Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Conservation of Races Essay Example for Free

Conservation of Races Essay The United States of America, since its commencement, has been a â€Å"melting pot† of different nationalities. While the term melting pot sounds forthcoming, this is not the case in reality. Many times cultures collide due their differences in ideology, culture, and geographical proximity. Such culture clashes have marked the history of the United States. Race is usually thought of in the physical sense with difference in skin color, hair, facial features, and language. Although race usually follows along physical lines, it is much more far reaching and extends into the social and cultural beliefs. In the past, the dominant trend was to keep these beliefs separate, consequently increasing the feeling of racial unity and racism in society. History has shown us that man has used segregation as a method of not only keeping the peace, but also of keeping the purity of a race in tact. In 1897, an address to the Negro Academy entitled â€Å"The Conservation of Races,† W. E. B. Dubois states: â€Å"The question, then which we must seriously consider is this: What is the real meaning of Race; what has, in the past, been the law of race development, and what lessons has the past history of race development to teach the rising Negro people? I thought the caliber of Dubois’ intelligence and boldness to ask the question was compelling. Throughout this essay I will explore and illustrate how Dubois comes to answer the questions, which he asked his audience. I found it easier to dissect the complex question into three separate questions. First I will illustrate how Dubois defines race. Then I will pinpoint where the basis of the law of race development is formulated. Finally, he answers the question; what can lessons of past history of race development teach the rising Negro? W. E. B Dubois writes that he believes that the conservation of races is the cornerstone of keeping the Negro race pure and intact. Thus, for him, race preservation is not backed only with racial motives, but to help society better itself as a whole. The history of the world is outlined by the histories’ of different groups and races. He states, â€Å"If it be true the history of the world is the history, not of individuals, but of groups, not of nations, but of races, and he who ignores or seeks to override the race idea in human history ignores and overrides the central thought of history (pg.142). In The Conservation of Races Dubois stresses the importance of surveying the whole question of race. He criticizes a biological account of race. He claims that such an account is inadequate because it fails to explain both the wide variety of physical traits within a race and the physical likenesses shared by all humans. For example he states, â€Å"Many criteria of race differences have in the past been proposed, as color, hair, cranial measurements and language. And manifestly in each of these respects differ widely (pg 142)†. Instead, Du Bois proposes a definition of race based on sociohistorical criteria that emphasized cultural and political loyalty. He defines race as: a vast family of human beings, generally of common blood and language, always of common history, traditions and impulses, who are both voluntarily and involuntarily striving together for the accomplishment of certain more or less vividly conceived ideals of life (pg. 142). I would have to agree with Dubois that race is a combination of language, traditions, color, impulses, common blood and ideals of life. This is extremely evident in the anatomy of the world. You can have people who are physically, spiritually, politically, socially, etc. very different be members of the same race. â€Å"Although the wonderful developments of human history teach that the grosser physical differences of color, hair and bone go but a short way towards explaining the different roles which groups of men has played in Human Progress, yet there are differences- subtle, delicate, and elusive, though they may be which have silently but definitely separated men into groups† (pg 142). Here Du Bois suggest an ideal of the law of race development. He further adds, â€Å"At all times, however, they have divided human beings into races, which, while they perhaps transcend scientific definition nerveless, are clearly defined to the eye of the Historian and Sociologist† (pg. 142). I think and maybe Du Bois would agree that the idea of race is an outdated, invalid scientific concept used to categorize individuals and validate who is superior or inferior. As discussed in class I don‘t think racism will ever cease to exist, because the ideal of race is far too prevalent from individuals of all sizes, shapes, and colors. And focusing on the illusion of race will never solve the problem of racism. The only way to stop racism is to end the classification of individuals based on meaningless physical characteristics as a whole and celebrate diversity. Finally, he answers the third part to his complex what can the lessons of past laws of racial development teach rising Negro people. By answering this question he attempts to motivate African Americans to create a recognizable culture and make a difference in the world. He believed that African Americans had potential. He thought that in order eliminate the problems African Americans were facing the focus must first be on boosting the African American culture. He states, As such, it is our duty to conserve our physical powers, our intellectual endowments, our spiritual ideals; as a race we must strive by race organization, by race solidarity, by race unity to the realization of the broader humanity which freely recognizes differences in men, but sternly deprecates inequality in their opportunities of development† (pg. 145). Dubois also saw the need for one main intellectual entity, a Negro Academy. Dubois eloquently stated, â€Å" for all these products of the Negro mind, which we may call a Negro Academy. Not only is all this necessary for positive advancements, it is absolutely imperative for negative defense† (pg. 145). He also notes that the African race has not yet been able to share its message. He sates, â€Å"For the development of Negro genius, of Negro literature and art, of Negro spirit Negroes inspired by the vast ideal, can work out in its fullness the great message of humanity† (pg. 144). In closing, races embody within themselves the answers modern society’s problems. However, a better description of the status of the Negro message would be a work in progress.

