Abstract The systematic disenfranchisement of convicted felons in Florida and other states is examined in this paper. The practice is deemed undemocratic and racist, and its manipulation by the parties in power is discussed.
From the Paper "The disenfranchisement of convicted felons in the United States is a racist tactic used by those in power to dilute minority voting and rig elections. As such it is morally reprehensible and profoundly undemocratic ..."
An important feature of the Mexican Revolution was its broad base of support. Revolution was brought about because, after more than 30 years in power, Porfirio Diaz succeeded in disenfranchising almost all socioeconomic groups who were not members of the
1,350 words (approx. 5.4 pages), 2 sources, 1999, $ 47.95
Abstract "An important feature of the Mexican Revolution was its broad base of support. Revolution was brought about because, after more than 30 years in power, Porfirio Diaz succeeded in disenfranchising almost all socioeconomic groups who were not members of the power elite. Revolution occurs when individuals are pressed to the limits of their endurance
From the Paper "An important feature of the Mexican Revolution was its broad base of support. Revolution was brought about because, after more than 30 years in power, Porfirio Diaz succeeded in disenfranchising almost all socioeconomic groups who were not members of the power elite. Revolution occurs when individuals are pressed to the limits of their endurance; such a situation existed in Mexico under Diaz, which explains why so many segments of society risked personal safety to participate.
Diaz pandered to foreign influence to such an extent that being a Mexican became a disadvantage, particularly the more than ninety percent mixed breed Indian population. The government regarded itself as superior to the common people: "The government must be an aristocracy, an aristocracy of brains, technicians, wise and upright elders, scientists" (Brenner, 1971 ..."
This paper discusses the use of the U.S. Supreme Court, from the end of the Civil War through 1917, to support the beliefs that truly all men are created equal.
Abstract This paper discusses the use of the U.S. Supreme Court by Blacks, Chinese and others to end discrimination, segregation and disenfranchisement by initiating and challenging regional legal decisions. The paper describes important U.S. Supreme court cases of this period: Roberts vs. the City of Boston ("separate but equal" doctrine), Ho Ah Kow vs. Nunan (discrimination against Chinese), Plessy vs. Ferguson (state's rights to enact its own laws) and Buchanan vs. Warley ( states cannot officially segregate African Americans into residential districts).
From the Paper "For example, the Chinese, who comprised a critical element in building the fortunes of the West, were denied many of the rights whites freely enjoyed. The Chinese persevered in this hostile climate and succeeded in broadening the definition of "American." The Chinese achieved Constitutional rights and led the way for other immigrant groups yet to come. In Ho ah Kow vs. Nunan, Ho Ah Kow sued a San Francisco sheriff who followed a racially-motivated law that decreed all prisoners have their hair cut at the uniform length of one inch long upon entering jail."
Tags: Roberts, vs., the, City, of, Boston, disenfranchisement, separate but equal, doctrine, Plessy, vs., Ferguson, Buchanan, vs., Warley
Abstract This paper analyzes Ahern's article in terms of the main theme, which is how, through subjugation, society disenfranchises women because of the potential power and great influence that they wield over the society. This stance is supported by Ahern's article and two articles discussing the same theme in Gary Seaman's "The Sexual Politics of Karmic Retribution" and Margery Wolf's "The Woman Who Didn"t Become a Shaman?.
From the Paper "Ahern, through the article, discusses three important facets that illustrate women oppression in the Chinese society: physical/natural/biological image of women, social reasons supporting the prevailing women image, and response of the people to justify norms that are implemented against women. In ?The Power and Pollution of Chinese Women,? images of women in their society connotes a negative idea, portraying them as dirty and undesirable in their community because of one important woman characteristic that men do not have: blood released through menstruation and during birth-giving. According to Ahern, ?[i]n Chinese society women are regarded as both ritually unclean and dangerously powerful? bodily effluvia associated exclusively with women are unclean: menstrual blood and postpartum discharge?? (269-270). Because of these beliefs, women in Chinese society are considered unclean and powerful, opposing qualities that reflect the society's fear in women. This is because through women, society, especially men, can see that they have the power to create and maintain social ties with other people, which men perceive as women's way in reversing the social order in the society, i.e., men as the outcasts and women are put in a higher, more dignified, and desirable status and role in the society."
Abstract This paper examines the lives of the authors James Baldwin, Edward Said, and Gloria Anzaldua. It attempts to find commonality between authors, noting that that none is a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant living in America, and none of them ever was. It shows how, despite the fact that Said is the only immigrant from foreign shores, all can be said to view their own native culture in relation to American culture, at least to some extent, and how each is a stranger to American mainstream culture in his or her own way. It also looks at how the common thread between them is being an outsider and an observer of the mainstream culture and how all three are eloquent in describing their disenfranchisement.
From the Paper "Said is a stranger of a different sort. Of the three writers, only he was not born in the U.S.A., but rather chose to come here as an adult. And Said's homeland is not a multicultural hodgepodge as is the United States; in fact, at this point it might fairly be said that his homeland doesn"t exist, except in the hearts and minds of the various Muslims, Jews and Christians who at one time"in this generation or the last?might have called themselves Palestinians, referring both to a culture and to a set of national boundaries. Of the three, Said can most easily be seen as a stranger in a strange land, no matter where he is. This is a difference from the status of the late James Baldwin and Gloria Anzaldua. Both Baldwin and Anzaldua claim estrangement only from one native land."
