...genocide, I don’t think of what’s happening/happened in Africa. I think of A LOT of people dying, but I don’t in vision how they die. So when I hear the word genocide, I don’t think of people getting beat to death, or sexually harassed or thousands and millions of dead bodies covering miles of land. I don’t think of people dying because they’re aren’t what other people want. And that was probably last week, before we watched Hotel Rwanda in social studies, but now, after seeing that movie, whenever I hear the word genocide I feel a chill down my spine. Because thinking about people getting sexually abused, beat, whipped, burned, cut, is totally different from actually seeing it. In class, we thought what we were seeing was horrible, but that wasn’t even a fraction of what actually happened it was kind of just a preview. The genocide that happened in Rwanda was depressing and horrifying. But aren’t all genocides? I know how genocides happen and how people do it, dehumanization. I still can’t even imagine it though, I can’t imagine ever being in a situation where I actually killed someone or was trying to be killed. I can’t even imagine watching someone be killed even it was an accident. So after learning about this and the holocaust, my one question is how did people have enough hope to survive? Some similarities I discovered between the genocide in Rwanda and the holocaust were they both intensely used dehumanization. For example, in Rwanda they took clothes away from the...
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...encounters upon his expeditions in Africa. Seen through the late nineteenth-century European eyes, the narrator creates images of violent imperial suppression and presents the corrupt colonial civilization that occurs in Africa; effectively creating a screen for the dehumanization and philosophical challenges of the pilgrims. Compared to Tess d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy wrote in third person to establish...
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...Structurally and in relation to the historical relevance of early African history, this makes sense when discussing the early histories of the African continent; however, this did leave much less focus and emphasis on the early history and perspectives of those in South Africa at the time. As a result, I believe that without the inclusion of a reference to the colonization of South Africa by the British and Dutch, the lesson may have been much more confusing to students who had, primarily, been scaffolded and introduced to the strong histories of African countries, such as Mali, that did not have colonizing white populations. Though Apartheid is a much more recent topic in South African history, setting the foundational history of its existence is key in ensuring that the students do not mistakenly attempt to isolate this portion of South African history from that of the rest of the African continent. Another example of the assessment of prior knowledge that I conducted before designing this teaching segment is my assessment of the student’s knowledge of the Civil Rights...
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...History Slave Agency versus Oppression “Dehumanization is a physiological process whereby opponents view each other as less than human and thus not deserving of moral considerations" (Michelle Maise) In my perspective, I believe everyone can agree that slavery was utterly dehumanizing. Kids at the age of 12 and younger were slaves and even born into slavery; families were constantly separated, and slaves would get beaten brutally without any mercy. Fredrick Douglass, the poem “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Sarah Fitzpatrick’s statement, and an autobiography by Josiah Henson; illustrate the harsh treatment and dehumanization that slaves went through and endured for many years. Slaves hoped and attempted to maintain slave culture, when going into slavery. It was often attempted to stop slave culture that originated from Africa, because whites believed that it would one day cause and uprising, and rebellion against slavery. “While on their way (to work), the slaves would make a dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness.” (Douglass Doc 2) This quote by Frederick Douglass illustrates their journey to work was one of their only breaks and release from slavery. Furthermore during their trip to work, singing and listening to music gave them a sensation of relaxation; like medicine to a sick patient, it helped them forget about the miseries and dehumanization as a slave, and gave them a sense of happiness...
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...Europe’s involvement with imperialism in Africa is infamous for their poor treatment of the natives and their backwards sense of civilizing the uncivilized. However, the effects of their imperialism left lasting consequences specifically due to their implementation of eurocentrism and dehumanization. Eurocentrism is when Europeans hold other countries up to their own European values and experiences (Meriam-Webster). This effect only belittles the traditions of the native people and throws them into a social strata based on the rules the Europeans conjure up. Due to the Europeans believing to be superior based on their ability to fulfill the European values, they tend to dehumanize the native people. Dehumanizing the people and holding them up the rules of the Europeans, inhibits the country’s ability to develop as a nation. They are restrained by the European rules yet are expected to function as a European society. Two novels depicting the social relationships of the native people of Kenya and Rwanda, and the European society, display how the eurocentrism and dehumanizing strategy ends up affecting not...
