Classmate You're Thankful For

Thanksgiving is that time of year when you surround yourself with the people you truly care about and reflect on everything that you have to be thankful for. Thanksgiving traditions vary just as much as the families themselves do, but one thing that everyone does during thanksgiving is count their blessings. In the end nothing matters more in life than the wonderful family and friends you acquire over the years. One classmate I am thankful for is India McGuffin. Although I did not know her until this year I am so thankful to have her in American Literature. I can always go to her when I have any questions about an assignment, and she is a very good partner when it is required to work in a group. This year we were also on the swim team together which was fantastic. Since, we had morning practices and American Literature together (which was the first class of the day), she would always cheer me up with her wonderful sense of humor. On this Thanksgiving day I am glad to have one more person I can add when I count my blessings.

Word Count: 190

Community Stories

An Account of Experience with Discrimination

            “The old slave holding spirit” can be related to the idea of community shaping a person and their beliefs, because “the old slave holding spirit” is one of those ideas. When something like slavery is ended, the beliefs of people do not just end right along side it.  When you instill a belief in someone’s mind and you drill it into their heads, that’s all they know. They simply cannot just stop believing what they believe because a change in the law. They must free their slaves but they still feel the same way about them. In their minds a black person is still a slave, they still have no rights, and since the white people were still in charge there was seldom anyone powerful enough to force a change of opinion upon them. The American communities had a strong effect on what the people believed because people are influenced by others around them. It is easy to believe something when everyone else around you believes the same thing.

            Primary documents such as this story differ from a reporter of short story in the perspective they give on the community because those people were not there. A primary document has a greater influence on a person because they can give an exact account. They are not telling a story from the outside in, they have personally lived through the event. When someone else tells the story, such as a reporter they can only recreate the scene at best.  They have gathered their information from other people, articles, and try to relate it to their own experiences, but I also think that there is some benefit from having these kinds of documents. Sometimes when a primary source tells about their accounts they are biased, or can be tainted by what the person would like to believe, which can cause a story to be less than credible in the end.

Word count: 324

To Be Young Black and Gifted

            Hansberry feels that life in Chicago was difficult due to poverty.  She says her people are “poor, tired, and determined to live.” She explains that the houses were dull and shabby, but expresses that they are still proud through the example of their clean white linens hanging high over their gray beaten down houses.  Hansberry feels that living on the Southside was also fun. She explains the games that they played with other children in the neighborhood, and how they used to lie in the park on hot nights and tell stories.  Hansberry also talks about her family. She says her family is not of the loving type. They were passionate and did not like to take part in the embracing each other for fear of seeming weak. They only time they openly showed “weakness” was when her father passed away and her mother hugged her children. That was the first time she had ever seen her mother do such a thing.  Her father she talks about more so than the rest. She calls her father brilliant. He was knowledgeable about anything and everything.  Hansberry is shocked to realize that even her father must know fear because to her he seemed so smart that there was nothing he could possibly fear.

            The attitudes Hansberry’s family instilled in her were to never betray family and race (which was the most important). They were also taught that “they were better than no one but infinitely superior to everyone. Their parents said that there was nothing enormously difficult about life; that one succeeded as a matter of course. Life was not a struggle- it was something that one did. One won an argument because, if facts gave out, one invented them- with color. The only sinful people in the world were dull people. “

            The effect of being the Youngest on Hansberry was that she was used to being alone. Hansberry was significantly younger than the rest of her siblings, so she had no one to play with when she was young. She says that her siblings thought of her as a nuisance, that being with her was more so a chore than fun, so they preferred to not hang out around her.

            There are several aspects of community and family experiences that are represented in Hansberry’s letter. The family aspects represented are the need to protect the family, and the need to provide for the family. The aspects of community shown in the letter are the aspect of sticking together, the aspect of fighting for equality, the he aspect of fighting for what you believe in, and the aspect of sacrifice for others.

Word Count: 447

Final Resonse to The Crucible (all acts)

Overall I thought The Crucible was just ok. I expected the ending of the book to be a little bit more dynamic. I thought that it was sad that Proctor died at the end of the story because he did not do the crime he was sentenced to death for. I also found it almost kind of repulsive how Abigail had no remorse for anything she had done. She didn’t even care if she accused her own cousin, Mary Warren, of a crime (punishable by death) if it meant that she could walk away unscathed. I had hoped that Abigail’s lying would come back and destroy her in the end, so it was a little bit disappointing to me that she just ran away, never to be heard from again.  In the epilogue the author said that Abigail was seen as a prostitute in Boston later on. I found that only a little bit ironic due to the crime that she committed (adultery) with Proctor. Something else I found disturbing was how blind to the truth Danforth was. He never realized that people were lying just to save themselves, and that the people who would not confess to witch craft were telling the truth. In the end, the whole community knew the truth, except for Danforth, the only person who decided a person’s fate. The only positive thing I found at the end of the book was that Proctor finally made peace with Elizabeth over the crime he committed, which was a major problem between the two of them throughout the duration of the play. 

Word count: 265

Outline

Robert Taylor Homes Outline

Through greed and racism the Robert Taylor homes have become one of the most infamous examples of public housing gone wrong in Chicago.

