I do not know of any specific examples of any of the people mentioned in the question referring to others as "Uncle Toms," but these men are certainly representative of the diversity of opinion among African-American political leaders at both the turn of the century (when DuBois and Washington had their disagreement) and the 1960s (when King and Malcolm X had theirs). DuBois' chief complaint about Washington was that his "accommodationist" strategy--accepting social discrimination in return for economic equality in the South--would not lead to real progress for African-Americans. Washington, on the other hand, thought that without economic progress, blacks would continue to be marginalized in every way that mattered in the United States. As for Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the former deemed King's strategy of nonviolence in search of political reform insufficient, though he did not really promote violence as is commonly believed. He also believed that King's message of racial cooperation was naive, and advocated African-American solidarity in the face of racial injustice. Other groups, like the young civil rights workers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) resented King's perceived control of the movement (many SNCC activists mockingly called him "de Lawd"). Robert Williams of Monroe, North Carolina, argued for "armed self-defense" in addition to nonviolent protest. Even King himself moved toward increasingly radical, fundamental social change in the years before his death. All of the above were skeptical of the legalistic approach taken by the NAACP. Ultimately, the movement for civil rights in the twentieth century was very complex, involving interaction between national leaders (who usually get the credit) and hundreds of thousands of local people (who are usually forgotten). Naturally such a multi-faceted movement would involve the kinds of disagreements referenced in the question.
Sunday, July 31, 2016
What challenges did Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. face?
Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 60's worked for desegregation, voting rights protection for African Americans, and an end to systemic racism all across America, but specifically in the South and in the major cities of the North.
They faced an entrenched culture of racism and a widespread set of laws and ordinances that enforced segregation, discrimination, and voter disenfranchisement. They faced police departments and local governments that were often in collusion with the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens' Councils, or would look the other way when racists would intimidate and beat activists. This was typified by the police department of Birmingham, Alabama, headed by Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor, who notoriously turned German shepherds and water cannons on children and students who were marching peacefully for desegregation.
Most seriously, Dr. King and his supporters faced the threat of serious injury and death. The KKK bombed many homes and churches during that time period, including Dr. King's. He personally received death threats by telephone and by letter. And in 1968, he died by assassination at the age of 39.
To face these monumental challenges, Dr. King openly relied on his faith as a Christian, especially when the threats and intimidation got him down. He talked about a particular moment during the Montgomery Bus Boycott when he was despondent because of the hate being directed at him and his family, in a speech called "Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool," which you can hear here:
His struggle wasn't in vain. He raised the issues of the Black community to national consciousness, helped win the Civil Rights Acts of 1964/1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and his speeches, sermons, and writings continue to inspire people all over the world to fight for the right thing regardless of the odds.
Workforce diversity is a valuable asset for any business that seeks a competitive advantage in the global economy. As an example, one of the...
Shlumberger is a company that presently works in more than 85 countries around the world, providing technological solutions for the oil and gas industry, a far-flung empire. This means it needs to have knowledge and understanding of many cultures, many languages, and many political and legal climates, as well as of geographical features, including weather and terrain, in many different places, and employees that are on the cutting edge creatively and technologically. The company clearly understands that workforce diversity addresses all of these needs, and thus it employs people of more than 140 different nationalities.
With a focus on workforce diversity, the company is able to function productively, efficiently, and intelligently in each country it serves, with workers who have local knowledge of customs, language, politics, laws, and geographical features. Companies that seek to enter a market without this powerful advantage are facing an uphill battle, since they are lacking in local knowledge and expertise. Furthermore, a company that embraces diversity is one that is drawing on a far greater pool of candidates than one which is not, and this implies that the company can choose the best and the brightest from all over the world, rather than restricting itself to a few sources of talent. This also enables the company to have a workforce that represents a multiplicity of perspectives, which is a key element in a problem-solving industry. The more perspectives that are brought to bear upon a problem, the more likely it is to be solved.
Saturday, July 30, 2016
What are some words in English that are not pronounced the way they look?
Many words in English are pronounced differently than they would be if they were pronounced according to the letters that appear in the word. This may be the result of letters that were once voiced but have now become silent or the result of importing words from foreign languages. One of the most prevalent patterns in the first category is the "ght" pattern at the end of words such as night, fight, light, sought, bought, fought, thought, caught, and brought. The /gh/ sound was once pronounced as a guttural sound in the back of the throat, but over the years the sound was lost, though the letters remained in the spellings. Sometimes the /gh/ sound changed to an /f/ sound, such as in laugh, tough, rough, and cough. Spellings can get even more confusing when the "gh" spelling is combined with a variant spelling of the long /a/ sound, "ei," resulting in words such as eight, freight, and weight.
Some words that came to English with their French spellings and pronunciations also contain silent letters and letter combinations that are pronounced differently from standard English pronunciations. Words in this category include tableaux, beau, hors d'oeuvre, Bearnaise, and plateau.
Some words begin with silent letters such as gnu, gnat, knee, knife, mnemonic, pneumonia, write, and psalm.
Other words that contain internal silent letters are doubt, debt, aisle, and muscle.
These are just some of the words in English that are not pronounced the way they are spelled.
What drug was Mrs. Dubose on in To Kill a Mockingbird?
Mrs. Dubose was addicted to morphine, a pain killer.
Mrs. Dubose is a horrible old woman who likes to shout insults at Scout and Jem as they walk by. One day she insults Atticus with racist remarks about his defense of Tom Robinson, and Jem gets stressed out and can’t take it anymore. Jem destroys all of Mrs. Dubose’s camellia flowers.
