leave a place that was targeted to blacks, another reason being the work and labor efforts were getting worse to where people worked long hours with hardly any pay. The main destinations for migrators were Washington, Pittsburg, and Chicago, areas that were north had jobs available for them by labor agents, labor agents recruited southern workers.

Malcolm X film

We had talked about Malcolm X a bit in our class but I had never seen the film before this class so I decided to watch specifically for this blog.

The beginning of the film sets the tone of how blacks were not free and that white men were worse than criminals

Malcolm talks about his family's history and that his father's brothers were killed by white men, one of them was lynched, his mother was raped by a white man and he married his father so her kids would have color.

later on Malcolm is at a dance party where he dances with a white woman named Sophia, which was surprised me a little, she suggests he take his girl home and come back for her, in the next scene he's back with the white girl in their car. 

Malcolm explains that his father died which people said was a suicide but Malcolm's mother knows he was murdered, after that Malcolm's mother tries to take care of all her children but the State Agency separated them and Malcolm grew up where he was the only black child in his class, he expresses his loneliness and how he thought the word "nigger" was his name and nothing was wrong with it. He expresses wanting to be a lawyer but his teacher says it's unrealistic for his race.

Malcolm grows up and says he's a victim of social order, he goes to prison after a robbery and meets a man that changes his perspective on things and teaches him to use white man's words against him.

The film itself has some different styles and editing that I've seen in a movie, when characters perform an action sometimes you'll hear a sound effect that obviously couldn't happen, there's also editing that moves to the past and back to the present without notifying it's done so.

I think the movie is pretty good, it is accurate to the time period and well acted, it's a different movie and I think it's a very good biography.

Zora Neal Hurston- Sweat

I was a bit sad that we were assigned a few articles but didn't cover them in class, one of them I thought was interesting was Sweat by Zora Neal Hurston. This story is a good example of the abusive husband who gets whatever he wants and takes advantage of her wife by sleeping with other women and using her money for his own selfish desires and treating his wife however he wants, I felt bad for Delia as she worked hard for everything she'd done and Sykes would reply with "What's that got to do with me?" I mean really how evil can someone be? I did like that she would stand up to him though with the pot and that surprised him a lot, I think this story did show that people reap what they sow, as I didn't feel too bad when Sykes was bitten by the snake at the end, it seemed ironic as he had scared her with a whip to make her think it was a snake at the beginning, Sykes was a man that took nothing from nobody obviously as he made it clear he hated whites and he didn't like his wife and expected her to do everything he asked without question.

The Black Panther Party

From our readings I have a good understanding of the Black Panther party, my understanding is that the organization saw that the many other organizations that stand for black rights or black women's rights to them felt had not made the progress that most blacks had wanted, in the past the black men had an view of not standing up for what they believed in or not supportive of black women to which they were criticized, and the focus of this group was to be taken seriously by standing their ground and being a firm group that will not be denied their goals.

I think the Black Panthers wanted to set an example that if they were taken seriously then their ideals would be taken seriously as well, unlike other groups they carried guns and tried a more aggressive approach and show they were serious about their beliefs.

Forrest Gump

Forrest Gump in my mind is a historical movie, it tells the life of Forrest and his encounters with people, places and things that make up history and there are two accounts that I know of that we've talked about in class that actually make an appearance in Forrest Gump.

In the beginning of the movie Forrest talks about who he was named after, I thought it was his grandfather but he never really says that, this is the entire quote from that scene:

Forrest Gump: [voice over] Now when I was a baby, Mama named me after the great Civil War hero General Nathan Bedford Forrest. She said we was related to him in some way. What he did was he started up this club called the Ku Klux Klan. They'd all dress up in their robes and their bed sheets and act like a bunch of ghosts or spooks or something'. They'd even put bed sheets on their horses and ride around. And anyway, that's how I got my name, Forrest Gump...

Another scene I remember that had to do with something we talked about today in class was the Black Panthers, they were also in the movie for a short period of time, Forrest and Jenny are in the Black Panther headquarters where one of them shoves Forrest aside and closes the blind and start to talk to him about what the Black Panthers represent and he says it proudly.

The Black Panthers aren't in the movie for a long period, much like everything else it's mostly just a glance but it's still important because it is apart of history and it is fairly accurate to what was going on at the time.

Remember the Titans

I think I've seen this movie 90 times, this movie came out in 2000 but takes place in the 1970's, I'm not going to explain the plot exactly, I think the movie handles itself well by having a balance in what happens to its characters and their ideas, I think it's good that the coach tries to keep them all in line and tries to teach them that there's no differences between them deep down. 

This movie shows the difficulty that they go through, some of the parts I think are humanizing is when the team starts to get along with their races, however there are some players and even one of the coaches who don't bond with the different race and end their friendship with people they've known for years. One of the biggest tension parts is that when coach Boone succeeds in bringing his team together he learns that the board made it to where if he loses just one game out of the thirteen he'll be fired and have to move after he just settled in. 

