American dream Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

American dream - Essay Example The early colonists took religion very seriously and believed it defined their individuality. The Puritans along with the Pilgrims and Quakers all wanted to leave England to re-establish their religious practice. England and the Puritans had different beliefs about how Christianity should be practiced and this difference of opinion is what drove the Puritans to head for America. England wanted to make changes and give a new lease of life to Christianity. The Puritans perceived things entirely differently and believed that the modifications England wanted to make to their religion would bring about great misfortune. The New World would bring great blessings from God to the Puritans if they dug their heels into the American soil. One of the things that is not made known by many history books is that a lot of people that came to America eventually went back to their homeland. "Given that people generally came to this country because of intolerable conditions in Europe, this implies that they found life here, whether in the teeming slums of New York or the freezing prairies of North Dakota, even worse" (Locke, 2002). The American dream has not changed significantly in view of the fact that, everyone is still seeking that perfect life. Although, since the early 1900's there have been many alterations to the American dream.

Comparing and Contrasting Essay Example for Free

Comparing and Contrasting Essay Comparing and Contrasting The man with the twisted lip with Front  There are many similarities and differences in both Front and Twisted lip, but the most apparent relation between the two stories is the keeping up appearances (or keeping down appearances in the case of Twisted lip) theme, meaning they are about someone or something trying to conceal the truth or simply the truth isnt so obvious in the case of Front, the other less prevailing similarities/differences will be analysed later on in the essay. The beginning of both stories differ quite strongly, Front begins with a narrator describing her experiences of seeing something that she would compare to as one of the seven wonders of the world and there some definite references to class Five streets down the comma after the word down brings emphasis towards it and sets the impression that the narrator feels (or later on in the story, felt) that she is in a sense not worthy, or in awe with her surroundings, as the story shows that she is quite concerned about class, and the economic standings of her and her family as this will be pointed out later on in the essay, and becomes quite obvious when reading the story. The Writer also gives the reader the impression that this girl thinks very highly of this place, and although she imagines it to be so far above the town she feels she is not good enough, I wanted to be forced to leave, the writer portrays the girl to be intimidated by this site she is seeing as it reads that she did not mention the crescent to anyone afterwards as if I had been trespassing, and needed to conceal the fact with all of these displays of almost worshipfulness and the fact that she thought back on it with great nostalgia the impression the writer has given the crescent would be hard to top. In Twisted lip however, a character (although not a very substantial one) is introduced as the first word in the story, with a short background on his dead brother and how he died of an opium addiction. This being quite pointless at first is quite a cunning trick the writer has introduced here, as for the next few paragraphs the reader thinks that this Isa Whitney is what the story is based on, the trick being the writer has made the story out to be something it is not, which is intentionally ironic as the story is based on a man trying to conceal the truth. A more close up view to Twisted Lips construction there a few references to class, like dregs of the docks and a vile alley, these let the reader understand Dr. Watsons train of thought and how he considers himself to be, within the very thick walls separating class at this time. When Watson reaches the opium den he refers to it like it was a tomb, a glimpse of bodies lying and using words like lacklustre, the writer sets a very dark, dreary place and referring to the smoke as gloom. Soon after Isa makes his way to the cab Sherlock Holmes inevitably makes an appearance, after a brief introduction Isa and his troubles have left the picture and Watson and Holmes take the limelight of the story. This point is quite a major difference as it shows the authors different style of writing compared to Front, as Front has quite a few characters and even less are properly introduced with past family history, whereas Twisted Lip portrays a much larger world to the reader and even though Isa Whitney is key to the irony and depth of Twisted Lip the reader wont realize that until approaching the end of the story, this just shows how similar and quite different the two stories I am comparing are. When the introduction in Twisted Lip is over and the complication of the story begins to unfold, it seems like another introduction to the actual story (or so it seems) and the previous little fiasco (that to an untrained eye could seem like the baseline of a story) was almost completely irrelevant to the complication of the main plot. This brings the reader to Watson and Holmes sitting in a cab heading to the home of the missing Neville St. Clair and as they travel Holmes tells Watson the story so far. Sherlock Holmes narrative lasts about fourteen paragraphs long, and describes the events passing and it becomes quite obvious that Holmes has been working on this case for some time. Holmes tells Watson what sounds like a murder inquiry and starts to explain the life of a successful man with a lot of money in the bank, no reason there-fore, to think that money troubles have been weighing upon his mind which facilitates the irony of Twisted Lip as it says later in the narration that the beggar that actually is Neville St. Boone put all his coins from begging that day into his coat to weigh it down. Another hint is when Holmes mentions the cripple looking a powerful and well nurtured man. The writer is obviously dropping these clues for a reason and an intelligent reader may pick up on these tell tale hints, but they are still very discreet and the impression of a murder story still sets the theme. The lack of references to class in Holmes narrative shows to the reader that Holmes is quite a different man to Watson, and that he doesnt really care about where he stands economically or anyone else, unless it has some relevance to his case for example; he has 220 standing to his credit. The writer portrays the villa and Nevilles wife to be definitely well off, using the mousseline de soie as a direct indication of the financial security of the missing mans wife and in doing so, adds to the eagerness later on of why Neville had became a beggar if he had all this wealth in the first place, but it is to the readers surprise that his begging money paid for the house as well, this gives the reader the motive to Nevilles begging addiction, the vast amount of money he could make. Showing the characters motives in stories give the characters depth, that is why this was an important point to make.