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...The Role of the 1990-1993 Civil War as a Precursor to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide Nora Aly Student #10025622 Poli470 Words: 3,451 Introduction: Background of Rwanda Ethnic distinctions and fragmentations, whether actual or perceived have proved to be the causes of several genocides throughout history; in the case of the Rwandan genocide, this was no exception. The Twa, the Hutu and the Tutsi were and continue to be the groups of people constituting Rwanda (Pearn J, 203). Tensions and conflicts with groups in Rwandan society, primarily with the Hutus and the Tutsis eventually led to the immensely destructive 1994 genocide of the Tutsi people as well as Hutu people perceived to be Tutsi sympathizers and supporters. The 1994 Rwandan Genocide, executed mainly by Hutu powers, resulted in approximately 10,000 deaths for 100 days which is the highest rate of killing seen throughout any known act in history (Cohen, J). Within the time period of the communal existence of the Hutus and the Tutsis, political struggle, rivalry, colonization, and civil war were all factors that assisted in leading to the tension that finally erupted into a brutal act of genocidal violence against all Tutsi people. Close examination and analysis of the civil war which occurred during 1990-1993 between the Hutus and the Tutsis, will be elaborated extensively to assist in accounting for the eruption of the genocide. Through a close, detailed analysis of the political, ethnic and socio-economic factors that...
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...are also echoes in this journal of a concept that stretches back into the nineteenth century, and whose most distinguished advocate was the great Liberian scholar and proto-Pan-Africanist E. W. Blyden. This is the belief that black people have unique spiritual and artistic talents, through which they can redeem not only themselves, but also the materialistically successful but spiritually deprived white peoples. While avoiding the racial basis of Blyden's thought, Professor Huggins seems to incline to this view. He portrays a world of black slaves who were not merely deprived of material opportunities and incentives by their circumstances, but also whose cultural heritage from Africa did not concern itself with such matters as profit, commerce and capital accumulation. This view of 'traditional' Africa is highly disputable. For Huggins, the eighteenth-century African arriving in America was a person 'from a traditional and static order'. Though warning...
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...of the native peoples include word like “suppression” and “extermination” (Conrad, 1899) do not attempt to hide the fact that he rules through brutality and coercion. This contemptuous honesty eventually leads to his ultimate destruction, due to the fact that his overwhelming success threatens to expose the malevolent methods behind Europe’s activities in Africa. Throughout the “Heart of Darkness” Marlow, Kurtz and the Company talk about the native Africans as objects instead of living breathing human beings. Marlow refers to his ships helmsman as a “piece of machinery” (Conrad, 1899), and Kuntz’s African concubine is just to be considered property. It can be disputed that “Heart of Darkness” partakes in the maltreatment of non-whites, which is exuberantly more malevolent and harder to solve than the outright victimization of the natives by Kurtz or the employees of the Company. Africa is just considered to be the backdrop for Marlow, it acts as the stage for that allows him to play out his profound and experiential endeavors. Their presence and eccentricity facilitate his self-reflection. The magnitude of the dehumanization is much more complicated to diagnose than the blatant violence or racial bias seen throughout the story. Although “Heart of Darkness” presents a compelling damnation of hypocritical course of imperialism, it also raises the problems around race that is fundamentally just as troubling. Throughout this story, Joseph Conrad likened madness to imperialism....
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...PSYCHOPATHS IN POWER: THE COLLAPSE OF THE AFRICAN DREAM IN A PLAY OF GIANTS Olusegun Adekoya Department of English Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife Nigeria oadekoya2@yahoo.com AN ABSTRACT A critical investigation of Wole Soyinka’s A Play of Giants, the paper discusses what the playwright himself calls the Aminian theme, that is, African leaders’ obsession with power, a seductive drive that breeds moral corruption, dictatorship, delusions, economic distortions and ruination, megalomania, perversion and desecration of all that is good in African traditions, and the evaporation of all the dreams of greatness, of nationalism, liberation from colonial thraldom, disease, ignorance and poverty, and of pan-Africanism nursed in the heady days of Independence celebrations. The four despots caricatured in the play are Field-Marshal Kamini (late Idi Amin, deposed president of Uganda), Emperor Kasco (Jean-Bedel Bokassa, former Emperor of the Central African Republic), Benefacio Gunema (late President Macias Nguema of Equatorial Guinea), and General Barra Tuboum (late President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo). They are in New York to attend the General Assembly of the United Nations. In response to the Secretary-General’s request for a work of art representative of each member nation’s culture, say, a miniaturized bust of the president, they sit for a life-size group sculpture on Kamini’s suggestion and in what appears to be a vivid demonstration of the old...
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...discussed by Kelly Brown Douglas in her book Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective, white people have been dehumanizing blacks for the sake of their own feelings since the nineteenth century. White people have always taken their personal anxieties out on blacks without and regarding for their humanity. Originally, whites place their sexual anxieties fostered by Christianity onto black people. Their lack of clothing (appropriate for the climate in Africa) startled white men who visited the country and was counterintuitive to their conservative ideals of purity. Similarly, in the film, whites force their fears of growing old and less physically and mentally able on the backs of black people. They kidnap black bodies and use them to their advantage much like whites did in the slave trade. In both cases, blacks are stolen from their homes with zero regard for their families and feelings and sold to other white people for their benefit. In the nineteenth century, whites also justified the dehumanization of by claiming black inferiority was biological. White masters branded black men as sexually aggressive and used their large penises as scientific evidence. One of the antagonists of the movie, Jeremy, revels in the main character, Chris’, genetic assets. He claims that Chris could be a “beast” in sports like MMA purely because of his genetic makeup as a black man. Once again, white people associate black men with aggression. This is not the only time Chris’ muscles...
