Puzzle Paragraph 2

While others say beauty is in the eyes of the beholder; others disagree with that sentiment and strive for what they believe is society's standards for beauty. Disliking yourself because of the way you look is worse than being disliked by others for the way you look. It's worse because you are accepting this and internalizing it. You are the one believing that you are ugly and you start to loathe yourself. Loathing yourself is arguably worse than gambling all of your money in a casino in the author's opinion. Loathing yourself and being lonely can make you feel like the Lone Ranger. Toni Morrison describes Pecola in the foreword as an important character who was meant to have people look into themselves however she tries to show Pecolas suffering without making the other characters villainous. In this passage Morrison examines her friend wanting blue eyes even though she is black, she tries not to make it seem like she's profiling but she does not think her friend needs blue eyes because it's not right.  She believes she needs to embrace her race and all the beauties of being black. This book is not a memoir but it feels like an expression of feelings and thoughts of the author. There may be truth in this book and there may not be truth, but the author will create verisimilitude about life through writing about the main characters battle with herself and with society. This book will have passion and hopefully, it will evoke a fire from the readers.               

The Idiotic Theory of Scientific Racism

Scientific racism is "the use of  scientific techniques and hypotheses to support or justify the belief in racism, racial inferiority, racialism, or racial superiority" Thankfully this theory has been denounced by the scientific community since the 1950's, however at one point in history, this was widely believed and used to enslave, kill, and mistreat other races. One particular example of this theory being used for evil is the holocaust and nazi movement. The Nazi's used this theory to justify their awful treatment of jews in concentration camps as well as the whole holocaust in general. They believed that the aryan race was the only race fit enough to be worthy of life. They also classified many other types of people into the "unfit category", which led to the extermination jews, homosexuals, and mentally disabled. 

The one thing that MAUS does exceptionally well is portraying what the nazis did in such an accurately historical manner. On page 58 of volume 2 they show this theory of "unfit" being applied. They selected who was fit enough to live and who was unfit to die. 

The thing about scientific racism that scared me the most was that it was used in the united states as well. I was doing research and I stumbled across what scientific racists believed in regards to blacks. Scientific racists "described black men as uniquely fitted for bondage, because of their "primitive psychological organization".In 1851, in antebellum Louisiana, the physician Samuel A. Cartwright (1793–1863), considered slave escape attempts as "drapetomania", a treatable mental illness, that 'with proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented'."(Samuel Sillen "racism and psychiatry, 1972)

This theory is probably the worst theory ever created, it's even worse that it was applied as vehemently as it was in the U.S and nazi germany. This has caused so many unnecessary deaths in our world. At the end of the day, there is only ONE race; the human race. 

MAUS

I'm not gonna lie. When Ms. Valentio handed me MAUS and told me to read the first chapter I looked at the cover and I was really confused. Why is there a swastika? Why does hitler look like a cat? And why is there mice hugging each other? Before even opening the book I decided to analyze the cover and i realized what it was trying to portray. It was trying to say that during the holocaust, jews were mice to the german, who were cats. It made total sense to me and I was excited to read it, but then I actually opened the book and it was in comic form. The whole thing. I've never actually read a comic before so I was excited to do so. This whole book has been very enjoyable and very effective for me and  actually think that this form may be more effective than a book in portraying the pain and emotions in history. The page that I want to show will exemplify this.

Page 108/109


This panel is so incredible to me because it is able to show so many things that just words alone could not do. We see that vladek is looking incredibly skinny which is because of not being fed at the concentration camp. This is subtle but can only be shown through pictures. I think that an author just describing to us that vladek was skinny wouldn't do the actuality of it much justice, but since there is a picture to show us it does. His emotion are portrayed in this panel as well. We see the anger and the sadness, and the nervousness by just looking into his eyes. Without the words the reader could still interpret what he is feeling just by the drawing alone.

I'm not necessarily saying that comics are better than books, but i do feel that comics are very important and can show the reader many things that just words on a paper could not.
Thanks for reading! What are your thoughts?

Misconceptions

When I first read the calender and saw that we were reading feminist literature, I groaned and rolled my eyes expecting to read the typical man bashing, bra burning  type of work but boy was I wrong. The first mistake I made this week was expecting to read that type of work, but the real underlying issue is that I assumed all feminists were radical, when in reality only a small minority of women are in this category of "bra burning". Feminism is so much more than what I thought it was at first. Thanks to the Hooks piece, the Kingston piece, discussions with Mrs. Valentino, and discussion with the substitute I was able to realize that feminism is demonized thanks to the outspoken minority and that feminism's goals are realistic and should be attainable. As Bell Hooks said,"Future feminist movement will be sustained only if the needs of the masses of women are addressed." So this is a call to action and one that I believe should be worked towards. 

The main thing that I really took away from this week aside from my new stance on feminism is that misconceptions are evil. As I said before, my views on feminism were skewed thanks to the minority being the loudest. I think this can apply to lots of social issues we have in this country today. Just because a small militant group (ISIS) is killing people doesn't mean that all muslims are terrorists, but because ISIS gets the most attention and the most coverage, people are swayed to believe in this. This is exactly what happened to me with feminism, I heard the radical minority because they were the loudest, but I ignored the reasonable majority because they were quiet. 

Civil Disobedience: A Necessity

This week in class we analyzed "Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau. The first time I read this piece I was skeptical. I agreed with a lot of things he was saying, such as:"That government is best which governs least", but I also disagreed with him when he encouraged people to openly break the law. Eventually the more and more I analyzed and thought about the matter the more and more I realized he was right. Think about all the change that would not have happened if people didn't participate in civil disobedience. What if Rosa Parks stood up and gave up her seat on the bus? What if the Boston Tea Party wasn't formed and didn't throw tea over the harbor to protest British rule and taxes? What if Susan B. Anthony didn't illegally vote in the house of representatives to protest female disenfranchisement? The point is clear, we would not be as free of a country that we are today without people standing up to unjust laws and breaking them.
Civil disobedience is needed and it is justifiable. Civil Disobedience is needed to publicize an issue. For instance, let's take Colin Kaepernick's actions and the black lives matter movement into account. Without Colin taking a knee and the black lives matter movement forming, there wouldn't be nearly as much talk about police brutality in the country. Thanks to these movements there are measures being taken to help prevent more cases like Freddie Gray from never happening again. There are now cameras that some police forces require their officers to to wear at all times, and there is more dash cameras on police cars. Though, the issue is far from over, without civil disobedience there wouldn't have been any progress made. So all in all, as Thoreau would say; "BREAK THE LAW!"