This paper uses Owen Dodson's poem, "Black Mother Praying" (1943), and Martin Luther King's "The Importance of Vietnam" (1964), to discuss the issue of war and the African-American community.
Abstract This paper explains that African-American men and women quite often are exposed to war not because of their patriotism and love of military life, but rather because of economic desperation and political disenfranchisement from the American dream. The author points out that Martin Luther King's speech upon the nature of the Vietnam War called for an end to the war and the draft because it was disproportionately waged upon the backs of America's desperate, poor black men, who could not afford a university education to obtain a deferral and did not have the political connections to obtain service in the National Guard. The paper relates that, in Owen Dodson's WWII poem, "Black Mother Praying", the great post-Harlem Renaissance poet's last poem in dialect, Dodson's fictive mother weeps for a son whose death is only for a nation that hates him.
From the Paper "Early on in his speech, King highlights the dangerous divide that America is causing by going to war in Vietnam, stating that the war was doing far more than ?devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools."
This paper reviews Cathy J. Cohen's "The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics", which discusses the debate regarding the absence of a strong African-American vote.
1,820 words (approx. 7.3 pages), 0 sources, $ 58.95
Abstract This paper explains that Cohen challenges the notion of a cohesive African-American vote by noting that African-Americans failed to become a strong political force because their political, business, and church leaders focus on imbibing the values of mainstream, middle-class America. The author points out that Cohen argues that, despite the growing threat of AIDS, African-American leadership failed to galvanize the population around this issue, which affects African-Americans as a group, despite categorical differences. The paper states that the Cohen believes that the attitudes of black leaders resulted in a secondary marginalization of gays and lesbians, who, due to their race and sexual orientation, remained among the most disenfranchised citizens.
From the Paper "Cohen begins by dispelling the notion of a politically-cohesive African American community, one wherein race supposedly overrides differences spawned by class, gender or even ethnicity. Instead, she maintains that this cohesion is "being challenged and sometimes replaced by cross-cutting issues and crises rooted in or built on the often hidden differences, cleavages, or fault lines of marginal communities" (9). There is thus no strong ?black vote,? because the African American community is highly fragmented and factionalized."
Abstract This paper summarizes Scott Cooper's 1989 article third cinema in the United States". It emphasizes the need for disenfranchised peoples to tell their stories from their own perspectives. The author discusses the problems of ideology. The paper also explores common characteristics of Third Cinema and Third World Cinema.
Abstract The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze the book "Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus", by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. The paper addresses how Frankenstein's creature compares to or resembles women and criminals as members of the disenfranchised classes of the Romantic period. The paper concludes that Frankenstein is alone and lonely, with no hope for a "normal" life. In this, Frankenstein is like the women and criminals of the Romantic period that he represents.
From the Paper "The novel is quite relevant to modern readers for a number of compelling reasons. First, society may have mellowed a bit, but overall, many of the societal judgments that were common in the Romantic period still exist. Women have a higher level on the social ladder, but they are still judged on their appearances rather than their abilities. Criminals are still an ostracized segment of society, in fact, they cannot vote in elections if they are felons. There are many aspects of modern society that have not truly modernized at all. In addition, the novel makes the reader look at how people judge others in society. The time period does not matter so much in this novel, because society is still incredibly judgmental and disapproving of anything out of the ordinary."
Abstract This paper examines Stud Terkel's book, "Working," which discusses the lives of American workers, the work that they do and their work's repercussions in their personal lives. The paper delves into the participation of women in the labor force and it also focuses on the workers' group in general and how they find ways in which to give invaluable meaning to their work by viewing their work as a contribution to their society.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Women in the Labor Force
Producing Something: Workers Making Sense of their Work Lives
Summary: Disenfranchisement of Specific Sectors in American Society
From the Paper "These passages from workers in America highlights the responses disenfranchised workers have adopted in order to alleviate or escape the state of marginalization they feel within the society. The first response is to "make sense" of their reality as a worker, justifying their worth not through quantitative, but through qualitative means, on how they have produced work that is considered important or valuable to American society. However, a more radical response adopted by most workers today is the path towards self-realization and -acceptance, using reality as their way of alleviating their disenfranchisement. That is, by accepting that they are parts of the whole economic machinery of capitalist America, they are able to perceive their work and themselves (as workers) as parts of a whole, but not necessarily "romanticizing" this notion as equivalent to 'contributing something important to society.'"
Abstract The paper discusses how, as the political and social climate has changed, American literature has evolved to include previously disenfranchised voices, such as Native-Americans, women, African-Americans and disenfranchised immigrants from many nations of origin. The paper then explores how we define an American writer and American literature.
