Themes Of Power, Deceit, Racial Discrimination, Fate, And Gender Norms

Racial profiling has been in existence for many years. One defines racial profiling as a method law enforcement agencies use to determine whether a person may be a suspect of a criminal act. “Racial profiling and racial discrimination against blacks in criminal justice administration can date back into the late 1600’s.” (Staples 2011) This is when the court officials in Philadelphia authorized the police to take up any “Negro” seen “gadding about” without a pass from his or her master”

In the book “To Kill A Mockingbird”, Mayella Ewell is the conflict of the story. To challenge herself to see if she is powerful based on class, gender, and race. Mayella is powerful due to her race; however, she would not be powerful due to her class and gender. One might think she is powerful over all; however, she does not have power in the eyes of some readers. Proceeding on to see if Mayella has power in race.

Charlotte Bunch once said “Sexual, racial, gender, violence, and other forms of discrimination and violence in a culture cannot be eliminated without changing culture.” Our society experiences all of these problems and I would like to focus on the gender perspective in the 21st century and how women have had more of an influence in music than people actually realize. Men have dominated the music industry and business but women have been the underlying reason as for why men and other females have been so successful in the music scene.

"I am an American," says over 308,745,538 people in the United States this year ("2010 Census Data.") These people originate from everywhere; America is a "melting pot" of culture, and that can unfortunately cause social inequalities to arise through the Matrix of Domination, a theory that mirrors the intersectionality of race, class, and gender, as coauthor of Race, Class, & Gender, an Anthology Patricia Hill Collins claims (Andersen, and Collins xi-xiii.) These two terms give label to the commonplace phenomena of race, class, and gender work within a system of social relationships. The understanding of people from other

For my Final project in WS, I have chosen to talk about the oppression of women, and women of color. To narrow more in on the topic, I have chosen to discuss the oppression of women in the work force and all the different forms of oppression women face. Oppression is defined as, “A situation in which people are governed in an unfair and cruel way and prevented from having opportunities and freedom,” (dictionary.cambridge.org). Oppression can be caused by many different things. People can feel oppressed because they are being compared to the opposite gender. People can be oppressed being compared to other age groups. And people can feel oppressed when being compared to different races. Women of color feel oppressed because they are constantly being compared to white women, and some may say they do not always have the same privileges as others. I have enjoyed reading and researching about this topic, but at the same time have had a hard time truly understanding it. To be completely transparent I am a privileged white girl and throughout my whole life I have never felt that I faced oppression. I have witnessed it, but never experienced it. The oppression I have witnessed has only been in the work force; which I will discuss later on.

The novel deepens our existing knowledge of the historical period because it allows all Americans realize that's we treated the Japanese, who were innocent, with a type of disdain. In history, we hear all about the Jewish concentration camps, but you hardly hear about the Japanese internment camps. In a country that preaches freedom,and whose core judicial belief is innocent until proven guilty. Therefore, it symbolizes America’s hypocrisy because we treated the Japanese as guilty without trial or even giving the, a chance to prove their innocence. It’s a dark stain on our history, but it is essential to learn from our mistakes, so it will not occur again.

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, privilege can be defined as, “a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor” (Privilege). Through reading this paper you will learn about the key points from the stories, A Social Worker’s Reflection on Power, Privilege, and Oppression written by Michael S. Spencer and the article White Privilege: Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh. Then the paper will include my personal beliefs on the topic of privilege and even some of my own personal privilege that are in my knapsack and that have helped me along my way in life. Finally, There will also be a point in the paper where you will be informed about how privilege affect people and how they can positively affect people who do not receive them.

Racism and stereotypes are explored in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, which draws the reader in through a series of vignettes, using poetry, prose and multi-media to detail both subtle and overt incidents of racism that happened to the author, her friends and celebrities. This paper will explore the ways in which modern racism is rooted in historical racism and African American women are subject to intersecting grids of marginalization through racial and gendered stereotypes that began during slavery but which persist today. African American women are relegated to the lowest rungs of the social structure, excluded from opportunity, dehumanized and erased from society, and objectified through hypersexualized images in culture and media. This social milieu shapes the self-identities and society’s perception of African American women, leading this group to devalue themselves and others to devalue them, resulting in some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy, HIV infection and an abhorrent lack of alarm at the rape of black women.

