Category: Assignments

“After viewing (Professor Medford’s lecture on video), it didn’t really change my viewing of Wilentz but it did make me look more closely into Hannah Jones’ writing in the “The 1619 Project”. In her writing, she holds Thomas Jefferson and James Madison accountable for their actions in the wrong treatment of African Americans but she also makes a point about Abraham Lincoln. She finds him guilty because within his proclamation he allowed ex slaves to join the union army and fight against their former owners. In her writing, she states, He believed that free black people were a ‘‘troublesome presence’’ incompatible with a democracy intended only for white people“. In this section of her writing, she goes into Lincoln’s actions to invite these former slaves and inform them that he was able to get congress to acquire funds to ship black people once freed to a whole other country. This doesn’t add up. Why would President Lincoln insist they fight in a war for their freedom in America just to be shipped to another country for their efforts? Knowing this, it made me question Professor Medford’s statement when she says that Lincoln did not want to originally include black men in the military because they wouldn’t be strong enough to stand up against their former owners on the battlefield. She then states “He found out very quickly that black men were anything but cowards and that they were spoiling for a fight”. I think he was very disappointed in what America has become and he knew that even with time African Americans will still be wrongly treated within America but he wanted to ensure that equality was written truthfully within the lines of the constitution.”

Perhaps this is what Wilentz means about the “relentless unforeseen.”  Despite Lincoln’s fear that free African Americans would never get along with whites in the U.S. after the Civil war, because whites would not accept them, once he took the action to free the slaves in the south during the war and at the same time started the African American brigades in the union army, inviting them to join these brigades, even though he didn’t know it at the time, full citizenship for African Americans would be necessary in the U.S. and perhaps he came to recognize this before he was assassinated.

The point is, once you have the African American military troops, the demand for citizenship and equality is unstoppable. No, it didn’t come immediately; there was continued debate before the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments; and after the 1865-1877 reconstruction period, the south reverted to a racist Jim Crow society.  Nevertheless the idea of asking the U.S. army veterans of the African-American brigades to leave the U.S. after the war was obviously untenable and in fact impossible.  Which is what happened.  They had no intention of leaving and stayed and continued to demand equal rights.

We do not know what is going to happen in the future.  But we must fight for our ideals and what we believe is right.

So for Hannah-Jones to just say that Lincoln didn’t believe in equality does not tell the whole story. Perhaps at one point he didn’t.  Professor Medford in her lecture says he changed his view during this time.

Perhaps it isn’t so much what a person or some people believe, but what we do to change the laws to create a more just society.

I wrote this email to a Scott M., in our class.  But it applies to all of us, including myself.

On your posts.  Try to review and edit one of your posts.  You do have something to say, and you say it.  Great. 

Now how can you be more effective and successful and powerful in communicating your thought?

First, take a minute to go sentence by sentence.  Don’t obsess over it, but spend a little bit of time and brain power on asking yourself, can I make this sentence better?  Not fancier, not weirder, not more poetic.  Just more clear.  

This is super valuable as a writer.  It also makes you think about what you are saying, and gives you the chance to change your mind on your thought and your judgement.  That’s critical thinking.  Critical means you make a decision.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?466542-8/abraham-lincoln-emancipation

Super informative lecture.  Please view and discuss in your reflection.  What did you learn that you didn’t know before?  How does this change your thinking on Hannah-Jones and Wilentz?

Hannah-Jones and Wilentz

 

Hannah-Jones, p 18.

“Yet in making the argument against Britain’s tyranny, one of the colonists’ favorite rhetorical devices was to claim that they were the slaves — to Britain. For this duplicity, they faced burning criticism both at home and abroad. As Samuel Johnson, an English writer and Tory opposed to American independence, quipped, ‘‘How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?’’

Here Hannah-Jones criticizes the 1776 founders for claiming they themselves were slaves to the English king; meanwhile they either held African slaves themselves or allowed others (the Southern planter class) to hold slaves.

Yes, this was hypocritical, and it seems that those in this 1776 period were aware of it.

On the other hand, we can also see that there was no simple way in 1776 the break away colonists could have simply abolished slavery at this point. The southern colonies were committed to this economic method of agricultural production. So what did they do? Were they concerned with the injustice of slavery as the first priority? No. They weren’t. Should they have? Perhaps.

Does this make it true that the U.S. was founded on the basis of racism?

Wilentz says that at the time, the people in 1776 did not know what the future would be. This is the “relentless unforeseen.” His article discusses the abolition movement in the 1776 period. He claims that the U.S. revolutionary period was part of and perhaps the major movement towards abolition of slavery.

More and more in these pessimistic times, we are learning once again, and with a sense of justice, that the United States and its past are rooted in vicious racial slavery and the lasting inequities that are slavery’s legacy. We learn too little or not at all that the United States and its past are also rooted in the struggle against slavery, and in the larger revolutionary transformation of moral perception that produced that struggle. (Wilentz p.3)

the United States was defined, from the start, neither by American slavery alone nor by American antislavery but in their conflict (p.4)

 

But to those who believe that the United States was based on racism at the beginning and has always been racist and always will be,

