The reason why I think Ben Carson is a living black legend is
Carson went from being a poor student to receiving academic honors and eventually attending medical school. At first Carson didn't like to read and began to fall back to the bottom of his class, but then his mom limited their TV time and refused to go outside started to mentor him. Carson graduated with honors, became a senior commander in ROTC program, a full scholarship to Yale, and received a B.A. degree. Carson soon enrolled in to School of Medicine at University of Michigan and became a neurosurgeon and soon became chief resident in neurosurgery at Hopkins. He spent seven years at trying to improve his skills at being a neurosurgeon. Carson had got contacted
The Negro Digs Up His Past by Arthur Schomburg is an article he wrote in 1925, in which he complaint that somehow through the years African American history has been questioned and denied as many claim that Africans have no history at all. He uses this paper to illustrate the importance of recording the collective accomplishments of African Americans and that we must at all costs save any evidence, so that things like this do not happen again in the future. He wants to make sure to leave no place for doubts that African Americans have a history and is irrefutable in the eyes of skeptics and the world. According to Schomburg, “Though it is orthodox to think of America as the one country where it is unnecessary to have a past, what is luxury for the nation as a whole becomes a prime social necessity for the Negro(Schomburg 231).” He emphasizes that blacks have to dig deep into their own history in order to hold their own against the current oppression. He wants to set the record straight and restore the history that was omitted, the history that was denied to them, a history that has somehow been stolen from them forever.
At the age of ten, I read a book, “Gifted Hands” by Dr. Ben Carson, which inspired and begin to motivate my interest in pursuing medicine as a career because I could identify with his discovery of the joy of reading and his fascination with science. When I was 14, I had an epiphany at the doctor’s office. This event occurred a little after I had finished my final exams in school and the next step was to go to senior high school. But, I thought the preliminary chemistry and physics classes of junior high school were daunting and went on to convince myself that a career in medicine might not be right for me.
With Skinker's help, Carson obtained first a summer fellowship at the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole in Massachusetts and then a one-year scholarship from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. While at Woods Hole over the summer, she saw the ocean for the first time and encountered her first exotic sea creatures, including sea anemones and sea urchins. At Johns Hopkins, she studied zoology and genetics. Graduate school did not proceed smoothly; she encountered financial problems and experimental difficulties but eventually managed to finish her highly detailed master's dissertation, "The Development of the Pronephoros during the Embryonic and Early Larval Life of the Catfish." In June 1932, she received her master's degree.
She first wanted to be an internist, but it changed when she became interested in neurosurgery. But that path was where people told her not to do, so she encountered difficulties obtaining the internship. But she refused to give up; she was then accepted as a surgical intern at the Yale-New Have Hospital. She went there after graduating, cum laude, from medical school in 1975.
Uplifting the Race is a rather confusing yet stimulating study that goes over the rising idea and interests in the evolution of "racial uplift" ideology from the turn and through the twentieth century. In the first part of the book, Gaines analyzes the black elite obsession with racial uplift ideology and the tensions it produced among black intellectuals. Gaines argues for the most part that during the nineteenth-century racial uplift ideology was part of a "liberation theology" as stated by Gaines, which stressed a group struggle for freedom and social advancement.
African Americans have endured many trials and tribulations over the centuries. Our people have suffered from war, violence, and anguish simply because of the color of our skin. Our history has been so blatantly missing from textbooks and the K-12th grade educational atmosphere. Our educational system continues to neglect the history of our African American ancestors and fail to provide them with the educational resources to inform them of our past and allow them to learn about the true origins of our culture. We have made many significant contributions to the world but those have also been highly ignored as well.
