Japanese Internment Camps

What the American government did to Japanese Americans was cruel and unnecessary. They beckoned innocent civilians that were indeed of Japanese descend, but still humans whatsoever. While in those concentration camps, people were treated even worse than animals, humiliated and denigrated to no point. It was an inhuman treatment that Americans gave millions of other people out of sheer suspicion, speculation, and mainly discrimination.

America claims that they had nothing to do with the Holocaust and the German slaughter of Jews, and they're perfectly right. They did nothing. Neither helping Hitler and the Nazis nor rescuing the Jews until most of them had suffered tragic loss and pain. After that, America claimed that it would never do something as savage as that. Well, after the Japanese Internment Camps, and countless of other discriminating acts, America proved to be no different from Germany's savage actions.

Innocent Japanese-Americans were abused, exploited, tortured and killed in those ominous, isolated camps due to their terrible conditions and their wards' indifference. And they all suffered so much simply because of their race.

Once America is faced with these acts of cruel discrimination, it simply shrugs them off and urges everyone to 'look forward to a brighter, equal future,' because the past is the past. Yes, it's the past indeed, but not something from the past that should be easily forgotten or put away. There are still people who discriminate and/or mistreat Asian people because of what happened in the past, and this isn't an example of progressive change.

Life Without Parole

Does Life Without Parole for juveniles violate the 8th amendment?

I think it really depends on the crime the child commits. There are cases in which the crimes the kids commit are not justified, of course, but it's just...Wrong to punish them so severely. Like minor crimes.

I suppose that when a child kills a person, then it would be right to punish them like that, but then again, there's the fact of what person he or she killed, under what conditions. For example, that girl that killed her pimp, she killed him because she felt like there was no other way out of her misery. She wanted to make him pay for everything he'd made her suffer, and thought that would be the most effective way. During her time in jail, though, she critically grew up as a person, learned that what she did was wrong, repented for it, and was willing to change her life and wanted to overcome the problems she went through.

She shouldn't spend the rest of her life in jail because she really has changed and become better. There are many of these cases that don't require minors spending all their lives in jail, but then again, it's quite debatable. I'd say I'm in a neutral place, defending both sides of the problem. Some children don't deserve to be put in jail for so long because their situation was complicated, and they've undergone a transformation that's hard to explain, but that has let them grow in a way that Life Without Parole doesn't fit anymore.

But then again, those are some cases, and in some others, kids cause them on purpose for no rational reason. Like that 15-year-old girl that got drunk and got in a cab with her friend, participating in the murder of the driver. All because her boyfriend dumped her. Or that 13-year-old boy that sexually assaulted an older woman.

People say that the punishment is severe because kids that age 'don't understand the severity of their actions.' They may be right, but to an extent. It doesn't take a lot of brain to understand that things like that are wrong, and they're as bad in children as they are in adults. If those are crimes, then they shouldn't need to understand them to a full extent, to experience them.

All they need to do is see that they're wrong and you might be punished because they're wrong for all ages, period. If they commited those crimes, then that means those kids simply ignored the basic 'position' of their deeds, (they ignored already knowing, at least a little, that what they were about to do was wrong) and still did them, regardless of the reason. If they were daring, or mature, or foolish (or whatever the term is) enough to commit the crimes, then they're just as daring, mature, foolish or whatever to face the consequences.

Sarah Ryan

The woman whom I honor is Sarah Ryan, better known as 'KG.' I'd say she's my best friend so far. We met about three years ago, in a chat room, of course, because she lives somewhere in Ohio. I was pretty bored and had signed in that chat room for a while, expecting to find anyone I could talk to for a while.

I made a friend; Tao_Whitney, and she introduced me to KG. She was so awesome, after getting to know each other for a few more days, we started an RP (RolePlay) together. I'd often sign into the chat room and talk to her about stuff, and she'd tell me about hers.

I had a good time with her. But, I couldn't meet her in the chat room anymore, so we exchanged e-mail addresses to talk in there instead. We're still RPing and talking to each other even after all this time, and though I'd never seen her before, I still feel like she's one of my best friends 'cause she understands how I feel and knows what I like to do, she likes some of those stuff too. I think she sees me as a real friend too, and not just someone else she met in the computer.

I look forward to meeting her one day, when it's safe. But, I don't have any complains. Being with KG all this time made me realize that despite what everyone says, you don't need to know what a person looks like to make them your best friends.

If you know how, you can see through their posts, or their e-mails, or whatever. If you're really into this friendship of yours. This might be the most pathetic blog anyone's read yet, but that's how I feel about KG, my best friend first through IFC, then GaiaOnline, and now Gmail/Hotmail.

U.S. Still A White Supremacist Country?

I don’t think the U.S is quite a white supremacist country anymore. People are no longer judged by the color of their skin, so white people are no longer thought to be ‘better’ than other people, especially blacks, since they have earned a lot of rights over the years. The country is trying its best to be equivalent with all people and see them for their value as a person and not as that of their race.

However, the U.S. still holds the 'white supremacist' belief in some areas. Take the immigrants, for instance. Many people mistreat them and discriminate them, claiming that their white, American race is far greater than theirs, who have to come to the great, American country to at least dream to be in a better economic position.