Monday, January 20, 2020

Graduation Speech -- Graduation Speech, Commencement Address

Good evening, everyone. Now is the time for me to come in front of these 400 students in identical caps and gowns and tell them to go out and be individuals. Looks like I have my work cut out for me. Seriously, though, consider what we've gone through. 13 years of schooling, 18 years of growing up! And reflecting back on these years, what do we have to show for it? We have our memories. Some of you may know the old saying, "Knowledge is not what the pupil remembers but what he cannot forget." What will remain in our minds after tonight? What memories will become those valuable gems of unforgettable knowledge? Who in the audience knows the phases of Mitosis, or can name the capitol of Togo? Not many. But one of us will ever forget that counselor who listened to us when no one else would ... that librarian who, with the kind of vision that would put Superman to shame, saw one single book out of order on the shelves, and made sure you knew about it ... or how about that custodian who astounds us all with his uncanny ability to scoop up spilled ketchup with feline grace. We can develop our minds with information as much as we want, but the truth is, those simple, rare smiles from a caring teacher mean more to all of us than any amount of knowledge ever could. Simple gratitude is all we have to offer these educators who have shaped our lives, and still these teachers continue to give every day. Routinely, we blame them for such things as the Culminating Exhibition, overcrowded lunches, and that disgusting feeling we all have when we realize there is, once again, no soap in the bathroom. But these teachers have shaped the lives of the 150 students they see daily and have given of themselves something that is irreplaceable. Who t... ... journey now to make new memories, casting off the skin of adolescence and stepping forward into independence. Some of us will become preachers, presidents, accountants, clerks. We have in this room future post office workers, caretakers, custodians, soldiers. We even have a select few who are insane enough to pursue a teaching career. In essence, it matters not what we do, but how we do it. Walk through a room, and make it just a little brighter as you leave it. In the words of Vince Lombardi, "The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor." As we venture out into the world, take with you the riches of kindness, excellence, and caring that we have gained in our years here at Hosea. Keep them with you as you create new memories that will make us proud. Thank you, and God bless.