The team has some good games and bad games, they go though misunderstandings with each other and they get torn apart, but they also able to have others who didn't want to get along to bond with each other. I think it's a good movie and it does speak it's message well.

Quicksand Revist

I posted a blog already on Quicksand, but I want to make another one after our class discussion which gave me a different take on the book and not just my own thoughts.

Well my first impression wasn't really that far off I don't think, I did make it clear that I did not enjoy the book as much as the other articles we read such as Narrative of a Slave girl or "Their eyes are watching God." film, but I concluded before hand that the book was suppose to represent loneliness and nothing more, but at the end of our discussion I thought that it was more than just loneliness and pessimistic thinking, Helga Crane was and still is I think a difficult character to like, you would think that the main character has to have some sort of redeeming value in order for you to want to follow them but at first I found none, I found myself not really caring that much what happened to her afterwards because of her attitude towards others and her isolation to only herself, she's a rock, she doesn't let others into her life and pushes most of them away, she goes to Chicago, New York, and Denmark and in most stories I've seen it only takes one trip for the person to have that "revival" and realize she doesn't belong and her life was fine where she was, but in Quicksand it takes three trips, and even after she comes back from Denmark she doesn't really get that happy ending.

I still don't really or can't exactly grasp the ending, I said in class I wasn't sure how to feel at the end, I thought it was to be a lesson for others to not do what she did, I think it's more about her race and that she was mixed and she didn't literally have a peoples or people to relate to but she does accept black people as her race, I think the main point to this story...quote me...is that in the beginning she would not open up to anyone, she was confused to who she was, and at the end she finds acceptance and she accepts herself for who she is, I think that was the most important thing for this story and the main point.

QuickSand by Nella Larsen

Well this one's difficult for me, I honestly had a hard time reading this at first because of the way it is written, I don't think it's something I can get over as most of the writing is in fragments, the over use of words that don't belong in the sentence, and just that the writing style felt it was trying too hard to be deep or complex when I was shouting "Just be real." There's no need for complicated explanations that go for a few paragraphs that at the end I don't understand what she was even trying to say, just be real.

The style in which Quicksand is written is not what I'm use to and I felt it did alienate me from the story but getting past that it follows Helga Crane who is not satisfied with her life so she tries to move away, there are complications and it was difficult for me to relate to her, as she seemed a cold person, she didn't seem to like anyone, she never opened up to others at the school and she seemed to consider everyone else as fools.

It was difficult for me to feel sympathetic for Helga as she just didn't fit the role of a heroine fighting for what she believes in, it seemed she had the most severe case of depression and had the mind set of never being happy, she does try to be happy by moving from place to place and meeting people who she has relationships with and marrying, but even so she never finds the element to make her feel complete, I can admit myself that sometimes I wish things in my life were a little better, but I know that my life could be a lot worse and she rarely has that thought.

I suppose I'm not a fan of negative thinking in a story like this, most of the details felt depressing as Helga never found true peace, she had freedom but she didn't seem to care about it, at least not enough to be happy.

Their eyes were watching God

I watched this film in class today and you would think watching a film in class would be boring or uninteresting but this one was not, I enjoyed this film a lot. This story is about Janie who is the wife of the town's mayor, their relationship is not that great for her as the mayor is a very stern and proud man, he pretty much tells her what to do and does not tolerate her having a mind of her own. The mayor in the film treats her wife like an object, he tells her what to do, what to wear and punishes her for trying to think for herself, when she has an opinion he verbally and physically abuses her, when they have a disagreement he punches her in front of the entire town, on his deathbed his dying words are that he hopes she will get struck by lightning and die, he was a cold man, after he dies Janie feels freedom she never felt before, and she meets Tea cake, they get along differently than she did with her husband, they do things together and run away together. Eventually he is bitten by a dog and has rabies which goes to the point where she has to shoot him before he kills her. What I liked about the film is it's believable, I cared about the characters, the characters that were meant to be hated I hated, and I wanted to see what would happen and I cared about Janie and Tea cake. At the end Janie said that for the first time she was living her life and not someone else's life.  This film has charm and replay value to it, I honestly liked the film and I'd watch it again if I had the chance.

The Colored Girl

One paragraph of the Colored Girl sums up how I feel about the issue of race and how this really began. White manhood shaped the laws of the land and established that black males and females were inferior and have no equality with white men or women. I don't agree with that of course, I think it is what was established in the minds of everyone that it was white men that set in stone they were superior in every way and that black men were not equal, and black women were below that, it's not a fair unwritten law but white men had great pride, they were afraid to lose their superiority and authority as the so called superior race, and giving a statement that they were equal was suppose to be a defeat for the white men and a victory for black men and women. Women in general wanted to step out of Men's shadows and be on equal ground with everyone, eventually it worked but there was a lot of stubbornness to break

Lynching

Lynching or hanging was a large part of history from 1880 to 1930, thousands of people were lynched in an attempt to maintain social order, however many people believed it went too far as the reasons for being lynched by today's views are things we take for granite or feel are minor.

