Directions for Reflection on Class Trip Blog Post

Blog Reflection Directions

After the trip, if you attend OR do the virtual visit, write a blog post or create a blog post including your reflection on the trip. Blog posts should be

  1. At least 200 words ( half a page single spaced almost one page double-spaced) o
  2. Should include at least 1 image with a caption
  3. OR
  4. A short video (3 mins or so) reflecting on the trip (can be recorded while on trip)
  5. Please use the category “Class Trip Reflection Blog Post” for full credit.

NOTE: you are encouraged to record yourself responding to materials while on the trip so that you can create a Youtube video and post your response more immediately. The professor also accepts twitter feeds and insta-reels capturing your experience as long as you post a blog with a couple of sentences describing your reflection and include a link. An example of a video “hot take” reflection is featured here:

Welcome To The Week- The 1969 CUNY Protest

Q1: If the administration noticed that there was an uprise, what if any moves did they take to address this situation?

 

“There are a number of signs that indicate that the college administration just might be awake to the possibility of impending blow-up and may be, at this very moment, attempting to initiate cooling off or even reformist projects”

 

I find this interesting especially based on the quote, which indicates that they knew that people in the administration were aware that an uprising was happening. It is interesting to me if they did anything to address it before the protests. If it was obvious that something was in danger of happening, why wouldn’t they do something to address the tension that was being shown by the students? 

 

Q2: How much did mainstream culture play in how the culture of rebellion and protest like the CUNY protest?

 

“The mainstream American culture is riddled with too much duplicity (land of the free and home of the brave on the one hand— discrimination, injustice, lynchings on the other), too much illusion (the multiracial melting pot myth of the one hand—conflicting and often antagonistic racial, national, ethnic clusters on the other), too much political evasiveness to be merely studied.”

 

The effect that the media has on people is something that is felt even to this day. What makes me more curious about this question was the media and how it was consumed was different as compared to today. It traveled slower, and most people believed whatever was fed to them. This tells me that people were aware of the disparities in our society and not falling for the facade that the media would try to portray, how much of that fueled protests and riots of that time period? 

 

Q3: Had CUNY not made the changes it made at this time, how do you think the demographic of Cuny would differ from today?

 

Its a question that really makes you think about the long term effects of protests, more inclusion and diversity is definitely a plus, but it does make me wonder had nothing been done, what would’ve happened to CUNY? What would the faces of the school be and how much different would the culture be had things been slower to change?

 

https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/ctl/event/cuny-1969-what-we-learn-from-a-year-of-unrest-student-activism-and-the-struggle-for-black-and-puerto-rican-representation-at-cuny-2/

 

CUNY 1969 STRIKE! – Welcome to the Week

 

 

Questions for the class:

  1. Do we feel like the CUNY system would have changed by itself if given enough time, or was this push necessary?
  2. Is it justified to have 97% of any race at a University?  Should there be mandatory diversity quotas?
  3. How do you feel like this strike, and many others at the time, helped to progress Affirmative Action and the dream of Black students in universities?

Enjoy your Spring Break!

The Jungle and The “American Dream”

This podcast was about The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. We considered the effects of the novel in terms of it sociopolitical impact. We also discussed what the American Dream meant to both the characters in the novel, and the greater American Dream at the time. I took on the role of Podcast host, editor, setting up the recording, and choosing the topics to elaborate on. I also chose the questions that we would be answering after the group reviewed our options. I think to improve this podcast, we could have more of a coherent structure. What I mean by that is: having the entire group ready to answer each question in order to form a better conversation. What ended up happening was each participant could only really answer one question, so it was more of an interview than a discussion. I would also have every person hold their own microphone so that the audio and conversation could flow more naturally because every time we wanted clear audio, I would have to either hand the microphone to someone or lean over to get their response. I think podcast voices are important because it is a very easy way for the public to digest material. I also think that having access to your words and language in written form is a skill and a talent, and that more people are better at talking than writing. Therefore giving people the opportunity to talk rather than write gives them more freedom and creative expression on important topics. Hearing people talk about important topics in a podcast might also inspire those who hear it to continue the conversation. There is also the possibility of sharing a work. When sharing the written word, there is a lot more time that it takes for things to be distributed and consumed and talked about. Meanwhile, having a podcast gives listeners the ability to share pieces or passages from that important conversation much more easily. The amount of information that can be transmitted through podcasts is greatly increased, even if the finer details of writing might be more precise. I think should I do another podcast for this class, it has to be in the stairs for consistency. But on a more serious note, the conversations and thought provoking questions might take more precedence over the literary analysis. When discussing significant work, the conversations we have in class don’t always quote the text, but I feel that important points are constantly being made. Bringing personal experience to the conversation is exactly the medium that podcasts were made for. There is no better way to engage people who might be scared of literature than to take out the reading. This is maybe not the right mindset to have about it, but I believe that inclusivity is not straight forward.

Annotating “Howl” by Alan Ginsberg

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix”

 

    In this line, Ginsberg begins the setting of the poem as dark and dystopian, setting the tone to be quite like “Gotham City”. He emphasizes the social situation of the era. Using the word “starving hysterical naked” Ginsberg described how both people were suffering economically the same time described it to be a social chaos. Ginsberg also hinted the social rights movement going on.

“Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovah’s! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!”