A.      The greed that occurred throughout the planning of the Taylor homes

I.     The number of buildings added to the Taylor project kept growing. Eventually the alderman had to find 6,800 more units because without more cites the CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) would lose millions in federal dollars. (Belluck, Pam: End of Ghetto)

II.   U.S. Housing Authority’s first director, Nathan Straus (public house’s choice to head the agency) deliberately wrote agency rules to insure that costs stayed well below legally mandated. (Venkatesh, Sudhir: An Invisible Community)

B.      Many politicians gave into their supporter’s wishes and made sure the Taylor homes did not come close to their neighborhoods, putting their political careers before the well being of thousands. (Hunt, Bradford: What Went Wrong with Public Housing in Chicago? A History of the Robert Taylor Homes)

C.      The racism that occurred throughout planning the Robert Taylor homes.

I.     The Department of Housing and Urban Development created and act that required cities to target specific areas and neighborhoods for different racial groups and certain areas of cities were eligible to receive loans at all, therefor guaranteeing racial segregation. Blacks who had means to move into better neighborhoods weren’t allowed to and were forced to settle for the Taylor homes or other Black areas in hopes that they could create their own communities. (A Dream Deferred.)

II.   Practices such as relining and restrictive covenants were used legally to prevent African Americans from securing mortgages in certain neighborhoods. These practices began in 1934 with the signing of Housing Act of 1934 which created the Department of Housing Authority. ( A Dream Deferred)

III.  After welcoming the first tenants to Robert Taylor in 2962, Mayor Richard J. Daley created a barrier between the housing project and nearby resource rich Bridgeport in form of the Dan Ryan Expressway. Daley grew up there and didn’t want the African American population going over. (Farwell to the High-rise, Metropolis Magazine)

D.      Why The Taylor homes were so disastrous.

I.      In 1965, Daily News ran a six part series describing conditions in the Taylor homes such as broken down elevators, erratic heat, excessive vandalism, and unsettling violence. By 1975 CHA budget crisis, deepening maintenance woes, and escalating violence had driven out those with other housing options. That year the CHA reported 1 in 8 units were vacant and 93% of Taylor families relied upon government assistance. (McRoberts, Flynn)

II.      Over the course of a year a resident of the Taylor homes has a better than 1-in-10 chance of becoming a victim of violent crime – a murder, a sexual assault, a shooting or a robbery. Nationally the chance of being a violent crime victim is 1 in 135. In the Northwest side neighborhood Jefferson Park it is 1 in 207. ( Papajohn, George and Recktenwald Harold: Living In A War Zone)

III.    Progressive administrators before and after WWII motivated by an unassailably sincere desire to improve Chicago’s housing conditions planned to tear down large swaths of the city deemed “slums” and rebuild with large-scale, high-density, often high rise housing exclusively for low income families. By mid 1950s administrators in Chicago recognized some problems created by this approach, but bureaucratic squabbling and obsession with cost in the late 1950s blocked the CHA efforts to return its designs and build low-rise buildings. (Venkatesh, Sudhir)

E.       Through greed and racism the Robert Taylor homes have become one of the most infamous examples of public housing gone wrong in Chicago.

Response to the Crucible Act III

I enjoyed reading Act III of the Crucible a lot. However, there was a character I began to get frustrated with, he was the judge (The act took place in the court house of Salem). During this Act it was Danforth’s decision to decide who was guilty of being a witch and who was not. I do not think that he was fit for the job. Danforth was blinded by his belief that someone had to be a witch, so he did not use his common sense while listening to everyone’s testimonies. For example, Danforth asked Elizabeth (Proctor’s wife) whether or not Proctor had cheated on her with Abigail (Paris’s niece), not knowing that Proctor had already confessed to the crime. Elizabeth wanting to protect Proctor claimed that he had not. After she found out that Proctor confessed you could immediately tell that she had lied for him. Danforth who clearly knew that she lied was too caught up in wanting to believe the lie of witchcraft said that she could not take back her testimony and sent her away. This was a critical point in the trial, and could have stopped all of the chaos and lies that were going around, but Danforth had to believe the “innocent” preachers niece instead of the local non-church going people. There are many other examples of things that went on during the trials that could have easily proved that there was no witchcraft going on, but Danforth refused to believe any of it. 

Word Count: 251

Possible Subtopics

1. What the idea of public housing tried to accomplish.

2. The greed that occurred throughout planning the public housing.

3. The racism that occurred throughout the planning the public housing.

4. The violence in the public housing units.

5. The effect of the Robert Taylor homes on the way we address public housing today.

6. What made the set-up of the homes so detrimental.

7. The reason for building the units.

Response to The Crucible Act I

Act I of The Crucible was very interesting.  I think that it started out a little bit slowly because if the narration in the beginning, but once you moved on the actual play itself was enjoyable. One thing I think the play touched on was trust. How are your judgment skills impaired when you want to believe the opposite of what that person is saying. For example, when Hale comes to visit Parris’s daughter (Betty) he believes that she is surly under some spell caused by witch craft. He first questions Abigail, Parris’s niece, thinking that she has played some part in her “sickness”, but Abigail shifts the blame to their slave Tituba in order to avoid punishment. To Hale, it only seems right to take the Reverend’s nieces’ word over a slave. When Tituba tries to tell Hale that she did not dabble in witch craft he will not take her word for it. He tells her to either confess or die for her crime. Tituba, although not guilty, must say that she was involved in witch craft, and humiliate herself. Hale desperately wanted to believe that there was witch craft occurring in the town so instead of listening to anyone’s story he bullied people into telling him what he wanted to hear. I think that later on this will cause some major problems throughout the duration of the play.

Word Count: 231