In Cornel West’s “Race Matters”, he expresses his thoughts and ideas on a variety of different issues we have encountered in both past and present times. One such issue is the failure of the liberal structuralist program. West introduces the Nihilistic threat to the readers, where life is meaningless and purposeless to the universe, and then explains how liberal structuralists seemingly fail to deal with this threat. He begins by blaming the liberal structuralists for focusing too heavily on the economy and politics and not focusing enough on culture and its character. The liberal structuralists address the plight of Black America by calling for full employment, health, education, and childcare through more government money, better bureaucrats, and active citizens (PowerPoint). He then refers to their views on people as basically selfish and self-centered. This meaning that they are mainly concerned only with how they are viewed and self-benefit, and not with the value of others’ self-worth and desire for importance. West later talks about the structuralists’ inability to discuss culture because it opened up a topic on race which the structuralists were not comfortable talking about. During the time, race was talked about in few ways. Ideas on race had remained steady throughout time, and with the new realm of ideas, the structuralists seemed resistant to discussing race in depth and for its actual worth. It is because of this that West claims that liberal
Jesse Ernest Wilkins Jr. better known as the “negro genius” was the first African-American to enter into the University of Chicago at the age of 13 and at that time the youngest student ever to register there. He was born in Chicago on November 27, 1923 to J. Ernest Wilkins, Sr., a lawyer who held a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Illinois and a law degree from the University of Chicago. His father was the president of the Cook County Bar Association in Chicago, Assistant Secretary of Labor in 1954, the first black American to hold a sub-cabinet position and in 1958 he was appointed to the Civil Rights Commission. His mother, Lucile Beatrice Robinson Wilkins held a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from the
The novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man by James Weldon Johnson shows a story of a man with mixed blood of white and coloured. Throughout the story, the man is conflicted with his heritage, sometimes accepting his coloured heritage and at other times rejecting his coloured heritage and passing himself off as a white man. The main character travels all around the United States and Europe while observing how whites and coloureds behave separately and with each other. The nameless man goes through tough times and prosperous times his whole life and comes out with quite a few revelations.
Unfortunately, Presidents were not the only Government officials who possessed views on rights and slavery. Congress officials along with the Supreme court also rejected blacks "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." Furthermore, George Washington was one of the first to own slaves, along with the highest amount owned in the nation, with an alarming 317. I only guessed about 10 slaves and I was way off. However, even after slavery had ended it was noted that many Presidents thereafter would still exhibit radical prejudice. Further, Thomas Jefferson owned the second largest amount of slaves with a total of 237, he was also the first president to have had a slave child born in the White House. Unfortunately, with Slaves also came punishment, more common of these were whipping or beating and chaining or handcuffing. Despite the cruel means of punishment all three of the U.S. presidents with the highest amount of slaves owned also are on U.S. currency. In addition to, replacing the face on the U.S. $20 bill, from Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman, this is something I did not know.
Robert F. Williams was a man to remember, not only for his incredible accomplishments in society but his character as a whole. He sought for social equality rather than being satisfied with freedom from chattel slavery. “We have the right and duty to raise our voices in protest against the forces of oppression that seek to crush free people” (P. 242). Personal relations amongst genders in opposing races brought up serious turmoil in the 1950’s South. Timothy Tyson’s views on the battle for African American civil liberties create a vivid window into some of Americas past successes and failures.
Black educators began to increase their involvement in political culture in Haiti through advocacy and education. American educators R.R. Moton and W.T.B Williams of the Tuskegee Institute sought more black involvement in U.S.-Haitian relations. Moton served as Booker T. Washington’s successor at the Tuskegee Institute. He felt a duty to continue Washington’s vision of industrial education for blacks and sought to extend the Tuskegee model into Haiti. He urged President Harding to include blacks on his “investigation body” declaring he could “suggest colored men who would in no way embarrass the administration.” Moton fell short; Harding did not appoint a black American to the body. However, Moton left an indelible mark on Washington.
The prison industrial complex is a term we use to describe the government of use of power to solve social and political problems, imprisonment as solutions to economic, policing, and use surveillance. The New Jim Crow was a book that was written by Dr. Michelle Alexander she points out a lot important issue that was still happening in a society like racism or discrimination against African Americans, Mass Incarceration, and other issues minority groups in
Stephen Vaughn, author of “Ronald Reagan and the Struggle for Black Dignity in Cinema, 1937-1953,” wrote an informative article about Ronald Reagan as an actor during an important period in time. In this article, written for The Journal of African American History, Vaughn gives a detailed illustration of Ronald Reagan’s involvement in overcoming racial discrimination in the film industry. The author starts with giving background information on the state of racial issues in America in the 1940s. Continuing into the article, Vaughn mentions all of Reagan’s evolvement with organizations against racial discrimination, particularly in the film industry. Throughout the article, it is clear that Vaughn believes that Reagan was very respectable and greatly contrasted mainstream Hollywood due to his upbringing. According to the author, despite Reagan’s good intentions, his effectiveness in executing his intentions in relation to racial discrimination is questionable due to Reagan’s obvious priority of anticommunism over anti-racial discrimination.
Carson was no ordinary man. His intricate way of thinking was like no other. One of the most obvious and well-known achievement is his concept of incorporating lasers in neurosurgery to nullify complexities faced whilst operating. He knew there was an easier way and took the initiative to act upon his ideas. Comparing Carson’s accomplishments and initial circumstances serves as living proof that anyone can be an influential figure in our society.