Essential Questions for QT 3

A person’s roots greatly influence their beliefs, views and values. When looking at he perception of America through the eyes of different ethnic groups what you see will differ in great amounts. Whites will most likely say that our country is a place of great opportunity and equality. However blacks might argue the other way. Sure the Civil Rights Movement wasn’t yesterday, last week or even a year ago but it was not all that long ago. Because of this, some of the prejudices of that time are still evident in today’s society. Like the in the essay by Brent Staples where people would cross the street when they saw him coming, things of this nature still happen everyday. Now imagine looking through the eyes of a Chinese immigrant. They probably think that Americans do not place enough focus on the importance of business. This is the case for Ralph Chang. He argues with his wife that his company is the first priority and that his time must be devoted to ensuring its success. While all of these views may be different from one another, who’s to say that this is all that much of a bad thing. I mean, diversity and individuality is what America was founded on right?

It is undoubtedly true that the past shapes the future, hence the saying that history has a tendency to repeat itself. Events that occurred in the past may have left resonating emotions or even stigmas that people of today’s age may still cling to. This is true for Lily Owens’ hometown. When Rosaleen attempts to become a registered voter, white men of the town harass her. This is because blacks have never before had the opportunity to vote and were thought to me much less than the whites. This is what drove the men to act the way they did. A second example is Ruth McBride. She was raised as a member of the Jewish community but when she falls in love with a colored man her family considers her dead. The Jewish community has long believed strongly in marriage to only other Jews. Because this custom is such tradition and regarded as more or less law, it would not be to see how Ruth’s parents could have done what they did.

Malleable Minds

A child’s mind is incredibly malleable, able to be shaped and molded to the confines whatever you want the limits to be set at. Having this power can be a beautiful thing, used to create a person with a grounded personality or it can be misused to create a mind of great prejudice. While reading The Color of Water by James McBride, there are multiple accounts where I am reminded of Zora’s Hurston essay How it Feels to be Colored Me.

            In Hurston’s essay she addresses the fact that she did not become colored until she moved from her town of only colored people. She did not know what it was like to be around those different from herself. This is similar to the way Ruth McBride, James McBride’s mother, raises her children not to focus their attention to the color of a person’s skin. James McBride tells the reader that it was not until he became a little older that he even realized that his mother was different from the other mothers—being that she was white in a predominantly black community. For McBride, he should be ever thankful for having been raised to put so little focus on skin color, especially during a time of great tension between races. Same for Hurston, having experience firsthand, the oppression of her race, she became a stronger person, learning to see past the superficial traits of human beings.

            Judgment is something innate; it would be impossible to eliminate it from our world. However, being able to establish sound morals about what is right or wrong is key to being successful in life. Growing up, my mother always placed strong emphasis on it being what’s inside that counts. I can relate to McBride and Hurston because it was not until I was a few years into school that I realized not everyone was raised the same way as I. At times it even appalled me that people could behave in such erratic ways. But it all goes back to how your mind was molded, and to where your limits were set. 

If we close our eyes, will the perspective change?

Everyone goes through a sort of “search for identity” or “search for self”, it’s part of growing up. Part of finding where your piece fits among this jigsaw called life. The only problem with all this searching is know what it is you are looking for. Sometimes the things that make you you are the most basic attributes about yourself that you seem to overlook. The easiest way to discover what differentiates you from others is to surround yourself by polar opposite personalities. Only then will you take notice to the overlooked traits that set the frame work for who you are.

This is what happens to Lily in The Secret Life of Bee’s and Zora in How It Feels to be Colored Me. While Lily is white and Zora colored, they do share a rather similar story. The two of them have both been faced with situations foreign to anything they had experience previously. In Zora’s case it is when she moves from her home town on Eatonville, Florida. Moving showed her what it was really like to be colored in a white man’s world. The whole concept perplexed her because she had never imagined such things, being as she was from a colored only community.  For the first time in her lifetime Zora had become known as colored. Lily stumbles upon a similar issue when she moves in with the Calendar Sisters. There are various accounts where Lily is left out or is given the cold shoulder merely because she is white. Lily had never before been the minority. She too was beginning to feel what it was like to be singled out. As both stories continue, the girls battle with self-identification. But as the tales reach their end the bigger picture is seen. They begin to see that color is nothing more than what our eyes perceive.
I have felt the very same way as the girls above—that feeling of not knowing where you are or how you fit into the picture. It’s exactly how I felt when I moved out here to New Berlin. I went from a school where whites were the minority and classes where taught in Spanish to a school of predominantly whites and was to call my teacher Miss or Misses. I felt like everyone was staring at me because I wasn't a cookie cutter replica of them. I spent the year trying to be but it just wasn’t happening. Eventually, as I made friends, I realized they didn’t care that I was a little different than them. In fact it’s what they liked about me most.

So let’s stop being so focused on, not just race, but outward appearance in general. . If you were to talk to a blind man, he would not be able to discriminate based on a person’s skin color. It’s time we close our eyes and observe the world around us without visual contaminants. 

Morality

It’s funny how what a person believes to be morally right can drive them do things that, under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t. This can be just as good of thing as it can be bad, however; I suppose it just matters what side of the argument you are on.  But back to morality, I find it absorbing the way an individual’s values can drive them to act in a way not generally accepted.