In fact, now that the white supremacy belief is supposed to have died down, now that there should be no more discrimination, that black and Indian people have rights like everybody else, immigrants are still being treated like people other than whites were treated in the old pages of American history. Illegal immigrants are people who come to work humbly and simply want to be seen as that, people, like everyone else, just as great as the next person, but they still encounter the barriers of American discrimination. The opportunities for work are still closed for them, because of the American so-called fear of they taking their beloved jobs.

'We have worked too hard to have the country we have now. We're far better than those illegals.' Those are the expressions of people who surround us, people who have no consideration for others that do not belong to the 'white race.'

That are not great, like white people have been for centuries. According to those people, the U.S. is still a country where white supremacy rules, like it always has. And they want it to remain that way for centuries.

Knowledge is Power

Literacy is highly important for liveration because it gives people power. Without knowledge, those who are unfortunate will be controlled by those who abuse the power of knowledge. To me, literacy is important because it opens new doors for the future, and that is liberating because I no longer have to depend on others that know things I know as well.

The power of literacy enlightens people and gives them better, more-structured perspectives of certain things, and, if they are bound to other people due to their ignorance, literacy liberates them by giving them the knowledge of freedom and the courage to fight for their beliefs. In the Narrative of Frederick Douglass, slaves are illiterate and are forced to remain that way because of the fear slaveholders have that they might rebel, as Mr. Auld told his wife, "if you give a nigger...A nigger should know nothing...there would be no keeping him...to his master." (34) Douglass realizes the strength of this power and seeks to treasure and increase it, as stated in quote, "It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled...I now understand what had beem to me a most...to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man...I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom." (34) He sought to continue learning no matter what, because to gain more knowledge meant to get closer to freedom, as he said in his realization, "Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with hope...to learn to read." (35)

Literacy has freed me because it has taught me how to find the path to better opportunities. I came to this country five years ago, and I knew nothing about it; I could not speak English, had no idea what the school environment was like, and I knew no one to help me understand. So I took English lessons for a year and six months, and I learned to read English, speak it, write it, and of course, understand it, quickly.

Speaking English and learning new things helped me communicate with others. It helped me understant my lessins in school, and it made my life better. Learning as much as possible throughout my life has opened my eyes and given me interest to learn even more, making me a better person for the future.

American Slavery

The different narratives of all those slaves expands the knowledge of American slavery because they are personal experiences those people share with the world, and tell them things that they didn’t know before. Those slaves narrate new things one has not seen elsewhere. It shows how slaves were brutally treated, discriminated, forced to work hard at a young age, illiterate, etc.

In the narrative of Charity Anderson, she describes how she remembers “seeing slaves torn up by dogs and whipped unmercifully.” Slaves that didn’t obey or do poorly in their chores would be beaten and/or fed to dogs as punishment. The whippings would be so hard that most slaves would be left cruelly deformed.

Other slaves were purchased by their masters like objects in a store, as it happened to Walter Calloway. By the time Walter was ten years old, he was forced to do a grown man’s work. Most slave children are forced to work in arduous chores of the fields and outdoors from a young age, and if they did not do as asked, they would be punished just like adult slaves.

Emma Crocket learned to read a bit of printing after the emancipation, but she never learned how to read handwriting. Slaveholders weren’t allowed to educate a slave because society feared that as soon as slaves learned enough, they’d rebel against them, for most of what held them prisoners to slavery was ignorance. If a slaveholder was caught educating a slave, they’d be persecuted by the law and arrested.

Tempe H. Durham describes how female slaves and their white mistresses spun, wove, and dyed cloth on the plantation, along with more women work. Back then, neither slave nor white women were counted with importance, and they were left to do woman work. However, since female slaves were even lower than the regular women, they would be discriminated and forced to do men’s work and arduous work equally.

Clayton Holbert mentions how slaves had to wave their own clothes, butcher their own meat, and make their own maple sugar. Slaves weren’t given shoes, and small children wore the same clothes regardless of the gender. Slaveholders wouldn’t facilitate the slaves’ necessities at all.

Some slaves would be freed, but then they would unfortunately be recaptured by slave dealers and sold back into slavery. Other slaves would be made to join the Union Army during the Civil War, as Holbert’s father, brother, and uncle did.

Some slaveholders would be nice at times, like Joseph Holmes’ mistress, who did not allow her slaves to be mistreated. She raised slaves for the market, so she considered it poor business to mistreat them. It was probably nothing but convenience, but at least she gave her slaves a break.

Ben Horry talks about the poor diet slaves had. They were not fed constantly, and when they were, they were given bad food in really small quantities. He also shows how white people didn’t allow any ‘inappropriate behavior’ in slaves by talking about the punishment his father received for intemperate drinking.

Other slaves were left with absolutely nothing after slavery’s end, like Fountain Hughes and his family. He tells the reader how he and his brother had to sneak into a white family’s livery at night in order to leave the cold. He also mentions how slaves were sold at auctions like objects.

Proud Composition

The composition I believe I'm most proud of is the assignment we were asked to do a while ago. It's in the blog named, 'Amiga Soledad,' from the Humanities' Blogs.

I'm proud of this assignment because I talk about a song I really like, and I kind of translate it to English and tell people what it basically says and what it means. I think I did a good work with it. What I believe I did well is expressing what the song meant because I was specific and gave lots of details, and even used my own imagination to include some little things in the meaning. What I could have done better is study it a little deeper to find more hidden things in the song, like metaphors, I wasn't able to find any metaphors, or 'complex things,' things that require a lot of reviewing to be able to catch and understand.