20
Dec
2018

Bessie Smith

categories: Uncategorized
  1. Edward Albee conveys messages when he separates people by things like race, age, gender, or politics. He is saying that people are different, and because they are different, they automatically put themselves into different groups. People of certain colors stay together, and people of certain politics stay together, and people of different ages stay together, and the same for people of different genders. He is saying that people will always find a way to separate themselves, and it will always be that way.
  2. He is saying that people care more about themselves than others. They also care for their specific group of people, not other groups. For example, the Intern didn’t care that Bessie died, he only cared that he didn’t save her and that he could get fired. The nurse didn’t care either, she only cared that the Intern could be in trouble, in fact, she was laughing about it. This can show why people in that time period had a problem with race. They didn’t care what the other races were going through, so they didn’t want to change it.
  3. It was relevant then because she was a popular singer. She had just died a bad death at a young age. It is relevant now because we can reflect and see that she could have been saved if people didn’t care about her race. People in 2018 do think about how it was a tragic young death, but they also think about how people were so blinded by her race, so they didn’t even care to help her.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/blues-singer-bessie-smith-killed-in-mississippi-car-wreck-is-buried

https://www.biography.com/people/bessie-smith-9486520

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZVD8QqNoak 

 

Image result for bessie smith

 

18
Nov
2018

Go Deeper on Race

categories: Uncategorized

Race is a modern idea: “Ancient societies, like the Greeks, did not divide people according to physical distinctions, but according to religion, status, class, even language. The English language didn’t even have the word ‘race’ until it turns up in a 1508 poem by William Dunbar referring to a line of kings.”

To go deeper on this quote, you can tell that race, or racism did not even exist until fairly recently. You can tell that ‘race’ is a social construct meant to label, categorize, and separate people. Certain races were not ‘supposed’ to be lower than another race. For example, white people are not ‘supposed’ to be any more important than any other race. It has not been this way since the beginning of time. This whole separation with race is fairly recent, so you know that is it made up. To go further, the word ‘race’ didn’t even exist in English until 1508, letting us know that the lines that separate different races are made up as well. People just use race to label and categorize people, when really, we are all just humans. The only thing that makes us different is our appearances.

 

LINK TO VIDEO