Legal and ethical issues of discrimination

Legal and ethical issues of discrimination In an effort to curtail discrimination, implementing new strategies and proposing these new hiring practices are vital. It is not a good ethical policy for employees to be able to screen and pick and choose who gets to be interviewed, as in this case. Company hiring practices if done with good judgment and a strong moral and ethically correct agenda, can benefit the organization as a whole. Furthermore, discrimination in the workplace is disruptive and harmful to the effects on business operations and its culture, whether in the present or the past. By getting rid of old outdated policy and allowing for more diverse interaction with employees, we can create a multi-cultural environment. Also reciprocating this is the fact that managed correctly, the atmosphere will cause increases in retention rates and reduce turnover. Because our time was put into defining specific goals of the organization, that needed to be met to receive consideration for employment. Therefore, this organization needs a more efficient way to determine the necessary steps in the hiring procedure. The current process of hiring prospective employees is based on a biased view that too much diversity is a bad thing. New employee assessments are needed to help predict whether potential hires are motivated by the factors associated with a particular job. It is true that companies have to be cautious and should be concerned about negligent hiring but outright discrimination is an undesirable practice. Making sound hiring decisions and performing detailed background checks on qualified potential employees can decrease employment risks later caused by premature termination. (Berris, 2009) This company is small but can benefit from forming a streamline, non-negligent hiring process, by setting up a structured, non-discriminatory process for existing and new hires. Negligent hiring means the company can be put into legal trouble if it could have foreseen a potential issue but acts negligently by not d oing a thorough check of the new employee, before hiring. This company had a tendency to overlook steps to reduce the likelihood of a hiring mistake. This company looks past a lot of qualified employees due to its biased hiring practices and may hire problem employees unknowingly. This potential failure is heightened because management chooses to hire off of appearance and fails to accurately assess a potential employees way of thinking and handling situations or their particular skill needed for the job. Quality, knowledge and skill sets need to be the reason for hiring/not hiring someone, not their appearance and this is how you decide who to hire. (Aly Shields, 2010) When individuals are discriminated against because of defining characteristics such as their race, gender or age, this is some of the most blatant forms of discrimination. Personally, I believe the most qualified person should receive the job, regardless of race, ethnicity. If discrimination does not exist, it certainly has a solid historical foundation for its existence. As evidenced in this scenario, a potential employee is shut out of the hiring process, based solely on his ethnicity. When employers violate workplace discrimination laws, legally they can be sued by the person or persons and receive bad publicity and other consequences. Discrimination occurs when an employee suffers from unfair treatment due to their race, religion, national origin. Proving discrimination is difficult as is can occur in a number of work-related areas, during your initial hiring phase, during training or even after you get the job and have to participate in job evaluations. According to Smith, unfai r treatment does not necessarily equal unlawful discrimination, treating a person differently from others violates Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) laws only when the treatment is based on the presence of a protected section under discrimination, rather than on the job performance. As far as ethnicity goes, Americans come in every colour shape and size and a successful business is one that understands its customers and knows how to meet their needs. (2010) The more diverse an organization is, the more likely it becomes a center piece of the community. Affirmative action helps to cut down on discrimination, past and present, but it is not a complete solution. The objective of its policies include the elimination of hiring and advancement discrimination; ensuring multicultural employment and to achieve a diverse and much more representative workforce. The results guide a prospective manager about how best to motivate, manage and develop potential employees in a new role. It has helped but the effort to increase the number of minorities in upper management and leadership roles in educational institutions is still a struggle and needs to continue. Needless to say there is a long history of racism and discrimination against blacks and minorities, which went unnoticed. Where was the need to strive for equality then as it is now? The evidence of all types of discrimination against minorities led to a decisive need for action, ethics and morals were the same then as they are now. Ethics are the societal application of what is right and wr ong while morals are an individuals belief of what is right and wrong. Is one to say that the U.S lacked morals and good ethical practices and this is why the need for affirmative action gave rise? Morals are instilled in every man woman and child, it is a sense of what is right and wrong and good ethical behavior builds off of good morals. There is no doubt that affirmative action has helped with the vast gap between blacks and whites in areas such as education, employment. Those that do not share positive views on affirmative action will state that it is discrimination to harbor or give away special considerations and benefits on the foundation that people have certain characteristics. Affirmative action programs that benefit minorities have been under attack in the halls of Congress and scrutinized for reverse racism against the whites. This is a valid argument but how can one ignore the imbalance of societal benefits that are obviously lacked by minorities. (Devata Kappelman 20 10) Ethically this is thesible but morally this argument should have never existed. For years the morality of America went unquestioned in the treatment of minorities, years beyond slavery and what individual or group has a right or an ethic ground to stand against affirmative action. Legally government has tried to mandate it and courts have tried to uphold its presence but to no avail. Again I ask where the outrage was when affirmative action was white. The opposition to affirmative action argues that the foundation that the U.S is built upon requires that government treats all of its citizens as individual persons without regard to their ethical status, and again I ask where this creed was during slavery and years after. This is truly a divisive issue and one cannot employ the constitution when needed and dismiss it when not.

