Crown Heights After-thoughts

Upon closure of the movie I realized just how controversial a race riot can be, and surprised that such a small event escalated into a riot. It started with one black boy getting hit by a car driven by a jewish man, and instead of a normal reaction to a car accident this incited violence. This violence was because of years of racial tension between the African American community and the Jewish community. I still feel confused because nobody seemed to know exactly what happened. They only knew what they perceived, but what they perceived was skewed one way or another. If you were black you saw the situation one way, and if you were jewish you saw it another. I think this is because neither side understood the other. They never got along so they never really wanted to see things through the other’s eyes. I felt like this whole thing began with something small and snowballed until it exploded into a riot and many years of hate. I think that Anna Deavere Smith was trying to show everyone’s viewpoint on what occurred to get a sense of what actually happened. These different viewpoints showed a lot of confusion on the matter and that the blacks and the jews just didn’t understand each other. Her goal was also to show that racial tension like what happened in Crown Heights has happened and will continue to happen. There will always be racism.

RIOT!

There are always 3 versions to every story. There is person A's side, there is person b's side, and then there is what really happened. So far in the movie, we have seen what happened through the eyes of a jew and of a black. We are still missing what really happened. This is causing a lot of confusion because I do not know which group of people I should side with. I feel sympathy for the African Americans because from what they saw, the jewish man was completely at fault. Without any hesitation, the jewish man was rushed to the hospital before the black boy who had just been hit by a moving vehicle. That does not seem right to me at all. From the jewish standpoint, their reasoning for taking the jewish man away first was because he was getting beaten by the blacks and they worried that more violence would occur if he stayed. I sympathize with this as well because the jewish man claims that he was part of a procession and that the collision was a complete mishap. Then, when he gets out of the car, he gets jumped by an angry mob. Honestly, I don't know who to believe, but I know there is merit in both sides. It's just a matter of weeding out the inconsistencies and paying attention to the facts. For example, the part about the jewish man having been drunk during the time of the accident was proven false upon arriving at the hospital where a blood alcohol test was administered. Overall, this event was both surprising and confusing because everyone saw the same thing and yet each person held different accounts.

What does the brother realize about Sonny as he plays the piano? What does the music allow Sonny to do?

Throughout Sonny's life, he has been searching for a way to escape reality, avoid the lows, to not suffer. This journey took him through some tough times. It began with Sonny enlisting in the army at a young age. Then came the addiction to heroin. It allowed him to put all his worries behind and live in a world where there was no suffering. As Sonny was playing the piano, his brother noticed him coming alive. Up on stage, Sonny was at peace with himself and his surroundings. He experienced so much suffering and through his music, Sonny was able to finally release. This was how he could cope with reality; to deal with those past sufferings and hardships. Sonny expressed his feelings in a way he had never done before by playing the piano. It was his truest form of expression. He used music as a way to deal with reality opposed to him using heroin to escape it. This is key because it shows a turning point for him. He could've continued abusing drugs, but he chose to face the enemy head on. Sonny's music even affected the audience. It helped those people to relax and release just as he was able to do.

Ethics

My ethics are simply defined by those who I have lived with and around. Some are similar and some have resulted in becoming the opposite of those people. It is hard to write about my own ethics since I am so used to them and haven't ever given them much or any thought. The one that comes to mind right away is manners in all aspects. From a young age, I remember my mother and my Alabama born father instructing me of verbal manners (please, thank you, sir, ma'am etc.). My parents lead mostly by example and catching the occasional mishap by myself. By observing them and the way they spoke to others, I was able to gather certain forms of respects one would use everyday. My father hammered humbleness into my head when it came to any actions I did that resulted in punishment. This was anything like fighting with my brothers, lying, or even stealing(yes stealing, I was around age 9 at the check out line at Marsh and I thought you could simply grab some candy from the rack and everything would be fine). Little by little starting with the first wrongdoing I learned a sense of right and wrong. What helped most was seeing my parents do something wrong, owe up to it, and apologize. My siblings contributed to my ethics as well. Sometimes, showing me what to do and what not to do. They, like my parents, were good figures for me to observe growing up. Seeing the different types of friends each brother or sister hung out with helped me choose my own group of friends. Many times, seeing them choose poor friends who were bad influences caused me to stay away from those types of people. Traveling through the years from a mere infant, my constant observance of others and how they naturally react to situations formed the set of ethics I have today.

