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Difference between morals and justice
Social institution and the military
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After reading “Battling the Plantation Mentality” by Laurie Green, I noticed the theme of state violence towards black bodies. In my response, I will point out cases that stood out to me.
First, The May Act signed by Roosevelt allowed the government to create “moral zones” for military personal.[1] This intrigues me because it cites military personnel as worthy of protection from the state, while other groups were left vulnerable to violence. Furthermore, the military has a monopoly on violence and force. They can legally attack another nation and their attack will be seen as justified. Yet, their soldiers have to be morally policed due to their immature or irresponsible behavior. Groups that are expected to protect citizens cannot police
In his book Worse Than Slavery, Oshinsky graphically documents the story of the “farm with slaves” that turned an enormous profit to the state. Throughout the book one is continually confronted with the systematized degradation and humiliation of blacks. Before reading this book I thought I knew the extent of America’s racist past but Oshinsky proved me wrong. There are many dark truths and shameful skeletons I have not encountered before. Parchman Farm with its use of race-baiting techniques and capitalizing on racist fears of black lawlessness as a means to justify political control, violence, and murder is absolutely horrifying. At the heart of Oshinsky’s work, one can see the continual effort of whites to restore their supremacy at all
‘Fire in a canebrake’ is quite a scorcher by Laura Wexler and which focuses on the last mass lynching which occurred in the American Deep South, the one in the heartland of rural Georgia, precisely Walton County, Georgia on 25th July, 1946, less than a year after the Second World War. Wexler narrates the story of the four black sharecroppers who met their end ‘at the hand of person’s unknown’ when an undisclosed number of white men simply shot the blacks to death. The author concentrates on the way the evidence was collected in those eerie post war times and how the FBI was actually involved in the case, but how nothing came of their extensive investigations.
In 1979 two black assailants forced a man and a women at gun point into the man’s car at a drive-in grocery store. As they were going down the highway the perpetrators robbed both victims, then forced the man out of the car. After a failed escape attempted by the woman, the two men drove her to a nearby
Four black sharecroppers (Roger Malcom, Dorothy Malcom, George Dorsey and Mae Murray Dorsey) are brutally murdered by a group of white people. The murders attracted national attention, but the community was not willing to get involved. The community was not fazed by these brutal murders but, by the fact that this incident got national attention. They were even more astounded that the rest of the nation even cared. In this book Laura Wexler shows just how deep racism goes. After reading the book I discovered that Fire in a Canebrake has three major themes involving racism. The first is that racism obstructs progression. The second is history repeats itself. The last theme is that racism can obscure the truth. This lynching, in particular, marks a turning point in the history of race relations and the governments’ involvement in civil rights. In the end this case still remains unsolved. No concept of the
1.In 1831, James Henry Hammond inherited through marriage Silver Bluff Plantation, on the shores of South Carolina. He was a Lawyer, Teacher and a Newspaper editor. He undertook the running of his plantation and soon realized it was not an easy job to overcome the dominance of the complexity of social system that existed. He struggled to control and manage it for the next thirty years. He called a “a system of roguery. “Hammond astutely recognized that black life on his plantation was structured and organized as a “system “, the very existence of which seemed necessarily a challenge to his absolute control and therefore, as he perceived it a kind of “roguery.” Because Hammond’s mastery over his bondsmen depended upon his success at undermining slave society and culture, he established a carefully designed plan of physical
Emancipated blacks, after the Civil War, continued to live in fear of lynching, a practice of vigilantism that was often based on false accusations. Lynching was not only a way for southern white men to exert racist “justice,” it was also a means of keeping women, white and black, under the control of a violent white male ideology. In response to the injustices of lynching, the anti-lynching movement was established—a campaign in which women played a key role. Ida B. Wells, a black teacher and journalist was at the forefront and early development of this movement. In 1892 Wells was one of the first news reporters to bring the truths of lynching to proper media attention. Her first articles appeared in The Free Speech and Headlight, a Memphis newspaper that she co-edited. She urged the black townspeople of Memphis to move west and to resist the coercive violence of lynching. [1] Her early articles were collected in Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, a widely distributed pamphlet that exposed the innocence of many victims of lynching and attacked the leaders of white southern communities for allowing such atrocities. [2] In 1895 Wells published a larger investigative report, A Red Record, which exposed how false or contrived accusations of rape accompanied less than one third of the cases documented around 1892. [3] The statistics and literature of A Red Record denounced the dominant white male ideology behind lynching – the thought that white womanhood was in need of protection against black men. Wells challenged this notion as a concealed racist agenda that functioned to keep white men in power over blacks as well as white women. Jacqueline Jones Royster documents the...
