One of this week’s readings focused on Ch. 5, “Caged Birds,” in Professor Lytle Hernandez’s book City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965, and this chapter was particularly interesting because it further explained the development of immigration control in the United States. As a continuation from the last chapter, there was a huge emphasis in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Geary Act of 1892. This essentially prohibited Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States, as well as eventually requiring these people to comply with regulations. “Caged Birds” encapsulates the events afterwards, as the book heads well into the early-1900’s. The disenfranchisement of immigrants develops towards further exclusivity because “[by] 1917, Congress had banned all Asian immigration to the Unites States and also categorically prohibited all prostitutes, convicts, anarchists, epileptics, ‘lunatics,’ ‘
Should one word define the future of an American classic? Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is one of the most controversial novels in America. This narrative regards a boy named Huckleberry Finn in the 1840’s United States, who runs away from home and travels down the Mississippi. Huck meets runaway slave, Jim who journeys with him on their many adventures.
Lee Chew lived in a unique time period for chinese immigrants in America, preceding the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and living in America after it passed. He was then confronted whether to live in America with the hope of wealth but no hope of being with his family or move back to China. This time period is recorded in a first person biography about Chew’s life, titled Life of a Chinese Immigrant. This primary source was published in a journal, The Independent in 1903. Chew had a very significant encounter with American wealth when a villager brought back huge wealth to the village after going to America.
William Rabe… demanded that the Common Council immediately investigate the Chinese settlement in the city” when there were only 2,000 Chinese individuals living in this area, yet this was enough to catch the attention of doctors and council officials (Shah, 171). Shah proves the American fear of the Chinese people by explaining “the city council’s unusual requirement that they build outside city limits… and in the end refused any plans for a Chinese hospital” due to the descriptions of the filthy living conditions alongside the plethora of rumors within the city (Shah, 174). The author explains that Bates, a health officer in a high position of power, created “comparisons to farm animals, feeding a perception not only of Chinese immigrant’s inferiority but also of their inhumanity” and uses visual descriptors to create an overarching image of the Chinese rather than purely uses fact-based evidence (Shah, 175). In addition, the writer disproves Thomas Logan’s investigation by his incorrect view of “behavior and body as both the cultural and biological heritage of the Chinese ‘race’” and how his “vivid and visceral narration of the midnight journey through Chinatown became one of the stand forms of knowledge used in both medical and popular accounts to establish the truth of Chinatown as the preeminent site of vice, immorality, degradation, crime, and disease (Shah, 177). It is explained that Logan’s eyewitness and use of overexaggerated descriptors were widely accepted without any real statistical evidence or proof.
Whether intentionally or unintentionally, Twain places the reader in a situation that requires much pondering of meaning and deep, intelligent insight into the commonalities performed by leading political
Chapter six examines the anti-Chinese sentiment with the emerging class antagonism and turmoil between white capitalists and workers. The unwelcomed arrival of Chinese immigrants brought along their own social organizations such as the huiguan, fongs, and tongs. These types of social organizations secured areas of employment and housing for Chinese immigrants in California. This social structure that was unknown to Anglos led them to also categorize Chinese on the same level as Indians by depicting them as lustful heathens whom were out to taint innocent white women. These images were also perpetuated onto Chinese women, thus, also sexualizing them as all prostitutes.
Twain’s use of irony in this passage connects to the theme of slavery in the book and makes the reader recognize the
Jane Smiley argues that Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn suggests only “a recognition of the obvious -- that blacks, slave and free, are human” and therefore does not deserve to be shelved on the western canon nor taught in schools (Smiley). Contrary to Smiley’s statement, the story educates on many more morals and philosophies in addition to racism and depicts the protagonist Huck fighting against deeply rooted societal conventions at the time (and even in places today) that a black person amounts to less value than a white person. This novel deserves to be on the western canon as it is far more nuanced than Smiley suggests; Huck’s fighting societal prejudices, teaches people to defeat stereotypes and value people not
By using improper, and in articulate diction, Twain exposes the stereotype that slaves are not able to be fully competent. When Jim cannot fathom the fact that there are people who speak all sorts of different types of languages he says it in a hard to understand manner. Jim says, "Well, it 's a blame ridicklous way, en I doan ' want to hear no mo ' 'bout it. Dey ain ' no sense in it" (The Adventures Twain 39). In Jims attempt to speak it is very hard to understand.
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain criticizes the roles of racism, religion, and society’s system of justice in the South during the 1800’s. More specifically, he criticizes how the injustice of slavery and racism is viewed as moral, how institutional religion is used more as a charade rather than a system of faith, and how society’s system of justice has the tendency to be biased and based on reacting to crimes instead of preventing them. Racism is an ingrained part of Southern society in the 19th century and is viewed by most Southerners as just. They believe blacks are a lesser race and shouldn’t be treated the same as whites are. This way of thinking is very prominent throughout the novel and is disapproved by Twain in several different scenes.
When trying to define a word such as Liberalism it seems difficult to find a solid definition. There are different forms of liberalism and different meanings depending on the time period it is being applied to (idea taken from Phil Badger author from philosophynow). To solve this ambiguity, I’ve decided to define liberalism based on the time period in which I will be conducting my research. Liberalism in the 1700s was the belief of freedom and equals rights generally associated with the enlightenment thinkers, John Locke and Montesquieu (as defined by wikipedia.org). Liberalism didn’t start in the 1700s.
Twain provides rhetorical questions followed by bitter responses. He wonders, “Now, then, what did the six Indians do?” Followed by the answer, “It would take you thirty years to guess… Therefore, I will tell you…” (65-67).
The Power Elite Theory states that power in the United States is concentrated into a miniscule group of elite individuals drawn from political leaders, corporate owners and directors, and high-ranking military officers. In my opinion, this is undoubtedly true. Due to studies done by top political scientists which show the small number of people who are in positions of power that control most of the nation’s important institutions, the small, intimate worlds these individuals build around themselves to ensure that power stays within the select few, and the pyramid of power which separates people based on their level of authority within the American government it is clear that the Power Elite Theory has merit. The primary reason it is believed
However, despite Twain’s Confederate influences, his opinion on slavery was not impacted, showing that regardless of the fact that he had seen the South’s opinion on slavery he knew that someone was responsible to address the cultural tensions that the nation faced. Nevertheless, there are people who greet this novel with unjust disapproval. Stephen Carter says “Once upon a time, people hated the book because it struck them as coarse. Twain himself wrote that the book’s banners considered the novel ‘trash and suitable only for the slums.’”. The idea that this novel faced such a negative response at release is almost a social commentary that speaks for itself, and unquestionably confirms the fact that this was one of the first real attempts in American literature on social reformation that was met with such
By definition political culture is the arrangement of states of mind, convictions, and estimations which give request and significance to a political procedure and which give the fundamental presumptions and standards that administer conduct in the political framework. Political culture is a current term which tries to influence more to unequivocal and efficient a great part of the understanding related with such long-standing ideas as political belief system, national ethos and soul, national political brain research, and the central estimations of a people. Then again, the term is more unequivocally political and thus more prohibitive than such ideas as popular assessment and national character. In this article the accentuation will be