Hamlet and His Home Essay examples -- William Shakespeare Hamlet Essay

Hamlet and His Home Hamlet begins at the open mouth of the Void. Barnardo and Francisco call out to each other and into darkness; they stand atop a guard platform that is naked to the open air and to the night. Every character's entrance is marked by a series of interrogatives, as characters already on stage try to ascertain the identity of those who are newly arrived and yet unseen. Darkness isolates these men from each other as they stand on the edge of civilization, the place where the solid stones of Elsinore castle open up into the world of night and the supernatural. The nature of the ghost remains debatable: Horatio has initially insisted that the guards' delusions have conjured the phantom (1.1.21), and, even accepting the reality of the apparition, Catholic teaching (ghosts are spirits of the dead coming up from purgatory) and Protestant doctrine (all ghostly apparitions are demons in disguise) hold divergent opinions on the nature and source of phantoms (Garber 12/15). The men have gather ed together on the guard platform, which has become a kind of stage within a stage. They have come to see a visitor who is a creature of hallucination, purgatory, or hell. This ghost is coming out of the open maw of night above and around the platform; what is known clings to the battlements, and all else in existence hails from the empty, the unknown, the imagined, the demonic. When Barnardo reports to Marcellus, "I have seen nothing" (1.1.20), the word "nothing" takes on a number of meanings. He has not seen the apparition; gazing out into the dark, he has barely seen anything at all. But "seeing" is still phrased in the positive, and so "nothing" becomes something to see. It is more than absence: emptiness itself exists as an ... ...st famous moments deal with a nothing that is the absence of what is known: as Hamlet asks what it would be not to be, the ultimate opaqueness of death is fearsome enough to make him go on living. It is too much for the prince to stare Nothing in the face. Later, in the play's most famous tableau, Hamlet literally stares at an embodiment of Nothing as he holds Yorick's skull. The skull's eye sockets are without subjectivity, empty of their tenant organs and the mind that saw through them; they contain, in a word, "nothing." But from their hollows something maddeningly elusive stares back: simultaneously a presence and an absence, as haunting as Hamlet's own dead father, and opaque as the darkness that envelopes Elsinore. Part of the play's power is in this substantive "nothing," a portal of slippage that relentlessly destabilizes what is known and what is knowable.