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...Did you know that Harriet Tubman rescued over 300 people from slavery? Slavery in the United States began in 1619 and lasted until 1865, along the middle passage where they would trade guns and rum for slaves in Africa. The slaves were subjected to horrible conditions on the way to America, forced into cramped spaces where sickness could spread. When they reached land, they would work as slaves in horrible conditions, working from day until night. They were dehumanized, stripped of their rights, and put through rough circumstances. Enslaved people would not take these conditions for long, however, and began resisting. Enslaved people resisted their enslavement by refusing to do work, running away, and fighting back, and this is historically significant because it affected millions of people and it is still...
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...Abstract Every human being is born with the rights of their own life and the pursuit of happiness. Through this crucial practice these people are deprived of these rights, they can no longer exercise what is granted to them as human rights. Human trafficking is the control and exploitation of others against their own free will. After illegal drugs and arms trafficking human trafficking is the next most profitable criminal activity. This paper will give the insight of human trafficking and how it effects human’s life as a whole. This paper will also discuss the moral and legal considerations of human trafficking, the Impact of human trafficking on the global communities, the Impact of human trafficking on US foreign policy and laws, and the Impact of human trafficking on me as an individual, as well as the pro and cons. Human trafficking Introduction Amongst the multiple crimes against humanity, human trafficking is one of the most common (UNODC, 2011). From Human trafficker leader, (2011), human trafficking is a form of modern day slavery. This is characteristic from the fact that humans are bought, sold and smuggled in the form of slaves into foreign countries. Mostly, the humans from poor nations fall victims in deceit that they will be granted new and good jobs in the foreign lands and the only thing is for them to pay a little fee and get ready to get to the greener pastures in their lives. This is in accordance to the UNODC (2011) which clearly states that humans are...
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...POS 322 QUESTION 1 DISCUSS THE ESSENCE OF POLITICAL THOUGHT Solution In discussing the essence of political thought, we need to first ask the question, what is political thought? Political thought though has several meaning in application, is most referred to as that body of thinking, idea, reason that has examined issues and events and phenomenon relating to politics at large. It is the intellect one’s philosophical expression of one political part, that expresses itself. A person political thought is that which expresses itself through its interaction with others, and is often difficult to separate political thought from other thought like, economic, social, religious, jurisprudence, emotional and among others. Since it is made up of idea that involves politics, and has passed through from one generation to another. Its automatically made everyone in the society to be a potential contributor to political thought. Invariably since one had an idea on politics and share thought about what he thinks, like or dislike, its already playing or practicing politics and political process (which express the process of practicing politics). In order word, political thought is neither archaic nor restricted to professional philosophers who are terms as major thinker of political thought. Since we have body of idea of political thought, however is to simply imply that there might be other body which are not political thought which include (economic, psychological...
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...passed the “Slave Code” which clearly stated the slaves rights, and acceptable treatments and rules regarding slaves. Yet if a slave was found guilty of rape of a white mowen, conspiracy to rebel or arson they were put to death. Education of the slaves were not allowed, if a slave owners was found to be teaching a slave to read or write were at least $500 and put in jail for 6 months. They were also not allowed to get married, the owners were free to split up families through sales. The slaves were given an area of the plantation called their living quarters. Only certain slave owners would provide them with housing, most would have to build their own homes. When the slaves made the houses they looked a lot like the houses they had in Africa, as that was what they were used to making. They didn’t have a lot of furniture, and most of the time their beds were made of straw or rags. After long hours working on the fields the slaves had little time to make their own cooking utensils and meals. Sometimes they used hollowed pumpkin shells to cook their food in. Plantation owners didn’t spend money on food for the slaves, they would give them fatty meat and cornbread. They were given a pair of shoes and three items of underwear a year, their clothes were ill-fitting and made of coarse materials. Majority of slave owners were middle class farmers who owned as little as five slaves, including a women who would help in the house with the wife and then the man to help on the farm. These...
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...Darfur: The Never Ending Genocide The Darfur War is considered a genocide by many people and countries, but according to the United Nations ( or UN) what is occurring in Darfur and its’ neighboring countries is not genocide. Genocide is defined by the UN as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” (Ruffin). It is an ongoing debate that has been talked about since the first attacks occurred in February of 2003. The Sudanese government and the Janjaweed groups are able to keep “cleansing” (Ruffin) their lands due to the UN not declaring this a genocide. Located in Northeastern Africa, Darfur’s surrounding countries are trying to lend aid, but they are unable to reach all of...
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