Blood Done Sign My Name EDFS 5209 September 19, 2012 “Paternalism strengthened the system of white supremacy by softening its sharper edges and covering its patent injustices with a patina of friendship.” This quote from page 25 of Tyson’s book appears, on the surface, to be his most accurate assessment of the “civil rights era” of all his statements that are not reflections of his personal situation. On deeper examination, however, this doesn’t stand up. I’m not sure paternalism is the right word, but since he used it, we’ll go with that. I lived my early years in a suburb of Chicago (LaGrange) that was all white, as far as I knew. There was a part of town that was literally “across the tracks.” I’m not sure of the racial …show more content…
There are countless examples this. But this where I’m not sure paternalism is the right word. My wife tells of a poor, old black woman that lived near her family’s farm in Athens, Georgia. My future mother-in-law would give her clothes out of the closet and food out of the garden. To me, these were acts of kindness and Christian up-bringing: to help those in need. When the Cuban missile crisis was at its height, my father hired a black man to shovel dirt on top of a fall-out shelter he built in a corner of our basement. This man had a large family and needed to put food on his table, just like my dad did. It would take an over-educated academic to call these two cases of “paternalism.” “You’re keeping the black man down, hiring him for menial jobs!” Was my dad supposed to ignore this man and look for a white man to shovel the dirt? “I bet that makes you feel good and ease your conscience, giving things to a poor black woman.” Should my mother-in-law rather have kept her things and ignored the plight of her neighbor? These acts were not those of paternalism. Paternalism suggests a relationship between one who can do and one who cannot do. They were acts of kindness and economics. The old woman didn’t suffer in want because she was black, but because she was old. The man didn’t need money because he was black, but because he had a family to feed. I cannot fathom too many situations where motivation
The author starts by explaining a question that many people ask about the odd behaviors in poor people and their purchases. She helps to explain this by giving background information on her own family when she was growing up. An event she describes is when her neighbor was unable to obtain benefits to raise her granddaughter after a year, the authors mom dresses “expensively” or nicely to gain an upper hand when asking for their benefits. This is done to further her belief that people buy these things to belong and to gain more privilege. She ends her essay by stating a person cannot judge what a poor person does until they’ve been poor themselves.
Grandmother is stuck in her old ways and she seems to care less about the suffering and the poverty of the lower class individuals. Besides, she indicates a given degree of superiority in her actions and has poor judgments towards other people. For instance, she spots on the streets a poor “Negro” child who is naked and she utters that “Wouldn 't that make a picture
Tyson challenges not only the glory and aura of reminiscence surrounding the civil rights movement but also what is repeatedly regarded as its vital core – nonviolence. Enticed by a flawed justice system supporting racial oppression, designated a call to battle, the nonviolent leaders of the Congress of Racial Equality, Urban League, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Southern Christian Leadership Conference chose to wield the weight of the masses as their chief weapon. Churches also contributed their multitudes as one of the few organizations dominated by blacks, capable of
In the early 18th century, there was a supposed shift in the manner of how planters/masters asserted their authority. On one hand, Patriarchalism was know as ultimate authority and was very much so associated with a monarchy. This ideology was a much more strict and harsh method of dominance. The other technique, Paternalism, had the reputation of being much more affectionate and soft, if you will. Historians Kathleen Brown and Philip Morgan took two opposing stances on this topic. Brown, the author of “The Anxious World of the Slave-owning Patriarch”, believed that Paternalism, while most likely was a little more compassionate, was still just a branch under Patriarchalism. Morgan, the author of “The Effects of Paternalism Among Whites and Blacks”, contradicted her by saying that slaves actually benefited from the new paternalistic ideology. While Morgan makes a powerful and credible argument due to the perspective he takes while analyzing Paternalism, Brown’s reasoning is ultimately more persuasive because she looks at many different time periods and utilizes many primary sources.