Hippies and the Revolution of a Culture Essay

â€Å"Tune In, Turn On, and Drop Out† was the motto of the hippie movement, a significant countercultural phenomenon in the 1960s and early 1970s that grew partially out of young America’s growing disillusionment with U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Hippies were mainly white teenagers and young adults who shared a hatred and distrust towards traditional middle-class values and authority. They rejected political and social orthodoxies but embraced aspects of Eastern religions, particularly Buddhism. Many hippies also saw hallucinogenic drugs, such as marijuana and LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), as the key to escaping the ties of society and expanding their individual consciousness. The immediate precursor to the hippies was the so-called Beat Generation of the late 1950s, including the poet Allen Ginsberg, who became a hippie hero. But where the coolly intellectual, black-clad beats tended to keep a low profile and stay out of politics, the hippies were known as much for their political outspokenness as for their long hair and colorful psychedelic clothing. Their opposition to the Vietnam War became one of the most significant aspects of the growing antiwar movement throughout the latter half of the 1960s. To express their protests, and to â€Å"turn on† others, the hippies used art, street theater and particularly music. Folk music and psychedelic rock-the Beatles album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a prime example-were both crucial aspects of hippie culture. This culture reached its peak in the summer of 1967, when a concert in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park kicked off the start of the so-called â€Å"Summer of Love.† The event introduced the music and aesthetic of the hippies to a wider audience and inspired thousands of young people around the country to head to San Francisco, some wearing flowers in their hair, a reference to Scott McKenzie’s version of the John Phillips song â€Å"San Francisco,† a ubiquitous hit and a kind of hippie theme song. In 1969, more than 500,000 people attended the Woodstock Music and Art Festival in Bethel, New York, an event that for many epitomized the best aspects of the hippie movement. There was a dark side to hippie culture, however, and it went beyond the panicked disapproval expressed by conservatives about the â€Å"immorality† of the hippie way of life. A Time magazine article in 1967 quoted San Francisco’s public health director as saying that the city was paying $35,000 per month for treatment for drug abuse for the city’s 10,000 hippies. To Joan Didion, who wrote about her time in San Francisco for her acclaimed 1968 essay â€Å"Slouching Towards Bethlehem,† the hippies were â€Å"missing children† who were the most conclusive proof that â€Å"the center was not holding† in American society. To the hippies, their behavior was the one truly authentic reaction to the oppressive forces of consumerism, imperialism and militarism embodied by America in the 1960s. By the mid-1970s, the hippie movement was on the wane, though many aspects of its culture-particularly music and fashion-had worked their way into mainstream society. The fraught atmosphere of the 1960s that had created the hippie counterculture no longer existed, particularly after the Vietnam War ended, and with the advent of punk and disco music the earnest hippies were often seen as ridiculous. Still, their ideals of peace, love and community became the enduring legacy of the hippie movement, and even today there are a few â€Å"neo-hippies† to be found on college campuses and communes across the country and around the world. The Tet Offensive The Tet Offensive was a large-scale series of battles launched by the Vietnamese Communists (or Viet Cong) against American and South Vietnamese troops during the Vietnam War that resulted in both a military failure and a psychological victory for the Communists. The multi-part campaign was known as Tet because it was scheduled to start on January 31, 1968, the Vietnamese New Year holiday known as Tet. As a diversionary tactic, North Vietnamese units attacked the Marine base at Khe Sahn shortly before Tet and approximately 50,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were involved in defending the base and other sites nearby. Subsequently, the Americans and South Vietnamese were surprised by the Tet Offensive, in which over 100 cities and towns and several dozen airfields and bases throughout South Vietnam were attacked. However, the U.S. and its ally quickly fought back and the Viet Cong, who suffered massive casualties, were unable to hold most of the captured territory for long. In the United States, people were stunned by the intensity and widespread nature of the attacks. Graphic images of the fighting were shown on American television and for the first time, criticism of the war mounted on a national scale. General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. military operations in Vietnam, requested over 200,000 more troops, believing it would be possible for the U.S. to finally wipe out the enemy in their weakened condition. However, President Lyndon B. Johnsons new defense secretary, Clark Clifford, convinced the president to reject Westmorelands request and in March 1968, Johnson stated that the United States was committed to a de-escalation of the conflict. Johnson also announced he would not seek a second term as president. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese launched additional Tet campaigns in May and August of that same year. American combat units finally withdrew from Vietnam in 1973 and South Vietnam fell to North Vietnam in 1975. Vietnam War Protests Opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War began slowly but grew steadily throughout the second half of the 1960s, eventually becoming the largest and most powerful anti-war movement in American history. By the time U.S. planes began regular bombings of North Vietnam in February 1965, liberal public opinion had begun to question the government’s assertion that it was fighting a democratic war to liberate the South Vietnamese people from Communist aggression. The anti-war movement then began in earnest, mostly on college campuses, as members of the leftist organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) began organizing â€Å"teach-ins† to express their opposition to the way in which it was being conducted. Though the vast majority of the American population still supported the administration policy in Vietnam, a small but outspoken liberal minority was making its voice