Sunday, January 12, 2020

Patient Narratives Essay

â€Å"Narratives† or stories have been used throughout the history of the human race to allow and help people to express themselves in ways that promote personal growth and enhance physical well-being. Even in the simplest of contexts, narratives are a core factor in the advancement of the humanity/society and all of its facets. An illustration of this can be seen in the transfer of a family’s lineage, history, and values from generation to generation. This allows for the recipient of this information to have a greater knowledge of his/her own family and the history surrounding it. Oral narratives and writings, such as journals, stories, or speeches to others are stress-relieving mechanisms that can reduce the external stress. The narrating of one’s thoughts definitely does not initially affect the external stressors one is facing. Narrating does, however, allow one to share these feelings with others and to organize one’s thoughts around these issues. More significantly, narrative opportunities such as these, work to encourage and advance constructive contexts in which individuals such as a mother and daughter or father and son can openly communicate any differences, worries, or problems one might be having with daily living. A more important and serious issue interlaced with narratives is the â€Å"personal issue of telling stories about illness†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Frank, ch.1 pg.2) Narratives are the beginning to the process of healing. See more: how to start a narrative essay introduction By definition, the term â€Å"healing† is best understood as a natural process by which the body repairs itself. Although rather simplistic sounding, healing’s true definition or meaning is a much more complicated issue. When analyzing healing, it is imperative for an individual to not view the words â€Å"healing† and â€Å"curing† as the same words. Healing raises much deeper, hidden issues than curing does. I once was talking with a buddy about his recent misfortune of breaking his leg. After tens, if not hundreds of hours put in to rehab, he had his leg cast removed in a much anticipated doctor visit. After the doctor removed his cast, the first words out of his mouth were, â€Å"I’m healed!† Normally, a statement like this would cause no fuss, or evoke any further debate. But today it is time to turn things straight. Unfortunately for my buddy, his statement was far from the truth. He was not healed, but cured! Medicine, fortunately for him, was able to cure him. But medicine did nothing to heal him from the multiple breakdowns and personal  angst caused by his broken leg. Healing goes much deeper than curing. A cure is almost a â€Å"quick fix† in a sense. If someone was to burn their hand, the cure for this would be something along the lines of burn cream or ice. But when someone has something severe happen to them, such as a life threatening illness or disease, healing must take place in order for that person to recover. My point is that deep illness interrupts life in all aspects. To start the healing process, one must find a new equilibrium or sense of who you are in relation to the people around you. This calls upon the ever-healing powers of personal narratives to allow for insight into what is going on in your life. â€Å"Stories have to repair the damage that illness has done to the ill person’s sense of where he/she is in life, and where she may be going.† I’ll people have to learn â€Å"to think differently.† (Frank, ch.1 pg.1) This can be learned by an ill person by hearing themselves tell their story to others and in turn, understand the listeners’ reactions and experience their stories for themselves. When an ill person tells a story, it is incongruent to telling a story when they are not ill. â€Å"The story was told through a wounded body.† (Frank, ch.1 pg.1) The need of ill people to express and tell their stories to create a new â€Å"equilibrium† as stated earlier is essential to their recovery. More imperative is the need for listeners of the story to understand that it is told not only about the body, but through the body. â€Å"One of our most difficult duties as human beings is to listen to the voices of those who suffer.† (Frank, pg. 25) For the average human, listening to stories as told through the body of an ill person is not exactly anyone’s idea of a good time. These stories told are, on most occasions, easily neglected or brushed aside by listeners because of their own feeling or thought of the possibility that they too might one day be afflicted with a disease or illness similar to the sufferer. â€Å"Listening is hard, but is also a fundamental moral act; to realize the best potential in postmodern times requires an ethics of listening. In listening for the other, we listen for ourselves.† (Frank, pg. 26) In lesser words, this statement depicts the need to listen as a moral act. In a sense, it is a person’s duty to listen to the stories of the ill. In doing so, one can more fully comprehend the story  being told and in turn, be able to relate in some way to the patient. This allows for a more full understanding of what the patient is going through and opens the eyes of the listener in ways that are beneficial for him/her. This way of thinking often deteriorates when the listener is not just a friend or family, but the appointed physician or doctor. Narrative ethics is a term that has recently been abundant in the field of medicine. The term â€Å"narrative ethics† is often used in union with how a physician listens or goes about listening to a patient’s story. It is easily understandable, that after years of practicing medicine, a physician may grow indifferent to the many stories told by patients. It is rather clear to see that after multiple repetitions of something, such as stories told to an attorney or lawyer by their clients, each new story has less and less or an effect on the listener. If a defending lawyer hears stories about client after client killing someone or stabbing someone, they will soon become indifferent to the stories being told. This is a huge problem afflicting modern medicine and physicians. In order for patients to become healed, it is essential for physicians to have a â€Å"narrative sensitization† towards their patient’s narrative. The goal is to create empathy for the pat ient to allow for a full understanding of the patients illness, and also to create a bond between physician and patient that will allow for further quickening of the healing process. Without this, it would be hard for a physician to adjust or find alternative treatment and medical decisions that would play to the â€Å"specificity of each patient’s life.† (Frank, pg. 156)†Thinking with stories is the basis of narrative ethics.† (Frank, pg. 158) Many times a physician will listen to what the patient has to say, but only to a â€Å"professional† extent. By this, I mean that physicians often look at each patient’s narratives and/or illness objectively. They don’t look at any deeper truth or emotion that a particular narrative may express; they only look at the observable truths and obvious implications. In the notes written by Renee Anspach on the Sociology of Medical Discourse, she states that, â€Å"Cases are objects of professional scrutiny. In presentations of cases, professionals talk about people’s stories; the story is an object of analysis, and professionals believe themselves to be the only ones qualified to carry out this analysis.† For example, a physician may listen to what  his/her patient has to say but not think with the story. In this way, the physician could empathize with the patient’s true feelings and better understand his/her condition. If instead, the physician would have listened to the story and actually thought subjectively about the patient’s words said such as, â€Å"Can you give me the courage I need?† then he could have thought about the possibility of medicating his patient for possible depression. (Frank, pg. 158) Existing in and throughout patient illness and healing, religion has been a topic that has been somewhat overlooked. Religion plays a significant role in many people’s recovery and healing process that doesn’t necessarily go un-noticed, but unaccredited. Religion itself is a means of healing, but is usually not documented because of the simple fact that there is no hard evidence to link the two. Religion is a narrative all of its own. Possibly the most powerful narrative, religious narrative allows an individual to place every hope of healing and progression through illness or disease in a single word that has no boundaries; faith. It has been common, for example, for religions to be the sole source of physical, mental, emotional, and psychological healing for adherents. Although religion and prayer are unable to deliver the resources of modern medical science, it is able to alter the way people perceive and process their experiences. This, in turn, can change the course of a disease or illness simply because of the influence our attitudes have on our physical well being. Regardless of if you believe in God or maybe just a higher-power of sorts, faith in something that you truly believe, will better your condition and will prove beneficial in almost any situation. Religion is possibly the most powerful, yet least used form of narrative existing. With faith in God, anything is possible. As has been explained, patient narratives are an integral part of patient healing in the face of illness or disease. Not only is the patient’s stories essential, but a listener that really tries to understand the patient and takes an active role in story-listening will better the given situation by ten-fold. Only when all of these factors combine into a single entity do the patient’s hopes and healing abilities fully render. Narratives are the beginning, middle, and end to the process of healing. Bibliography for Patient Narratives Paper1.http://www.cancerlynx.com/storyteller.html2.http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=sgQEb9AObS4C&oi=fnd&pg=PP13&sig=GodeUXE92NJX3OH0I9thPOJBtpA&dq=%22The+Wounded+Storyteller%22#PPP1,M13.http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/perspectives_in_biology_and_medicine/v048/48.1connelly.pdf4.Porterfield, Amanda. Healing in the History of Christianity. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. 3-185. 5.Frank, Arthur. The Wounded Storyteller. The University of Chicago Press, 1997. 1-185. Topic:Analyze the importance of patient narratives in healing experiences. How can personal illness narratives help patients move toward healing? What narrative options has modern biomedicine (or â€Å"orthodox† medicine) provided?