The north figured that giving the African Americans jobs would help improve the economy. This opportunity of work encouraged the people who had yet to migrate to do so. Those who did were soon disappointed when they discovered their salary. Yes, they were given a job opportunity, but their wages were nowhere near as much as a white person’s.
During the mid-20th century there was much racial discrimination, specifically in home ownership. During this period there was mass immigration of Southern blacks to the north. In Lawndale Chicago, there was adverse reactions to this. As the
On the home front, the U.S. government desperately needed workers to fill newly created defense jobs and factory positions left open by soldiers who had left to fight. More than two million African Americans went to work for defense plants, and another two million joined the federal civil service. As these new opportunities drew more and more African Americans into cities, they opened the way for economic mobility.
Chicago in the 1920s was a turning point for the development of ethnic neighborhoods. After the opening of the first rail connection from New York to Chicago in the 1840s, immigration sky rocketed from that point on. Majority of the immigrants to Chicago were Europeans. The Irish, Italians, eastern European Jews, Germans, and Mexicans were among the most common ethnicities to reside in Chicago. These groups made up the greater part of Chicago. The sudden increase in immigration to Chicago in the 1920s soon led to an even further distinguished separation of ethnicities in neighborhoods. The overall development of these neighborhoods deeply impacted how Chicago is sectioned off nowadays. Without these ethnicities immigrating to Chicago
Many left to the North because it was a place “…where there are no lynchings” (Sandburg 15), a place where they could be safe. The black population in Chicago lived in an area known as the “black belt.” The Negro Migration caused the population in the Chicago “black belt” to more than double from 50,000 to 125,000 making Chicago have the third or fourth largest black population next to New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington (7).
Paternalism is in place to look out for and enforce what is in our best interest, whether they are choices we would or would not make. If decisions we make now are likely to be regretted in the future and are more likely to be irreversible, paternalistic intervention is there to step in and aid the decision. For example, someone chooses to drop out of school at a young age. That person will eventually regret this decision because they will find it hard to get a job with limited education, and also find it virtually impossible to put themselves back through school with limited funds to do so. This situation is a justified situation for paternalism to step in. Paternalism is mainly used in large decisions in people’s lives, decisions that involve high stakes. The advantages of having paternalism in place is that in the long run, with paternalistic intervention, our decisions will be better made. Paternalism is used by officials when make public policy. They look at your surface preferences and judge them on a standard of deeper preferences when configuring limitations and freedoms. There are, however, four types of preferences that prevent paternalistic intervention. They are relevant, settled, preferred, and your own preferences. As
Racial segregation has had a long history in Chicago. While separation by nationality had always been apparent in the city, with neighborhoods typically being dominated by a certain ethnicity, no group of Chicagoans experienced the degree of segregation that African Americans faced in everything from the housing districts to public services. Forced to live only in designated areas by de facto segregation, redlining, and other tactics, they had limited chances to escape the cycle of danger and discrimination of the city. Confined to only their deteriorating neighborhoods,they had little chance.
while people of color resided and continued to reside in cities. During the early 80’s as a
Following the 1964 Civil Rights Act, president Lyndon Johnson put in place important steps in Affirmative Action policies on June 4, 1965. When speaking about Affirmative Action president Johnson said... “you do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and say, you are free to compete with the others, and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” Implying that the act of not taking action would only freeze the brutality that has been aimed at blacks for years. This metaphor was one of many thoughts original to the late, great Martin Luther King Jr. King thought the best response to stop discrimination, would be
I grew up in a small town back east called Pennsville, population 15,000, and all of them were white folks except the Lees and the Tacketts. They were the only two colored families (as they were known to be called in passing), that lived in town. How they
During the times of slavery, colored individuals were labeled as “other” in the United States. Black families were categorized as pathological, deviant, and in need of fixing. Black families struggled a lot. Poverty rates were sky high for single women who were the head of their household, especially for Black and Latino women. They were also the face of the homeless community, which was growing rapidly. The government then decided to implement marriage and fatherliness encouragements to ease poverty which resulted in societal problems surrounding the Black and Latino women.