heard by the end of 1965. This minority included many students as well as prominent artists and intellectuals and members of the hippie movement, a growing number of young people who rejected authority and embraced the drug culture. By the end of 1967, the Vietnam War was costing the U.S. some $25 billion per year, and disillusionment was beginning to reach greater sections of the taxpaying public. More casualties were reported in Vietnam every day, even as U.S. commanders demanded more troops. Under the draft system, as many as 40,000 young men were called into service each month, adding fuel to the fire of the anti-war movement. Heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali was one of the more prominent Americans who resisted the draft system, declaring himself a conscientious objector and earning a prison sentence (later overturned) and a three-year ban from boxing. On October 21, 1967, one of the most prominent anti-war demonstrations took place, as some 100,000 protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial; 30,000 of them continued in a march on the Pentagon later that night. After a brutal confrontation with the soldiers and U.S. Marshals protecting the building, hundreds of demonstrators were arrested. One of them was the author Norman Mailer, who chronicled the events in his The Armies famous book of the Night, published the following year to widespread acclaim. By early February 1968, a Gallup poll showed only 35 percent of the population approved of Johnson’s handling of the war and 50 percent disapproved (the rest had no opinion). Joining the anti-war demonstrations by this time were members of the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War, many of whom were in wheelchairs and on crutches. The sight of these men on television throwing away the medals they had won during the war did much to win people over to the anti-war cause. After many New Hampshire primary voters rallied behind the anti-war Democrat Eugene McCarthy, Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. Vice President Hubert Humphrey accepted the Democratic nomination in August in Chicago, and 10,000 anti-war demonstrators showed up outside the convention building, clashing with security forces assembled by Mayor Richard Daley. Humphrey lost the 1968 presidential election to Richard M. Nixon, who had promised in his campaign to deal with the extreme elements of the population-namely the radicals and the hippies-more effectively than Johnson had. Nixon’s war policies divided the nation still further: In December 1969, the government instituted the first U.S. draft lottery since World War II, inciting a vast amount of controversy and causing many young men to flee to Canada to avoid conscription. Tensions ran higher than ever, spurred on by mass demonstrations and incidents of official violence such those at Kent State in May 1970, when National Guard troops shot into a group of protesters demonstrating against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, killing four students. By the time the war finally ended, after North Vietnamese troops captured Saigon in 1975, the plaintive anti-war slogan â€Å"What are we fighting for?† seemed a prophecy come true, as veterans returned home from Vietnam to find their own nation still bitterly divided. My Lai Massacre On March 16, 1968, a group of U.S. soldiers attacked the South Vietnamese village of My Lai, believed to be a Communist stronghold, and killed between 175 and 400 civilians as well as committing rape and other crimes. U.S. helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson and two crewmen, who were flying a reconnaissance mission over My Lai, saw the dead bodies and stopped to investigate. In the process, they managed to rescue a group of Vietnamese civilians from American troops. Although Thompson reported the incident to his superiors, the American public didnt learn about it until over a year later, after a former soldier named Ronald L. Ridenhour wrote letters about what happened at My Lai to President Richard Nixon and other government officials. Ridenhour had found out about the events a month after they occurred from soldiers who were there. The Army eventually launched an investigation that led to the conviction of platoon leader Lt. William L. Calley, Jr., for the murder of 22 unarmed men, women and children. In 1971, Calley was sentenced to life in prison, which was later reduced to 10 years. Ultimately, he served three years under house arrest. The My Lai massacre left many Americans further disillusioned about the Vietnam War. People were horrified that U.S. soldiers had committed atrocities against innocent civilians and were angered at the potential military cover-up, as well as the fact that Lt. Calley was the only person convicted for the murders. Music and Hippies The American music scene during the first part of the 1960s was dominated by male vocalists such as Elvis Presley, Motown artists like Diana Ross & The Supremes and folk performers such as Bob Dylan with their acoustic-based protest songs. By the mid-1960s, though, psychedelic rock had taken root as an intrinsic part of the growing hippie movement. The Flower Power generation was interested in freedom and self-expression and the kind of mind-altering experiences that could be achieved through the use of psychedelic drugs such as marijuana and LSD. Psychedelic rock, which often used electronic sound effects and was sometimes influenced by music from India, attempted to recreate and enhance the feelings resulting from hallucinogenic drug use. Groups including Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin and Big Brother & the Holding Company were pioneers of psychedelic rock. They all lived in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, which became the epicenter of the hippie scene. The Beatles were at the height of their popularity throughout the 1960s. After bursting onto the scene in their native England in 1962, the band made its first appearance on American television in 1964, on The Ed Sullivan Show, and generated a massive audience. By the second half of the decade, the band’s pop rock sound had become more experimental and psychedelic. In June 1967, the Beatles released their eighth album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band, considered one of the most important records in rock history. Many of the album’s hit songs, such as â€Å"With a Little Help From My Friends† and â€Å"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds† were allegedly filled with drug references. One non-musician who was an important part of the ’60s music scene was concert promoter Bill Graham, whose San Francisco auditorium, The Fillmore, became a major venue for psychedelic rock groups such as Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Grateful Dead and Big Brother & the Holding Company, among others. In 1968, Graham opened the Fillmore East, which became a showcase for counterculture musicians in New York City. In June 1967, the Monterey International Pop Music Festival, the first widely promoted rock fest, took place in California. Over 200,000 people attended the event, considered a highlight of San Francisco’s â€Å"Summer of Love.