The Virginia Military Institute was a higher education school in Virginia. It claimed to train the leaders of the future, or “citizen-soldiers” and impart to its students great discipline; however, it only enrolled male students. In 1996, the United States government sued the state of Virginia and the Virginia Military Institute for its male-only policy as a violation of the Fourteenth amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The District Court ruled in the school’s favor. The Fourth Circuit demanded Virginia to reverse this constitutional violation (Van Camp). In response to this complaint, Virginia proposed a similar program for women: the Virginia Women’s Institute for Leadership. The District Court found that this plan satisfied the equal protection requirement, and the Fourth Circuit affirmed that although these two institutions would differ in prestige (and the historical benefit), they would still offer essentially similar educational opportunities. The United States then appealed to the Supreme Court, and it raised the issue whether this new women’s only academy satisfied the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme court ruled, in a 7-to-1 decision, that Virginia Military Institute’s male-only policy was unconstitutional. In order to not violate the Equal Protection clause of the amendment, VMI must make its program available to women as well. VMI

War. It is something that plagues our everyday lives as it has for many millennia, but the question that always arises is, why does it happen? Many say it’s due to religion and government, and while those are both true, the answer is truly found in the metaphorical roots of culture. In literature, the idea is addressed often through the actions of characters, not so much the general conflict of the story. The pieces “When the Emperor Was Divine” and Things Fall Apart by Julie Otsuka and Chinua Achebe, respectively, perfectly illustrate just how culture can be disrupted and how it is the characters’ actions that lead to these disruptions. Mainly, it is the elements of fear, miscommunication, and the White Man’s instinctual need for power, that

“His original name was Frank Fink. He had been born on the East Coast, in New York, and in 1941 he had been drafted into the Army of the United States of America, right after the collapse of Russia. After the Japs had taken Hawaii he had been sent to the West Coast. When the war ended, there he was, on the Japanese side of the settlement line. And here he was today, fifteen years later”(Dick, 7). The Man in the High Castle, wrote by Philip K. Dick, is a book set in 1962 but in an alternate timeline where the Axis powers won WWII. The writer Philip K. Dick was a man troubled with addiction, death, and government distrusts; who used these as inspiration to become arguably the best science fiction writer of his time.

The dystopian society portrayed in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle places race as measure of class standing, bringing about a desire for unity and creating a culture of deception. The occupation of the United States by the Japanese and Germans has resulted in the vast adoption of other cultures, resulting in undeniable deceit. While the Japanese appear to hold a higher positioning in the government and in the social hierarchy, the Japanese characters in this novel show great interest in American culture. Betty and Paul Kasoura are Japanese characters who show great admiration for the ways of Americans.

This is one of my favourite books of all time, dealing with the issues of racial injustice and gender roles. When I first read the book, it took me very long to finish it, but the rush is so well-written that I can clearly visualise all the scenes. No detail has been left out, still, the rush is very compact. It's a must read, even if you haven't read the

Alternate history novels create a great science fiction genre, and try to illustrate what the world would be like had things in history come out differently. One of the most prominent novels of this genre is The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, set in an alternate 1960’s where Germany and Japan were the victors of World War II. The United States of America is torn into three: the Japanese dominated Pacific States of America, the Nazi puppet United States, and a neutral Rocky Mountain States to act as the buffer between the superpowers. Almost everything changes in America and the change is what the collage art piece sets out capture.

Women have found power in a variety of ways though out history in their struggle towards justice and equality. Though personal power can take many forms this paper will primarily focus on power found through gender solidarity, class issues, race or sexuality. I intend to examine the ways in which three different women, of different races and times in history, were able to find such power resulting in a positive change to either their own lives or the lives of others. Those women are: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eleanor Roosevelt and Melba Beals.