How is Washington providing an answer to the ‘go North’ or ‘stay South’ debate we looked at in Frederick Douglass’s Life and Times?

To begin with, Booker T Washington expressed his intense belief in communal cooporation among blacks and whites. Just from this we can see similarities between Washington and Frederick Douglass's Life and Times. They agreed on a few levels. Douglass believed that the blacks should not be afraid to stay in the South and to not migrate north. They could just stay where they were and find jobs which were almost guaranteed. Sure their bosses would most likely be those whom enslaved their friends and families, but this is where cooporation comes in. Douglass believed in communal cooporation between the two races. They may not like each other- in fact they hated each other- but the blacks could help the whites and vice versa. The whites needed workers to work their lands and the blacks needed jobs. Through cooporation they could have struck a deal with each in which they both benefited. Kind of like how I said i would work for Keaton in order to obtain some gold fish opposed to migrating to the desk where there may or may not be a few gold fish.

Washington uses a great metaphor to show this phenomenon- the water in the bucket. There are two ships- one is pleading to other saying to give to them some water when they themselves are on a body of water. The other replies to cast your bucket down where you are. Again the boat pleads twice more until they do cast there bucket down and are rewarded with a bucket of water. Washington wanted the blacks to stay where they are because there was opportunity in the South. There was basically a guarantee for success, but they associated the South with slavery causing them to migrate North.

Booker T Washington also believed in morality and there was no morality on this issue. All of the states were free but still the blacks moved to the North. There is no morality in moving North if you can't be equal in the South

Compare Equiano to Venture Smith. Both are Africans brought over to America to be slaves. Do they share the same views? How do they differ?

Equiano's life story is vastly different from Venture's for many reasons. Their views of life and slavery differed the most. Venture focused his story on capitalism. He got sucked in to the typical American Dream that comes up a lot throughout America's history. He centered his decisions around money while Equiano's decisions were about moral growth. Equiano used feeling and emotion in his writing instead of cold hard facts as Venture did.

I could tell from the very beginning that the stories would be greatly different. To begin with, Venture told his story to a white man who then published it into writing. By doing so, we most likely lost a lot of detail and things which the white man would have taken out just because he didn't like it. It was censored. His story starts off with Venture being referred to in third person and says that this is an account of hist story. Equiano's beginning was much different. It contained emotion and opinion right from the very start. Through Equiano's words, we are able to get a sense of his vernacular rather than a censorship.

Their takes on slavery differed greatly as well. Venture just said this happened, then this occurred, bam bam bam, these are the facts. He simply stated what took place without detail. Equiano went deep into detail. He showed the horrors of slavery saying what he smelled, felt, and saw. his explanation of the ship ride over almost made you feel what he felt.

On a side not, Equiano talked a lot more about his tribe. He explained the tribe's culture and rituals. He did this to show us that they were human too just as the white men were. It showed a contrast between his old lifestyle and his new life where he isn't treated as a human.

– Continue the idea of values. What ideas are being presented in these protest songs that echo back to the older works we’ve looked at?

These poems contain values which we saw in older works we have been looking at over the past week. In Aint Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round, we see the black who won't let anyone put him down. He's got an attitude similar to the character Shine in Shine and the Titanic. He's got a dream and he is going to fulfill it, which in this case is 'the freedom land' or the North.

These three poems are filled with hope for a better future. In We Shall Overcome, the idea there is quite simple to understand. They, the black slaves, will overcome their difficult situations and live a better life. They have much hope. They believe that will 'walk hand in hand someday', having equal rights and status with everyone else. This element of overcoming tough situations rivals the ideas present in songs/poems as NY State of Mind and The Message. In both songs the narrator talks about their situations and how they won't let it get to them; however, it is close to pushing them over the edge.

It(NY State of Mind and The Message) also echoes the content contained in Strange Fruit. The author of Strange Fruit gives a detailed explanation of what slavery is like in the South. Lewis Allen went into great detail how the south produces strange fruit. He compared the strange fruit to the hanged bodies of black slaves, and the bloody roots and leaves to all slave blood spilled by the southern whites. This explanation of the slaves' hardships echoes the hardships Nas spoke of in his song NY State of Mind and The Message.