Aneeq Ahmed
Robin Cedar
WR 222
18 February 2017 Words carry enormous weight and power. They have been used throughout history to take away agency and power away from people. They have been used to dehumanize, to oppress and to subjugate. This colonizing power of words is encapsulated by the use of the ‘N-word’ by the colonizer of the Americas. What was once a harmless word was turned into a racial slur used to dehumanize and ridicule a group of people becauseof their race. Words can be violent. They can open wounds that are still healing and they can inflict great pain when used to refer to an entire group of people. It is important to understand the history behind such language. It is also important to understand how our identities
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Indeed many of the early leaders of the US have expressed such sentiments in their writings. In his autobiography Benjamin Franklin wrote ‘“If it be the design of Providence to extirpate these Savages in order to make room for cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the appointed means.’ In the 1823 case Johnson v. M’Intosh Chief Justice John Marshall officially incorporated the Discovery Doctrine into US law. The Discovery Doctrine was the idea that because Christian European colonizers had took control of the lands now under the US after ‘discovering’ them, the US state had sole claim to the lands that belonged to the Indigenous peoples while the Indigenous nations only had the right to occupancy. The language that John Marshall used in this case was the following;
“The tribes of Indians inhabiting this country were fierce savages, whose occupations was war, and whose subsistence was drawn chiefly from the forest… That law which regulates, and ought to regulate in general, the relations between the conqueror and conquered was incapable of application to a people under such circumstances… Discovery gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy, either by purchase or by conquest.”
In ‘The Winning of the West Vol. 2’, Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States wrote;
“The settler and
The crown depicted the Indians as intractable, only to find that settlers resorted to violence against the Indians precisely because of their supposed intractability. Indigenous peoples, for their part, fought among themselves and against advancing settlers. All groups sought to “territorialize” their societies to secure themselves against competitors. In the final chapters, Langfur extends and qualifies this complicated story. In the later eighteenth century, settler pressures grew, stressing crown policies and threatening indigenous social orders, until all-out war broke out after 1808. For Langfur this was no Manichean battle between European invaders and indigenous victims. To a dominant narrative of violence he juxtaposes a “parallel history of cooperation” among Europeans, Africans, and Indians, and he concludes that war itself must be understood in terms of “the relationship of cooperative enemies.”
One of the weaknesses of this book was the way in which a strong opinion of the author frequently came to the surface. The impression given when reading was one of bias in that the Spanish were wrong to come in and refine everything. This was reflected in the fact that periodically within the book, when the Spanish conquistadors did something to the Indians, it was pointed out how inhumane it was. Yet, when the Indians retaliated in some way, it was quickly pointed out how justified they were. The mentioned advantages that the Indians gained through the Spaniards were infrequent and underdeveloped.
Nations of dependent Indians, against their will, under color of law, are driven from their homes into the wilderness. You cannot explain it; you cannot reason it away.... Our friends will view this measure with sorrow, and our enemies alone
The existence of the Indian nations as distinct independent communities within the limits of the United States seems to be drawing to a close.... You are aware that our Brethren, the Choctaws, Chickasaws and Creeks of the South have severally disposed of their country to the United States and that a portion of our own Tribe have also emigrated West of the Mississippi--but that the largest portion of our Nation still remain firmly upon our ancient domain....Our position there may be compared to a solitary tree in an open space, where all the forest trees around have been prostrated by a furious
Growing up in the west, Jackson “fought Indians as a militia officer” (Tindall 331) and considered the removal of Indians his primary presidential priority (Tindall 333). In his statement regarding the Indian Removal Act of 1830, he argues that removal is necessary as it “puts an end to all possible danger of collision” between Indian tribes and the American slaves and reasons that removing Indians could potential lead to Indians “cast[ing] off their savage habits and becom[ing]n interesting, civilized, and Christian community” (Jackson). The basis of this argument relies entirely on whether the Indians were a savage and uncivilized community that posed a direct threat to the American government. Primarily, Dale Van Every, an American writer, argues that the “forces that led to removal did not come ... from the poor white frontiersmen who were the neighbors of the Indians. They came from industrialization … and the greed of businessmen” (Zinn 136). The tribes, therefore, did not pose threats to neighboring Americans but were rather simply an obstacle to the rapidly expanding American. Secondarily, many Native American tribes had actually become increasingly civilized (or increasingly American) by the passing of the act. A good example of a Native American tribe whose advancements were discredited by biased
In the 1800’s, before the establishment of factories, laborers worked from home and received a “piece-rate wage” based on the output and quality of products produced. Cottage industries included spinning, weaving, lacing, and branding, which provided job opportunities and a source of income for women. This “piece-rate wage” system disappeared during the Industrial Revolution, when steam-powered factories became laborers’ workplace. As women started to get older, the gender wage gap widened; by the age of 30, women factory workers only earned approximately one-third of a man’s wage. Women organized into labor unions, which utilized strikes to negotiate labor rights and fair pay. The strikes were not always successful, but started to catch the
As a rule, the Native Americans are perhaps the most overlooked sector of the population of the colonies. This war completely varied their knowledge of their land and its value. “We know our lands have now become more valuable,” (Document B). No more would they be fooled by
“The Word “Nigga” Is Only for Slaves and Sambos” was written by Rob Nelson and first published in a university newspaper in North Carolina. Later on, the article was so meaningful that it was re-published in the academic journal, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. In the article “The Word “Nigga” is only for Slaves and Sambos”, Rob Nelson uses ethos, logos, and especially skillful pathos appeals based on the history of slavery and the illustration about the future of African American, to prove why he thinks the “N-word” is not acceptable. By using ethical argument and those clever appeals, Rob Nelson definitely persuades his young African American audience.