Acting suspiciously
Gambling
Adultery
Killing livestock
throwing stones
insulting a white man
Arguing with a white man
Slander
being obnoxious
spreading disease
insulting a white woman
frighting a white woman
vagrancy
rape

some crimes more serious than others, the thought behind nearly 2,000 lynchings was to send a message to those that broke the law, to maintain order, the demonstration of power, or race hatred.

Many were against lynching and tried to pass anti-lynching laws, however they didn't pass as lynching continued until 1930.

To me it seems that lynching was abused greatly, I'm sure it struck fear into most African American's because more of them were lynched than whites were. Trials were no longer held, if you did something you were lynched that was it, some had trials but the result was usually the same, some were lynched even though they were innocent, some family members were lynched for another family member's crimes. I think those in power are so eager to kill people they forget about their own humanity, it was a terrible time for all not just one group, it showed how certain people can be good even in the face of death and how others can be worse than demons.

Sarah Baartman The Hottetot Venus

In class we watched a documentry film about the life of Sarah Baartman, an African American woman who was taken from her home and brought to Europe as many things, an attraction, an experiment, examination, a servant.

Sarah was brought into Capetown as a servant and made into a show, she was called The Hottetot Venus, Europeans were curious about this woman as she had different features than they were use to, she had wide hips and larger breasts which was uncommon for women in Europe. She was examined by the Natural History Museum before and after her death where they wanted to study her anatomy.

as I watched the film I tried to put myself in her perspective, I understood that I couldn't imagine what she had to go through being taken away from her home and being a servant in a place she'd never been, she was obviously unhappy with her situation and I felt the Europeans who only wanted to study her didn't seem to care for her in the slightest, she was not given much sympathy for her situation, it does make me sick that they couldn't see what they were doing to this woman and decided not to give her any respect.

Issues of Slavery, law, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Back in the times during the Revolutionary War and long after there were issues of slavery, slavery was a large part of living and most farmers or workers had slaves who they had work for them, fed poorly, beaten harshly and even killed. In most of my readings I've taken note of how there would be several different issues where a man would be killed by their woman slave, yet the slave was using self defense and she would be hanged anyways, or other issues that had to do with rape or conflicts with slaves children and revolts. Over the years they kept creating new laws and punishments, fines, more years of slavery and banishment for slaves.

This was a difficult time for America, many accounts and books at the time described the Native Americans and African Americans as savages, barbarians, or cannibals. The truth is that the Europeans were the savages, it's strange that the Europeans mostly go by the Bible, they know the Bible very well but when it came to dealing with the different races in America they did not go by the book so to speak. This has to do a lot with the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl where a woman born into slavery at every turn tries as hard as she can to be free, she hides for years from her master who has tried to rape her before and it seems every decision she makes seems to makes things worse for her and her children.

In my opinion I find it amazing how over times every slave owner thought having slaves was ok in the first place, it didn't occur to any of the Europeans that they invaded America and took over their land, owning or taking land wasn't something the Native Americans even though of until they arrived, but sadly throughout History, whoever had the weapons called the shots, in Medieval times the castle guards had the swords and bows and arrows, the Europeans had the guns.

I need to correct my statement before that Europe coming to America isn't the first account of race being a issue, much much earlier than that were the Romans and Jews, in which the Romans would just kill them if they knew a person was a Jew, the Romans believed in Apollo while the Jews believed in Jesus, I'm not sure why it started to where Rome became a hater of the Jewish people, I'm guessing it had more to do with their Emperor than anything, but this is an example of different beliefs and a situation snowballing into the extreme.

June 2nd, 2011 Race and "Some could suckle over their shoulders."

Today we discussed for a long period about race, what defines race other than just color, some of the examples included social construct, physical appearance, culture, religion, ect. We had some discuss their opinions about what race is and that it runs deeper than we may realize, it may run down to the Tower of Babel in the Bible where tribes were broken up with the languages and were spread across the world. Race to me has to do with many different topics and we can probably never pinpoint one thing that makes a race what it is, races have different cultures, languages, religions or practices, some races may have similar practices or similar features but are different people. I don't think there's a way to know or distinguish what a true deep meaning of race is, it is all judged by appearances and actions and given a name, I think it's important that all people are ok with who they are and not be looked down upon or even up upon for whatever reason.

Gender was a big part of our discussion as well, June 1647, Richard Ligon in his recordings describes an African American woman that he has seen for the first time, she was different from what he was use to seeing before, white women of Europe wore dresses, were modest and well brought up, the woman he saw had little clothing and was a worker in the fields which was unusual to him. I think many Europeans thought the cultures and practices of African Americans and Native Americans were taken wrongly as they felt to tell them what they were doing was wrong, if they worshiped totems or their own gods, had ear and nose piercing or did not wear clothing like the Europeans did. It caused a lot of controversy which in turn caused a lot of conflict as the writers of Europe at the time described them and beasts and gave descriptions that were sometimes exaggerated, the readers didn't know what was in the New World as they had never traveled there, the only thing they had to go on was what they read.