Atticus punishes Jem by requiring him to read to Mrs. Dubose every day. She sets an alarm clock timer and he reads to her for several weeks, reading a longer amount of time each day. One day, Atticus goes to see her and when he comes back he tells the children that she just died.
“Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict,” said Atticus. “She took it as a pain-killer for years. The doctor put her on it. She’d have spent the rest of her life on it and died without so much agony, but she was too contrary—” (Ch. 11)
Mrs. Dubose became addicted to morphine, and it is terribly painful. She wanted to wean herself off the drug, and she needed help to do it. When the children were reading to her, it was just to distract her. The alarm clock was the signal that she was going longer and longer without morphine, until eventually she did not take it at all.
“Did she die free?” asked Jem.
“As the mountain air,” said Atticus. “She was conscious to the last, almost.
Conscious,” he smiled, “and cantankerous. …” (Ch. 11)
Atticus tells Scout and Jem that Mrs. Dubose was one of the most courageous people he knew, and he wanted them to get to know her so they could see that real courage is “when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.” This is an important lesson for them to learn, because it is analogous to Atticus’s position with the trial. He knows that it is a hopeless case, and there is little chance of his winning because of the racism toward Tom Robinson. However, he still has to try.
How did Australia's geography impact social, political, and economic patterns?
Australia is very large and very remote from most of the rest of the world.
Both of those things may seem kind of obvious, but they had profound implications for how Australia developed.
For thousands of years, Aborigine populations were basically isolated from the rest of the world. We're not sure exactly how they got there in the first place, but what we do know is that they had very little contact with anyone else once they did. As a result their language and culture is very distinctive.
Fast forward to the early 17th century, when Dutch explorers found this huge island continent nobody had any records of. But no European settlements were established there for over a century; it was simply too far away.
Then in the late 18th century, Great Britain decided that this huge island continent would be a great place to leave the criminals they didn't know what else to do with. The fact that Australia was huge meant that they could easily fit as many people as necessary. The fact that it was remote meant that the criminals would have basically no chance of making it back to Great Britain on their own.
But when you put a bunch of people together for a long time, even if they were initially all criminals, they tend to start setting down roots and establishing towns that grow into cities and eventually building whole nations. Once this started happening in Australia, more migrants came from Britain, voluntarily for a change. Their remoteness from Britain gave them a significant amount of autonomy in developing their own political system, even though they remain to this day officially under the Crown of the United Kingdom.
Because most of Australia is desert, the British population became concentrated on the fertile east coast, especially the southeast coast. In the sad refrain of colonialism throughout history, when the British settlers found land they liked they claimed it, regardless of what the indigenous Aborigines thought about the matter. Fertile land was relatively scarce, and often fought over. (On the other hand, the abundance of fertile land in the United States didn't seem to stop conflicts from arising between colonists and Native Americans.)
Most of Australia's political institutions were borrowed from Britain, but some were also modeled on the United States, which gained independence around the time Australia started being colonized. One way their geography may have influenced these decisions is that travel from Australia to the US is actually faster than travel from Australia to the UK, because crossing the Pacific, while difficult, is still easier than crossing all the way around Asia and Africa up to Europe. (This was particularly true until the construction of the Suez Canal and then the invention of the airplane.)
As a result of this hybridization Australia has a parliamentary system, but with a Senate and House of Representatives like the US instead of a House of Commons and House of Lords like the UK. They have a Prime Minister rather than a President. Their highest court has 7 justices, compared to 9 in the US or 12 in the UK.
Australia's proximity to Southeast Asia has also influenced their cultural development, and there has been substantial trade and immigration between Australia and many Asian countries. In the 20th century this process greatly expanded, particularly due to the rapid economic development of Asian countries such as Japan and Korea. Today, there are substantial cultural and social influences from Asia in Australia, and Australia is tightly integrated into Asian trade networks.
Friday, July 29, 2016
How are doting parents addressed by the author?
Although it may sound like the author is speaking to us directly as Chapter 1 begins, we don't want to assume that the author and the narrator are the same person. So, let's consider instead how the narrator of Matilda addresses parents who dote on their children, and then you can take a pretty good guess as to whether those views are also held by the author.
The narrator spends the first six paragraphs of Chapter 1 talking about how terrible it is when parents dote on (spoil) their kids. This discussion is very funny, and enjoyable yet shocking for kids and parents to read. Let's take a close look:
"Even when [doting parents'] own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful."
This means that some parents have a kid who is a total monster, with awful behavior, and yet the parents still believe that the kid is "wonderful."
The narrator goes on to say that parents can be "blinded" by their love for their kids, and then these parents successfully lie to themselves about how smart their kids are. Having to hear these proud parents talk about their so-called brilliant kids makes the narrator want to throw up:
"'Bring us a basin! We're going to be sick!'"
This is funny, of course, but the narrator doesn't stop there. He describes how he'd like to deliver a reality check to parents like this by writing horribly insulting (yet true) things about their kids on their report cards. Here's an example of an insult he'd love to write about a stupid child whose parents believe she is smart:
"'Fiona has the same glacial beauty as an iceberg, but unlike the iceberg she has absolutely nothing below the surface.'"
In sum, the narrator addresses the subject of doting parents by exploring how annoying it is when they over-value their children and overestimate their children's intelligence, using humor and exaggeration.
But ultimately, all this discussion is just a way for the narrator to explain how terrible it is when parents don't care about their kids at all. All this humor, then, has been a lead-up to the assertion that "far worse than the doting ones" are the parents who aren't even interested in their kids.
That's when we meet Matilda, and that's when we understand the unfairness and tragedy of her parents' lack of interest in her.