† Jimi Hendrix and The Who made their first big U.S. performances at the festival, which also showcased performers such as Janis Joplin, Otis Redding and Ravi Shankar. John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas, who helped organize the festival, wrote a song, intended as a fest advertisement, called â€Å"San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).† Sung by Scott McKenzie, â€Å"San Francisco† became a Flower Power anthem.Monterey was a precursor to the Woodstock Festival, which took place in August 1969 on a 600-acre farm in Bethel, New York. An estimated half a million young people turned up for the event, which featured the key musicians of the time, including Hendrix, Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, The Who, Joan Baez, Sly and the Family Stone and Crosby, and Stills Nash & Young, among others. Woodstock later came to be viewed as one of the ultimate events of the hippie era. 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City Controversy surrounded the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City before the Games even began. Athletes were concerned about Mexico City’s high altitude and thin air. Human rights activists were outraged when the Mexican military opened fire on thousands of college students during a campus protest in Mexico City shortly before the opening of the XIX Olympiad. After the Games began, one of the most notable events was the Black Power salute by two African-American athletes during their medal ceremony. On October 16, 1968, Tommie Smith, the gold medal winner in the men’s 200-meter race, and his team member John Carlos, the bronze medalist in the same event, stepped up to the podium shoeless and wearing black socks, civil rights buttons and one black glove each. The lack of shoes and black socks were meant to symbolize poverty among African Americans. When â€Å"The Star Spangled Banner† was played, Smith and Carlos bowed their heads and each raised a fist in the air, in a gesture of protest against racism in America. Australian Peter Norman, the 200-meter silver medalist, wore a human rights badge on the podium as a sign of solidarity. International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage, who believed the political gesture was inappropriate for the Olympic Games, an event meant to be free of politics, suspended Smith and Carlos from the U.S. Track and Field team and barred them from the Olympic Village. Back home in America, Smith and Carlos faced criticism and even death threats for their actions. However, others praised the men, both of whom went on to graduate from San Jose State, play professional football and later become track coaches. Robert F. Kennedy Robert Francis Kennedy, the crusading U.S. attorney general, senator from New York and presidential candidate, was instrumental in helping protect and shape civil rights law in America during the 1960s. Kennedy, born November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachusetts, attended Harvard University and University of Virginia Law School and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He served as U.S. attorney general during the presidential administration (1961-63) of his elder brother John F. Kennedy. As attorney general, Bobby Kennedy championed social justice causes and later helped draft the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Kennedy announced his presidential candidacy in March 1968 and spoke out against urban poverty and the Vietnam War during his short-lived campaign. In the early hours of June 5, 1968, after giving a speech to his supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Kennedy, a father of 11, was shot by Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Bishara Sirhan. Kennedy died the next day and was buried near John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery. Democratic National Convention Politics turned violent when local police clashed with anti-war demonstrators and journalists at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which took place in Chicago from August 26 to August 29. The convention, held to select a Democratic nominee for the U.S. presidency, occurred during an already tumultuous year that had seen the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as growing disillusionment with the Vietnam War by many Americans. During the convention, Democrats were divided over Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, an anti-war candidate, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who was associated with President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War policies. In a symbolic gesture, political activist Abbie Hoffman and his fellow Yippies nominated a pig called Mr. Pigasus for commander-in-chief. Humphrey won the nomination, but would go on to lose in the general election to Republican Richard Nixon. Following the convention, Democrats instituted reforms in the nomination process which overhauled the methods for delegation selection and put greater emphasis on primaries. hicago Mayor Richard Daley, a powerful, hardheaded figure known to dislike hippies, vowed to use whatever means necessary to control the crowds of demonstrators who had threatened to shut down the convention. Daley ordered a large police presence, instituted an 11 p.m. curfew and refused to grant permits for rallies and marches. The police took an aggressive stance, attacking and clubbing protestors and journalists on a nightly basis outside the convention hall and in nearby Lincoln and Grant parks. The violence was broadcast on national television, stunning Americans and leaving a black mark on the city of Chicago. Remarkably, no one was killed. A group of protestors that included Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden and Black Panther Bobby Seale and became known as the â€Å"Chicago Eight,† were arrested and charged with conspiracy to incite a riot. The men, later referred to as the â€Å"Chicago Seven† when Seale was tried separately, were ultimately acquitted or had their convictions overturned.

