Works Cited Accomando Essay Example for Free

Works Cited Accomando Essay The antislavery campaign in the United States resulted in the emergence of the middle-class feminist movement. However, the latter did not include African-American women or white women of lower economic classes. The objectives of middle-class feminists were suffrage and social recognition for upper-class white women. Black women, on the other hand, first sought to be recognized as women. Already equal to African-American men socially within the slave community and in terms of the oppression they both suffered, African-American women challenged the institution of slavery and resisted sexual assaults of white men (Scott, n. pag. ). The lives of black female slaves proved to be harder than those of their male counterparts. Black female slaves were exploited for both their reproductive and productive capacities. Apart from performing strenuous manual labor and enduring abject living conditions, they were expected to replenish the slave population through pregnancy and childbirth. Furthermore, black female slaves experienced sexism and sexual abuse from their masters (Mankiller, 543). But the worst form of mistreatment that female African-American slaves received from their owners was probably the stereotype of the promiscuous black woman. In slavery-era America, white women were regarded as the models of self-control, self-respect, sexual purity and modesty. Black women, meanwhile, were often dismissed as innately licentious and desired sexual relations with white men. This misconception was used as a justification for the rape of female African-American slaves by their owners (Mankiller, 543). The labeling of black women as immoral has partial historical basis. Slaves were sold naked in order to show that they were healthy, capable of reproduction and docile (as seen through their whipping scars). Slaves likewise worked wearing scant clothing – black female slaves often worked with their dresses lifted up around their hips to prevent the hems from being stained with the water, dirt and mud in which they worked. In sharp contrast, whites, especially white women, were dressed in layers of clothing (Mankiller, 543). As a result, black women were initially excluded from the nineteenth-century women’s rights movement. Feminists during this era believed that black women should not be considered as women because they did not conform to the prevailing images of feminine virtue. Most black abolitionist women interpreted this philosophy as a means for feminists to have more time to pursue their cause. A feminist, after all, will no longer have the time to rail about gender inequality if she has to cook, clean her house or tend to her family’s farm – chores that are traditionally assigned to female African-American slaves (Dixon, 50). Sojourner Truth, an illiterate former slave, was one of those who insisted that black women have rights as well. An abolitionist and a champion of women’s rights in the nineteenth century, she opposed the nineteenth-century’s assumptions about womanhood. For Truth, women’s rights must apply to all women regardless of race. In her speech Aren’t I a Woman (1851), she used her body to further elaborate on these points. By detailing the difficult tasks that she performed unassisted as a slave, as well as the grief that she encountered when all of her 13 children were sold off to slavery, she argued that black women are also women. They are also oppressed like white women, but only on a worse level (Ritchie and Ronald, 144). Truth also challenged the traditional but overly-simplistic feminist analogies between marriage and slavery and between white wife and black slave. Truth argued that black and white women must use motherhood as a unifying factor in their struggle for gender equality. They will produce another generation of marginalized and exploited women if they allow race to prevent them from joining forces in order to attain their common goal (Accomando, 67). Black women are also women. The only reason they were not considered as such was because of the institution of slavery, which considered them as culturally stunted and morally loose. Thus, black women are entitled to the same rights that white women enjoy. Both of them suffered immensely in a patriarchal society. In fact, black women suffered more. Works Cited Accomando, Christina. â€Å"Demanding a Voice among the Pettifoggers: Sojourner Truth as Legal Actor. † MELUS 2003: 28. JSTOR. University of Arizona Library. 20 September 2008 http://www. jstor. org/stable/3595246. Dixon, Chris. Perfecting the Family: Antislavery Marriages in Nineteenth-Century America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997. Mankiller, Wilma Pearl. ed. The Reader’s Companion to US Women’s History. New York: Houghton Mifflin Books, 1999. Ritchie, Joy S. and Kate Ronald. Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001. Scott, Eryn. â€Å"Differences and Intersections between Feminism in Africa and Feminism in the United States. † 18 November 1997. Columbia University. 20 September 2008 http://www. columbia. edu/cu/sister/Differences. html.