However, the historical significance of the word nigger is deeply rooted in American History. For example, Kennedy’s book presents historical examples of nigger in its most pejorative context: “Michael Jordan was suspended from school for hitting a white girl who called him a nigger” and “Tiger Woods was tied up in kindergarten by his older schoolmates who called him nigger” (Kennedy 22). It is precisely because of this history that many African Americans are in favor of banning the word from the English language. Although the historical significance of the word nigger often triggers deep-rooted hostility in the African Americans, it has also progressively evolved into a term of endearment in the modern day African American culture. Consequently, a fine line exists between past and present definitions of the word nigger that opens up the possibility of misinterpretation and the potential of further damage.
The use of the term nigger can be used as a amicable greeting between two blacks, or as a “hideous pejorative” (Marriott 94) towards blacks. Marriott notes that the use of nigger is usually condoned and used by younger blacks as a “term of endearment” (98), in hopes to gradually alter the meaning of the word. Their goal is to normalize the usage of nigger between blacks to “dull its edge whenever whites use it” (Marriott 95). This has been proved somewhat efficient, as most whites dread the word and express feelings of disgust whenever it is heard from the mouth of whites. Many younger blacks believe their efforts are stimulating a progression in society, but older blacks and the majority of whites assert just the opposite- it illustrates “anything
This brief essay considers the struggle of Indians and the U.S. government in the 1830s to resolve conflicts over land acquisition and the scope and nature of Indian rights under treaties.
But [she] didn’t ‘hear’ it until it was said by a small pair of lips that had already learned it could be a way to humiliate [her]” (Naylor, 411). This not only supports the fact that the boy had been taught or heard this word by someone older like a parent, but it is also sad that a nine-year-old had to be taught that such a nasty, ugly word was created to make her and people like her feel ashamed and embarrassed to be black, or that are worth less as human beings, which is absolutely false. That is why slurs are created though, to make groups of people feel less “human”. This essay explored the most infamous slur against the black community. The fact that slurs like this are prevalent in today's society is extremely upsetting and wrong. There are plenty of racial slurs that are so casually used today, it makes one's stomach ache in distress. Ableist slurs are even less reprimanded, a high school student walking through the hall will hear the r-word too many times to count during the course of a day. Just as commonly used are homophobic and anti-LGBT slurs. A high school student will hear the f-slur and the q-slur plenty of times, and even more will “that’s so gay” or “you’re so gay” be whipped from the mouth of students without a second thought. It’s disheartening.
During the end of the nineteenth century, the United States had formed policies which reduced land allotted to Native Americans. By enforcing these laws as well as Anglo-American ideals, the United States compromised indigenous people’s culture and ability to thrive in its society.
Between 1790 and 1920 it was a tough time for the Indians. During that period Native Americans were forced to convert to the European-American Culture. Their whole life changed, the way of living, religion, and especially their children’s future. It was wrong of Americans to convert natives into a different society that they saw fit and not letting them express their own culture and treating them as an unworthy society.
Personal health record (PHR) is an emerging model of patient-centric health information exchange system, which has been often outsourced to be stored at any third party locations, such as cloud service providers. However, there have been wide privacy concerns as the personal health information could be exposed to unauthorized parties and to those third party servers. To assure the patients control over accessing their own Personal Health Records, it is required to encrypt the PHRs before outsourcing. Yet, there are issues such as risks of scalability in key management, privacy exposure, flexible access, and efficient user revocation, has been remained the most important challenges toward achieving fine-grained, cryptographically enforced data access control. For, designing the above system different methods of encryption techniques have to be studied and see what are the main advantages and disadvantages of the system as few of disadvantage in one system can be used advantage of another system. We have to study how data is stored in cloud system and how users can access them. To design a system such that it has different level of accessing flexibility such that the owner can choose which accessing is required for different user such that data tamper and data corruption can be eliminated. To design a system which has time limited access and data