Luncheon on the Grass by Manet essays

Luncheon on the Grass by Manet essays Edouard Manet was a French painter who was born on January 23, 1832 and died on April 30, 1883. He was an expert when it came to approaching modern-life subjects in his work, filling the gap between the art movement's realism and impressionism. After painting "Luncheon on the Grass" (1863) Manet received a great deal of media attention. While a nude in a classical setting was considered acceptable, one nude in a contemporary setting was not acceptable. Savaged by the critics, "Luncheon on the Grass" caused a public scandal. Influenced by the painting "Judgment of Paris" by Raphael, Manet featured a naked woman with clothed men. The female's body appears luminous and her gaze is directed towards the viewer. Manet wanted the viewer's attention drawn directly towards the nude female's body. The meaning of this piece of art that Edouard Manet intended was that just because a nude female is casually sitting beside two fully clothed men doesn't mean that the two men's attention will be to wards the nude woman. The two men accompanying the woman seem to be ignoring the woman as they are engaged in a deep conversation. They seem to not be at all astonished at the woman's presence by their posture and facial expressions. Manet executed the characters in this painting like they were supernaturally present. The woman in the background bathing in the stream also seems ignorant or comfortable by the other nude woman sitting with the two men. She appears like she is floating. There is an atmosphere of informal familiarity in his work. Each character in this painting is sitting in a very relaxed manner. The men for example are reclining casually, while the way the women are sitting is also in an uninhibited manner, obviously not a way that a lady would regularly sit, especially in nude. She looks quite comfortable the way she is sitting though. She has one leg drawn up and the other leg relaxed, lying down. The woman's hand is holding her chin as...

Should Race be a Consideration in College Admissions essays

Should Race be a Consideration in College Admissions essays A compelling argument against using race as a consideration in college admissions is that everyone has something different about them, if one looks hard enough, and so anyone could claim minority status in some way. To use individual traits of arbitrary choice does not make sense, as this writer notes, "Individualism cannot be defined via individuating or important traits. The principle of individualism is really meant to capture the completely different idea that people should be judged only by traits they choose. That is why race, an involuntary, immutable trait, is an improper basis for judgment" (Levin, 1997, p. 338). One cannot choose one's race, but one can choose other traits to excel at, and so, traits that are chosen and agreed on should be used as considerations for college admissions, such as GPAs, athletic and social abilities, membership in extracurricular activities, and test scores. These are all attributes that students have some input and control over, and these, not traits that cannot be chosen and acted upon, should be used to ensure everyone gets an equal chance at education and advancement. The weakness here is that those students who do not choose to work on themselves may not gain admission; while the strength is that those students who work hard will have a better Eliminating standardized testing is also a way to eliminate race as a basis for college admissions. Standardized tests measure nothing but standard learning. Each individual is different, and should be evaluated on those differences, rather than what they have in common with everyone else. Standardized testing is also suspect as to really giving a balanced view of actual learning. Another writer states, "The overriding conclusion is neither new nor earthshaking: in crafting a college admissions policy, tests serve as useful, but far from perfect, tools" (Zwick, 1999, p. 320). ...