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We live in the 21st century where no human right is an equal right. We were issued human rights to be treated equal but everyday life situations show me that society is so unfair. Human rights are made to be inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is entitled to do because he or she is a human being. Human rights are meant to be natural rights to anyone who takes part in America's population. Human rights can be defined as rights that are believed to belong justifiably to every person. World War I and World War II of the twentieth century is what led to the development of the human rights. The human rights were derived from 18 members of many various political, cultural and even religious backgrounds. Authors consisted of those from John Peters Humphrey, Charles Malik, Peng Chun Chang, William Hodgson and Eleanor Roosevelt to name just a few. At the time that human rights were created it was for the people who faced such horror. I put myself in society shoes and I notice that the Human Rights are more of a dream than reality. When stating my opinion, each state has its own violation of the human rights of some kind. Tortured or abused in at least 81 countries, unfair trials in at least 54 countries, and lastly but definitely not the least restriction in freedom of expression in at least 77 countries. So many human rights are being violated in our everyday life yet America is considered the ideal place to live. Human rights violations still plague the world today. Who can recall how article three of the Declaration of Human Rights stating "everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person" has been violated in such ways. An estimate of 6,500 people were killed in the year of 2007 in armed conflict in Af... ...the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enlist. People are very bias when it comes to gay and lesbian relationships. Everyone is supposedly treated equal and fair correct? Or at least that's why we have Human Rights to abide by to ensure that all is treated as one. But the question that still rises in my mind, if there are people in society who is not being treated as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights say we should who will enforce them? Who do those who don't have the equal opportunity as some turn to? The government, do we reach out to society, maybe those that stand higher ground than us, start petitions for those who seem to be getting unfair treatment. I not only support same sex marriage because of myself but because in my opinion love has absoutely no gender. A right was set as freedom to many but not to all, coming with a crutch.