Saturday, January 4, 2020

Summary of Death and the Maiden Book Written by Dorfman Free Essay Example, 1250 words

Paulina must go through a process of rebellion that frees self-interest and philosophizing from her character before he is able to actually act out and carry out her revenge. This process takes up a lot of the play so that by the end, the viewer is more concerned with Pauline s self-interest and indecision than they are with the plot of the play, which is being delayed by her failure to simply kill the doctor without having the showy trial. She makes some progress in that she is unable to question the fact that the doctor raped her, but this does not mean that she is willing or ready to act. There are also gender issues that are at work in Paulina s revenge and trial of the doctor. Women often participate in revolutions, but they seldom bear the fruits of such equality afterwards. Political awareness and advancement like Paulina s, for a woman, was a mixed advancement in many cases, because often when the troops came home, the working women were expected to abandon their roles in the revolution and go back to being a woman in society. Although women were taking more jobs than ever in the 20th century worldwide, gender segregation remained a major issue in South and Latin America, where most countries have strong patriarchal cultures. Income disparities between women and men working the same job continued as proof of continuing sex discrimination, even though women became more respected because of what they had achieved during various revolutions. Dr Miranda often shows more direct action than Paulina when he is being put to the show trial, and when he realizes that she represents a danger. When revenge does come, it comes too late, and tragedy ensues. Paulina has spent most of the play deliberating in the show trial about her revenge on the doctor so that in the end, the action appears less important than the deliberation, and the play s viewer or reader is left with the mystery. This is a direct challenge to the cultural values of the play s contempo rary audience, who were taught to respect knowledge and the method of the linear narrative with a clear ending. We will write a custom essay sample on Summary of Death and the Maiden Book Written by Dorfman or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now