As presented in many fictional text such as Kindred, Wild Seed and The Appropropriation of a Culture “control” or “power” can be deemed the underlying influence to the concept of oppression and unjust treatment of others due to their race or social status. These fictional texts graphically detail the experiences of African Americans and how they came together as a community when facing the inevitable both in slavery and during the Jim Crow era. There are many other texts that describe the improper regulation of control and what can happen when one race or group has too much. One novel entitled Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston tells the story of a wife who was sentenced to prison after shooting her husband in self-defense after he had contracted rabies and turned violent. Another novel entitled Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor details racism in America during the Great Depression (Goodreads) Despite the slavery era and modern day being two different periods of time, there are still some unresolved issues and situations in which revolve around the idea of racism and oppression. However, unlike back in the day African Americans are able to learn about their heritage and ancestors as well as receive an education so that they may acquired the knowledge necessary to diminish the destruction caused by oppression and dilute the poisonous effects of
In this story it clearly shows us what the courts really mean by freedom, equality, liberty, property and equal protection of the laws. The story traces the legal challenges that affected African Americans freedom. To justify slavery as the “the way things were” still begs to define what lied beneath slave owner’s abilities to look past the wounded eyes and beating hearts of the African Americans that were so brutally possessed.
Sarah Orne Jewett's "A White Heron" is a brilliant story of an inquisitive young girl named Sylvia. Jewett's narrative describes Sylvia's experiences within the mystical and inviting woods of New England. I think a central theme in "A White Heron" is the dramatization of the clash between two competing sets of values in late nineteenth-century America: industrial and rural. Sylvia is the main character of the story. We can follow her through the story to help us see many industrial and rural differences. Inevitably, I believe that we are encouraged to favor Sylvia's rural environment and values over the industrial ones.
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is a very poignant piece. Throughout the work Alexander makes it a point to draw parallels between the current judicial systems implementation of declarations coming out of the executive branch and the lack action from the legislative branch to correct the overbroad execution that has ultimately lead to a disproportionate amount of Blacks currently incarcerated. The book was interesting to say the least. I feel as if Alexander did a proper job of laying the historical foundation down for the reader and describing that from the earliest time in American history the Black people were invited into the land merely as a compromise and because the Blacks seemed to be the most economic choice for the furtherance of their motives to develop the country. Alexander did not merely stop at the idea of just telling the reader the Blacks were a better economic move during the foundation of the country instead she went into depth about why other racial groups, such as the Native Americans and the poor Eastern European Whites would not be as easy to assert slavery power over.
As the United States grew, the institution of slavery became a way of life in the southern states, while northern states began to abolish it. While the majority of free blacks lived in poverty, some were able to establish successful businesses that helped the Black community. Racial discrimination often meant that Blacks were not welcome or would be mistreated in White businesses and other establishments. A comparison of the narratives of Douglass and Jacobs demonstrates the full range of demands and situations that slaves experienced, and the mistreatment that they experienced as well. Jacobs experienced the ongoing sexual harassment from James Norcom, just like numerous slave women experienced sexual abuse or harassment during the slave era. Another issue that faced blacks was the incompetence of the white slave owners and people. In ...
Southern Horror s: Lynch Law in All Its Phases by Ida B. Wells took me on a journey through our nations violent past. This book voices how strong the practice of lynching is sewn into the fabric of America and expresses the elevated severity of this issue; she also includes pages of graphic stories detailing lynching in the South. Wells examined the many cases of lynching based on “rape of white women” and concluded that rape was just an excuse to shadow white’s real reasons for this type of execution. It was black’s economic progress that threatened white’s ideas about black inferiority. In the South Reconstruction laws often conflicted with real Southern racism. Before I give it to you straight, let me take you on a journey through Ida’s
In the article “Violence and the Rights of African Americans in Civil War-Era Indiana: The Case of James Hays”, Richard F. Nation main argument focuses on the treatment of African American during the mid to late 1800’s by the criminal justice system of America, especially that of Indiana. During this period in time African-American were “free”, but did not have the same rights as Caucasians had (Nation, R. F. 2004, pg.215 &216). The few rights that African-American had were easily violated in the court of law when the case was against a Caucasian male or female do to the racial inequality that African-American faced (Nation, R. F. 2004, pg.215 &216). James Hays case showed how even when the court was provided with proof from an African-American against a Caucasian, the chances of the African-American winning was improbable (Nation, R. F. 2004, pg.222, 223 & 229).
The mental impact on family members of a lynching victim is life altering. Often being responsible for the retrieval of the body, families saw the representation of white hatred for them and their family members embodied in their corpse (Lee H. Butler). More than 2,805 families have endured this atrocious mental impact, because there were 2,805 documented lynchings from 1882 to 1930 (Braziel). That number does not take into account the lynchings that transpired after 1930, and outside of the ten categorically Southern states in the records.... ...
When you think of Uganda, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Is it lush grasslands filled with lions, giraffes, and elephants? Or is it the commercials you see on television that show the starving kids, asking you to send in money to help feed the children? Whatever comes to mind, there's more to Uganda than meets the eye. "In the Plantation" by Oyet Sisto Ocen sheds some light on the unseen side of Uganda like child sacrifices. These child sacrifices are done in hopes of bringing wealth or health.