Slavery, in this view, wasn’t simply an important part of American society at the founding and after; it defined a nation born in oppression and bad faith. While this view acknowledges the ideals of equality proclaimed by Jefferson and others, it regards them as hollow. Even after slavery ended, the racism that justified slavery persisted, not just as an aspect of American life but at its very core. (Wilentz p.5)

this (view) is vulnerable to an easy cynicism. Once slavery’s enormity is understood, as it should be, not as a temporary flaw but as an essential fact of American history, it can make the birth of the American republic and the subsequent rise of American democracy look as nothing more than the vindication of glittering generalities about freedom and equality founded on the oppression of blacks, enslaved and free, as well as the expropriation and slaughter of Native Americans. It can resemble, ironically, the reactionary proslavery insistence that the egalitarian self-evident truths of the Declaration were self-evident lies. (Wilentz, p.5)

Some of that cynicism is on display in The New York Times Magazine’s recently launched 1619 Project, enough to give ammunition to hostile critics who would discredit or minimize the entire enterprise of understanding America’s history of slavery and antislavery. (Wilentz p.5)

So this is the big difference between Hannah-Jones and Wilentz. Wilentz points out there was a significant anti-slavery mentality in the 1776 period. To just sweep that away, or dismiss it as hypocrisy, is unfair. It also tends to agree with the southern pro-slavery view, later the confederate belief system, which openly argued for slavery of an inferior race. The confederacy claimed that the true United States was a racist one.

For those of you interested in the ongoing health crisis, it’s absolutely necessary to understand the biology of the virus.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/03/biography-new-coronavirus/608338/

Feel free to comment and reflect, perhaps on language that clarifies and states precisely the nature of a virus.  What you knew and didn’t know and how clear language helps us understand scientific information.

Note this article was not written by a scientist, but by a journalist who writes about science.  You could reflect on the genre of science writing/journalism as a reader and as a writer.  Notice that this information would be very difficult to communicate in slang.

 

We definitely have the power as a human to make history, if there wasn’t no human in this world it wouldn’t be a world because us humans make everything in this world, we make conversation and we know what to do and what not to do. Just everything that makes a world up needs humans in it because what would it be without them. We make every decision we have to make, if humans weren’t in the world who would have done that. That’s why it’s better for humans to be alive and be in the world. Humans make everything in this world and some people don’t realize that

 

Like how colored people were used for slaery. Some people didn’t realize if these kinds of people weren’t in this world nothing like that could have happened. That’s why it is upsetting that people were treated like that knowing were all human beings and it’s not fair how they were treated. It was scary to them and they couldn’t do anything about it because of everything what was happening to them in this world. I think it wasn’t fair to the colored people at all because i don’t like to see people get treated bad when other humans can do something about it to stop what was going on but they didn’t care how they were doing to the colored people, its just hard to see everyone treat other people that are humans just like them. Its scary knowing people can do that to others.

Post your reflections on the current health epidemic.  Please use best practices for writing on line.  Fact check conspiracy theories.  Evaluate news sources.  Take the time to read and understand scientific information about viruses and how they spread.

You should also reflect on your experiences, what you’ve learned, how you are learning about the situation, public healthy, psychological aspects of your own life.

You will get credit for your reflections on these as well.

Try to edit your post before you click send.  How can I make my communication easier to understand to the reader?  Can I write my sentences more clearly?  What is the next step in my flow of thought?  What benefit will the reader get from what I am writing?

3/12/20

Hannah Jones Reflection (by Selines A.)

Question 6:

Based on the Hannah-Jones, back in the 1940s, Mississippi was an apartheid state and defeated majority of the black population through horrific acts of violence. The white residents killed and hung more black people than those in any other state. Colored citizens had no legal rights. They were not allowed to vote, enter any public facilities, and find any other work besides picking cotton. It would be considered a crime if colored women went into the same room as a white woman was in, or if a colored woman bumped into another white woman. White people were more privileged than black people and that’s unfair on their part. Black people are just as equal as any other white person. They deserve respect and shouldn’t be treated any less than because of their skin tone. It’s a disgusting behavior which I one hundred percent disagree with. I can’t begin to imagine what this experience must’ve been like for those who had to go through it.

Homeless people now go through a similar situation. Because of their appearance, people prefer not to be around them nor offer any help. If they were to enter any public facility, they would be asked to step out. Sometimes they are physically abused if they beg for money. Homeless people become desperate for food because they go days without eating or drinking anything. People don’t see it from this perspective though, they see it more as a bother. Homeless people are also removed from corners of the street, they use to rest, by police officers. Homeless people are at higher risk of catching any disease or sickness because they are not provided with the proper care that they need. People usually believe homeless people are at fault for being in the situation they are in. Truthfully speaking, we do not know the real reason behind their situation. Homelessness can be caused by a number of reasons such as mental illness, substance abuse, medical issues that were left untreated, abuse and violence, traumatic situations, or not having enough money to afford housing. Instead of being judgemental towards homeless people, why don’t we stop and think to ourselves how hard this is on them? Why can’t we stop being so heartless and lend a helping hand to those who need it the most? Homeless people are not cared for and are treated less as a person, and so were slaves.

What do you think about Wilentz’s concept of “relentless unforeseen,”  that we do not know what our actions will lead to, and that throughout the 1776 period and the 1865 period, people white and black did not know that slavery would be abolished.  Yet it was.

Question:  do we have the power as human beings to make history, or does it just happen to us enforced by fate?

Hannah-Jones also believes that human beings make history.  One of her main points is that the work and deeds that the African American people, the effort to demand abolition of slavery and then equal rights, is an example of people acting in history to improve their lives and to create and contribute to the concept of freedom as something that human beings can achieve.  Nevertheless, they have been blocked by oppressive, reactionary forces.  But Hannah-Jones point is that people did this.