Creoles & language evolution process Essay

Creoles have generally been considered to have more complex formation processes than pidgins, which lie at an earlier stage in the language evolution process (Culpeper, 1997). The processes that drive the development of creoles and pidgins have been the subject of interest and debate to linguists for many decades. Some have hypothesized that the development of these forms has been driven by variables similar to those that drive the creation of languages. Some of these hypotheses have included biological approaches to creole and pidgin evolution, while others have posited synchronic methods (Adone & Vainikka, 1999; Bickerton, 1999). Many of these synchronic and biological ideas are compelling highly challenging in their plausibility, employing ideas related to Universal Grammar as a means of illuminating creole and pidgin development. The development of pidgins has been considered to be less difficult to understand than that of creoles, mainly because of the precise phenomenon that pidgins describe. As a language form that develops from the mixing of two distinct languages, many have simply considered it to occur as a result of the mixing of two (or more) people groups that possess distinct languages. Yet, some complexity exists in the different scales to which pidgins might develop (Adone & Vainikka, 1999). Furthermore, it is interesting to note that when the languages of a bilingual child develop, even at an early age, that child generally distinguishes between the two perfectly without mixing them (Culpeper, 1997). When languages exist together on larger scales could be when pidgins are more likely to develop, and this appears to stem from the likelihood that the multiplicity of languages is intelligible by a wider range of persons. When this is the case, it creates no real need for any one speaker to make the effort distinguish between them for purposes of being understood. Despite the fact that pidgins and creoles are distinct language forms, many consider pidgins as a form that occurs on the way to the formation of a creole. In fact, the definition of creolization given by Adone and Vainikka is â€Å"the process by which pidgins develop into creole languages† (1999, p. 76). Discussions regarding the relationship that creolization bears to language acquisition processes and language development have led to two distinct schools of thought. One has viewed creolizaiton as being an extended process that takes several generations to mature. Indeed, this process never ends but continues to develop alongside the development of the particular culture in which it occurs. The other school of thought has viewed the process of creolization as on that has the potential to occur suddenly, within only one generation (1999). The gradual development of creoles appears to be more consistent with the prevailing theories of language development. If creoles are viewed according to the definition above (as a product of pidgin development) then it would appear that such a fast development of the language would be very difficult. Such speedy development would afford little time for the creation of the pidgin itself before its further evolution into a fully developed creole. The mixing of more than one language appears to be a phenomenon that would take quite some time, as this would involve a certain degree of standardization concerning which parts of each language should be included in this pidgin. In addition, it would appear that more than one generation would be needed to allow the general spread of this understanding among the population. However, it would also seem that geographical and population-density concerns would have a bearing on the ability of the creole to develop and suffuse an entire region. It may also depend on the demographic of the individuals who act as the agents of this development. Those theorists who believe that creolization has the potential to develop within one generation have cited young children as being the agents of such change (Bickerton, 1991, cited in Adone & Vainikka, 1999). This researcher argues that this form of â€Å"radical creole† develops through a Bioprogram that operates very closely with the theory of Universal Grammar. Such a development, therefore, is based on humans’ innate understanding of language, which is to some degree distinct from the language that is learned in any given cultural context. Because this theory posits humans as having a relationship to grammar that transcends the grammar rules of any given language, the development of a particular radical creole would be based on the similarity of the language variation put forth by each child despite the fact that they may not grow up in close proximity to each other (1991; 1999). This particular view of creolization is based on language evolution theories that take a biological or even genetic approach to language change (Mufwene, 2001; 2006). In the creole form used in Mauritius, for instance, the children have been found to make fewer â€Å"mistakes† that represent a non-conformity to the language than those found in many standardized, non-creole language (Adone & Vainikka, 1999; Bickerton, 1999). Bickerton writes, â€Å"Children acquiring English and other noncreole languages make a number of â€Å"mistakes,† a very high percentage of which would be fully grammatical utterances if the children were acquiring a creole language† (1999, p. 66). The opposite of this does not appear to be true—children acquiring creole languages do not make as many mistakes that would be considered grammatical in a noncreole language such as English or French (1999). It would seem therefore that creole might be considered a more naturally occurring form of a given language as distilled through the human’s biological propensity toward language expression. However, while this supports the idea of Universal Grammar, it does not appear to offer much support of radical creolization, as the Mauritian Creole has been evolving for many generations. Creoles and pidgins are interesting in that they offer insight into the earlier stages of language development. Many ideas exist concerning the classification of these language forms. Theories also exist concerning how such forms are developed, as well as the relationship they have to each other and to the languages on which they are based. Biological and synchronic approaches have both pointed toward the idea of Universal Grammar as having a bearing on the development of these forms of language, and intriguing (yet inconclusive) discussions have come about as a result of research done in that direction. . References Adone, D. & A. Vainikka. (1999). â€Å"Acquisition of Wh-questions in Mauritian creole. † Language creation and language change: creolization, diachrony, and development. Boston: MIT Press. p. 75-95. Bickerton, D. (1999). â€Å"How to acquire language without positive evidence: what acquisitionists can learn from creoles. Language creation and language change: creolization, diachrony, and development. Boston: MIT Press. p. 49-75. Bickerton, D. (1991). â€Å"Haunted by the specter of creole genesis. † Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 14: 364-366. Culpeper, J. (1997). History of English. Oxford: Routledge. Mufwene, S. S. (2001). The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Mufwene, S. S. (2006). Language evolution : the population genetics way. Marges linguistiques, 11, 243-260.

Raising The Minimum Wage Of The United States - 1309 Words

Raise the minimum wage: In the United States, studies show that women tend to make up a disproportionate share of low-wage workers. In the field of education, men tends to go more to STEM than women and that also leads to high paying jobs for men. If we raise the minimum wage, this will help hardworking women to support their families. Approximately, women made up two-thirds of all minimum-wage workers in 2012. With the current federal minimum wage i.e. $7.25 per hour, someone working full time, only earn $15,080 a year round. People working full time with minimum wage is still below the poverty threshold for any family with children and single person is also not far above the poverty line. So, increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would help increase the wages for about 15 million women, which will help close the gender wage gap. Raise the tipped minimum wage: The gender wage gap is vividly observed in tipped workers. The federal tipped minimum wage, which hasn’t been changed since 1991, only pays workers $2.13 per hour. According to the Economic Policy Institute, women make up two-thirds of tipped workers and are 70 percent of food servers and bartenders, occupations that comprise more than half of the tipped workforce. Tipped workers have a higher poverty rate than non-tipped workers, and 46 percent rely on government assistance to make ends meet. As women account for two – thirds of tipped workers, raising tipped minimum wage will help decreasing theShow MoreRelatedThe Effects Of Raising Minimum Wage On The United States2322 Words   |  10 PagesThe Effects of Raising Minimum Wage My topic of interest is the effects of raising minimum wage in the U.S. Minimum wage is defined as the lowest wage permitted by law or by special agreement. In 1938, President Roosevelt signed a bill called the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which set the minimum wage at $0.25. 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