From the Paper "The representation of both women and African American writers is not the only body of inclusion. Contemporary movements have made significant strides toward the inclusion of almost every immigrant group into the canon of American literature and into the body of publishing in general in history and contemporary works. These groups include Asian immigrants, Eastern European Jews, Germans, Italians and of coarse Native Americans who have a rich tradition of their own. Yet, we must remember that this is a relatively new experience and that for the majority of the development of "American Literature" the system was one of elitism that preferred almost exclusively the point of view of the Western white male."
Examines their origins in Irish folklore, animism, background (language, Celtic culture, religion), character traits, meaning of name, disenfranchisement and examples.
3,375 words (approx. 13.5 pages), 15 sources, 1995, $ 119.95
From the Paper "The leprechaun of Irish folklore is familiar to all who have ever sat among a green-wearing crowd on St. Patrick's Day. According to this modern-day popular telling of fairy tale, the leprechaun came into being something like this:
In the beginning, before there was humankind in the form even of Adam and Eve, God had created the angels to worship Himself. That all did not do so is well known: The Archangel Lucifer thought himself an equal to Himself and fomented a rebellion amongst the angel legions, arch and otherwise. It was touch and go for a while - not because God was ever in doubt of losing, mind you, but because the Almighty Father wanted to see who among his heavenly creations had faith in Himself - and humility in themselves (jealousy, you see, being the root of Lucifer's failings). The Archangels Michael and Gabriel were, of ..."
Abstract This paper reviews Michelle Cliff's novel "No Telephone to Heaven" in which she explores the lives of the alienated and the disenfranchised in Jamaica, England, and the United States. The paper explains how the book portrays a life of hunger, violence, racism, disease, poverty and shows how these afflictions affect the lives of those who suffer them.
From the Paper "Here we have an encapsulation of Cliff's entire work -- the importance of the land, the history connecting generations, the geography of the shells representing the origins of life in Jamaica, the dangerous enemy ready to strike, and the book used as a weapon to kill that enemy. Affliction marks the passage (spiders, rats, scorpions, rot), but Clare emerges victorious as she uses a "rat-bitten book" to smash the scorpion."
Abstract Voting reform in America's South has been undertaken with great seriousness over the past two decades. Many changes had been made in the years prior to that and efforts continued because blacks were still disenfranchised to a great degree, with a number of laws and practices remaining that mitigated against the black vote. The paper shows that in the last 15 years or so, efforts to increase the black vote in the South increased, along with efforts to martial that vote to elect more black representatives, with some success. The paper examines how these efforts have made considerable change, but they have not completely overcome the traditional imbalance between black and white voters nor the tendency toward non-voting common in the South and becoming more common all over the United States. The paper looks at voting laws, demographic movement and includes a table.
From the Paper "The states in the South are primarily responsible for the low voter turnout rates, for they continually rank at or near the bottom of turnout rankings. Southern voters are influenced dramatically by various demographics which tend to lead to nonvoting, such as low incomes and low education rates. In addition, race plays a greater role in the South than in any other part of the country. As the South tries desperately to improve its economic and social conditions, voting will play a major role. Nonvoting seems to show a general disinterest in the political situation, and if minorities do not improve their voting record, one result will be that less attention is paid to the many problems of the many poor and minorities in the South. Past studies have documented that voter turnout rates are relatively lower for the South when compared to the rest of the nation, a pattern that is not due to any type of cultural difference that exists between the South and the rest of the nation but rather to demographic factors such as education, income, religion, and race (Joyce, 1998)."
Abstract Richard Cavell tackles one of the all-time greats of communication theory in his article on ?McLuhan and Spatial Communication.? The paper explains that Marshall McLuhan was one of the great prophets (some would say charlatans) of early communication theory. For a long time he was one of one of the only celebrities of the field and toured wildly to give his opinions on the subject. They were certainly opinions worth hearing, for he had some remarkably new and insightful things to say about media, communication, and the way in which technology affects human development. The paper shows, however, that within the scope of his own lifetime, he went from spokesman to outcast and academia widely turned against him. Before his death his saw the school he had founded shut down and his work widely discredited. Since the rise of the Internet, however, the development of other, new forms of entertainment and media, McLuhanism has enjoyed something of an academic comeback. It is with this background in mind that the paper approaches Cavell's work on McLuhan, for much of his essay deals with presenting an explanation for McLuhan's disenfranchisement from and eventual re-adoption by the academic community. According to Cavell's central thesis, McLuhan's anomalous position and his lasting durability within the field of communications theory both spring from his ?elaboration of a spatial model of communication... based on the notion of acoustic space... situated within the spatial bias of postmodernist thought.?
From the Paper "Cavell's failure to bring up the way in which McLuhan's theories on space have been substantiated through current technological advances is an important one. Cavell explains in great length the way that McLuhan's theories draw from the history of technological development to explain the development of various forms of consciousness and space. Yet in explaining McLuhan's continued relevance, he somehow fails to take the logical step and relate McLuhan's dynamic space to what is today commonly called ?cyberspace.? Many theorists of the digital revolution look to McLuhan as one of the greatest prophets and thinkers of the Internet Revolution, having discussed its many complications and impacts years before it even existed. Paul Levinson explains that it is the Internet, not TV, that best fulfills the role of the media in creating the acoustic space described by McLuhan."