 

    Ginsberg personifies the city as a ‘Moloch’. The term blind windows may refer to people ignoring others struggles and problems. The author also mentions the ‘Moloch’ to have endless skyscrapers defining the city to be very urban and endless Jehovah’s which is a Hebrew term for God. The factories dream and croak in the fog, the author personified the factories and described them to “dream and croak in the fog”, referring the fog to pollution.

defining freedom through descriptive imagery

Du Bois mentions that there is still a query which remains unasked among Black people, which is what we went over in class when we watched the youtube video about the question “How does it feel to be a problem.” Rather than white individuals asking this question or considering how people of color feel in this regard, they’ll speak to him saying things like “I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil?” Du Bois then recalls his first ever time realizing he was different, when a classmate in his elementary class refused to accept a card from him. The image he uses is one of being “shut out from their world by a vast veil.” Firstly, no one should feel as if they aren’t part of the same world as anyone else, let alone a child feeling that way. The vast veil describes the large history of distance between white people and people of color, and how they still keep a fat distance in a large amount of situations, no matter how harmless a situation may be (example: the girl refusing a card from her classmate). He then mentions how afterward he did not have any bit of interest in breaking down or passing through this veil, yet he held everyone on the opposite side of him (white people) in contempt, and “above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.” The blue sky would represent a form of “freedom” (as free as one can be as a person of color in this time period), freedom in the sense that in that moment he freed himself from thinking he should try and change what he cannot control in the current moment.

working conditions in “the jungle”

These quotes demonstrate examples of relation to the working conditions in “The Jungle.”

“Here was a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery. Things that were quite unspeakable went on there in the packing houses all the time, and were taken for granted by everybody; only they did not show, as in the old slavery times, because there was no difference in color between master and slave.” This is a quote from Chapter 10 in which explains Ona’s working conditions. She is forced to work under a woman named Miss Henderson, who is in charge of a prostitution ring, and a majority of Ona’s coworkers are prostitutes. Sinclair describes these working conditions to be unfitting for those who are modest (like Ona). Prostitution, like every other shortcoming of the working class in the book, is demonstrated not to be an inherent mistake of the women participating but rather to be a result of the oppressive economic practices of the capitalists that they impose on the underprivileged immigrants. This passage also alluded to Ona’s rape at the actions of Phil Connor and hinted at the sexual oppression which young working females are made to experience at the hands of their superiors. The final phrase also makes a Marxist point about how social connections under capitalism appear to be tranquil. The claim is that while capitalism masks the true tumultuous nature of these interactions, connections under capitalism aren’t any less oppressive than those that prevailed during slavery and in feudal cultures.

baldwin’s “letter to my nephew”

1: what is the major motivating source which keeps baldwin and his family surviving?

“Here you were to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard at once and forever to strengthen you against the loveless world. Remember that. I know how black it looks today for you. It looked black that day too. Yes, we were trembling. We have not stopped trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other, none of us would have survived, and now you must survive because we love you and for the sake of your children and your children’s children.”

this implicates the power of love and how sometimes, in a world full of chaos and pain, all you can do is love one another and that, sometimes, it’s the only thing that keeps you alive. baldwin is emphasizing how even though you may feel weak or you may want to give up, that people love you, and you must keep fighting not only for those who are alive, but to honor those who were alive and for those who will one day be alive. additionally, i think it’s quite clever how he says “i know how black it looks today for you. it looked black that day too.” in a piece where he’s discussing race, i think it’s a smart play on words.

2: were black people even given the chance to live a, not even successful, but a humane life?

“This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish. Let me spell out precisely what I mean by that for the heart of the matter is here and the crux of my dispute with my country. You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits to your ambition were thus expected to be settled. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity and in as many ways as possible that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence. You were expected to make peace with mediocrity. Wherever you have turned, James, in your short time on this earth, you have been told where you could go and what you could do and how you could do it, where you could live and whom you could marry.”

in this part of the piece, baldwin is pretty much saying that in the world they live in, his nephew was placed in an area of society where he was not meant to succeed, nor did anyone really (anyone being the whites) believe he could or should succeed. this part of the piece emphasizes how his nephew and many other people of color were “destined” (in regard to the people of power in their society) to not succeed or to not do well. they were given circumstances which were very difficult to deal with and ones in which would not help for him to grow or even implicate that it’s possible for him to do well in his life. i could compare this to placing a fish in a tank, a tank that isn’t well filtered, where the water isn’t cleaned out, and where they aren’t fed as often as they should be. how could that fish be expected to survive?

3: why does baldwin believe people are and continue to be racist?

“The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority, but to their inhumanity and fear”

this is the most positive way he could possibly explain this to his nephew. it’s devastating how people of color have been treated and still are treated, and the fact that they constantly put down people because of their race. however, baldwin flips the script and says that the perspective of the whites does not reflect your character, but their lack of humanity and cowardice.

“They are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men.”

this part honestly helped me understand why racism is still a thing. not that it should be a thing, because it’s awful, but i’ve always wondered why are people racist. what made the first person say “hey, i’m white and you’re black so i’m better than you.” baldwin doesn’t necessarily go into detail about the roots of racism, but shares how even white people don’t know why they’re being racist. such seems as if they’re just being racist because it’s what they know, what they were taught, and what continues to be taught in their bloodlines.

“Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shivering and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar, and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.”

importance of imagery! this also explains how it’s very difficult to stop believing something that’s become a “normal” for many. he uses these images to explain how it’d shake the world of white men to suddenly not be racist, which also goes back to how he mentions that they don’t even know why they’re being racist, they just know it’s what they’re “supposed” to be or do, because of what they were taught. this is a very mature and offers an approach which brings peace to his nephew and himself.

/

“It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy peasant stock, men who picked cotton, dammed rivers, built railroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said, “The very time I thought I was lost, my dungeon shook and my chains fell off.”

You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too early. We cannot be free until they are free.”

great quote to end with 🙂