Recently in class, I made this realization. While watching videos on the Civil Rights Movement and reading The Secret Life of Bees I have greatly taken notice to the passion that’s fueled such historical events. In the book, Rosaleen participates in the non-violent actions—a fighting tactic done by blacks during that time period. There are countless times in the book when Rosaleen should have turned around and hit someone dead in the face because of the way they were treating her, but she didn’t. She stayed calm, strong, defiant. She had a point to make.  She wanted to let the whites know that she was above them, that their beatings were insignificant to her. She knew that holding back her anger was something she simply needed to do for herself, fellow blacks, and the future of the country.

While Rosaleen stands her ground, it amazes me the way the whites continue to pursue such vicious attacks. I’m not speaking solely about The Secret Life of Bees , I’m talking about the majority of whites during this time. The way they sought to hurt—even kill—blacks because they held so strongly to the belief that blacks and whites weren’t equal. I am truly ashamed of some of our history’s recent past. Church bombings and things like the incident at Little Rock are just more examples of how what a person believes can make them behave erratically.  

It’s nothing less than irony that while reading this in school, Egypt is in the midst of over throwing its government. It’s no lie that an individual’s own moral code is something they regard as being higher than law. And as a result, events like these will continue to happen as time goes on. It’s merely an inevitable factor. I don’t see what can really be done about it because when people truly believe that they are going something for the greater good, they are going to do it—no matter the costs.

I Pledge Allegiance To The Segregated States of America...

I feel that everything that has started this third quarter of the year is showing a progression that has taken place in The United State of America. The first piece of literature that we read was a letter written by the forever famous, Martin Luther King, titled Letter from Birmingham Jail. Throughout this speech Martin Luther King address numerous accounts of which segregation has impacted the country negatively. One instance he discusses is the signs on many shops dictating whether or not those of color were allowed in.

This week we also began reading The Secret Life of Bee’s which contains a particular passage that stuck out to me in relation to the letter referenced above. This passage exemplifies the way that after the Civil Rights Act was passed, whites still found many ways to discriminate against the blacks. Sue Monk Kidd, the author of The Secret Life of Bee’s, shows this through the passage where Rosaleen is going into town to become a registered voter. She practices her cursive time and time again because she will be turned away if there is even a minute discrepancy in her handwriting. However I would bet that if a white man or woman had forgotten to “so much as to dot an i or make a loop in their y” they would not have been turned away, deemed ineligible to vote (27). This is just one more way that people find loop-holes in everything.

Which brings me to today, we have made discrimination something to be frowned upon and people still did it, we made it illegal and there were loop-holes to be found, we now have equal rights yet we still are verbally abusive to those we perceive as different from ourselves. There is still discrimination today, given it is not to the severity as it was in our countries past but that does not mean that it is something to be taken lightly. As Martin Luther King states in his letter “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.

This whole discussion about truth versus fiction has really got me thinking. How much of it really matters. Initially many people would say that it matters a whole lot. Fiction is fake and non-fiction is the truth, they are polar opposite ideas so obviously the distinction is far beyond important. Many people will argue that fiction is an escape from reality whereas non-fiction is more dull and to the point.

However, this is not always the case. Now I’m sure you are probably asking how that could even be remotely possible. For instance The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a collection of short war stories. O’Brien takes you through the war of Vietnam and tells the brutal details of war.  At about halfway through the book, I found out that so many of the details in the book were made up. At first I was mad. I thought, why would he fill our minds with such false memories that he never truly had. But as I continued to contemplate this, I realized that it does not matter if the facts are one hundred percent true. This is because sometimes you need to add the details to make the reader feel what the author was feeling at that time. During the war I’m sure that O’Brien repressed so many of the tragic events. While he images were forgotten, the emotions lingered and in order to evoke these same emotions from the reader O’Brien had to create false scenarios.

So in the end does it really matter if the facts were not entirely true? Does it matter as long as you still understand he point that O’Brien was trying to make? Does it matter at all? I don’t know. I suppose the answer is subjective to each person. So, does it matter to you?

Reading

Reading is something that does not come in just one variety. The text that you read can hold the words to the past, others can be a gateway to an escape from reality, and some may be insightful with advice to better yourself. Reading is not always the boring textbooks that are handed to us in school.  If only more kids would venture past the textbooks, they would find the true glory that books can posses.

I’ve been reading ever since I can remember. When I was in 3^rd grade I was enthralled with the Harry Potter series. I thought the idea of having powers beyond that of the human capacity was consuming. As I got a few years older, and went through a lot of my own personal struggles, I found refuge in books. The text related to my life. My books of choice now, are those that I feel I can relate to. Perhaps the content is not directly an excerpt from my life, but the idea of a personal struggle and fighting to keep your life on track is something that I find relief in. When I know that there are other people in the world with issues, it makes me feel so much less alone.

I love reading but recently I’ve neglected it because my life has become too chaotic. However, I do plan to make time in my days for leisure reading because I remember how therapeutic it was for me and I truly miss that. Reading is something that I wish more people my age would appreciate. Hopefully if they broaden their beliefs about it, they will become more open to reading on their own time.