Research

Since the last time I posted a proposal on my topic, I've talked to several people about this issue. Generally speaking, people seemed interested in this topic as much as I was. Not everyone seemed to agree with me. This one adult who I talked to was conflicted about the issue of younger people like teens getting an abortion.

Abortion

I feel strongly about how women should be able to choose whether or not she wants to keep the baby. Now, I understand that there are consequences where people around the mother have rights to be against the abortion. However, the mother should make the final decision and I think it is people who are around her's job to make her feel comfortable with the choice. When a woman is pregnant, she is already stressed and unstable that I think people should be aware and be thoughtful. I can't even imagine how it would feel like to be pregnant and feel like I don't have any choice but stuck to have the baby. This is something that women should be able to choose because no matter what other people say about it, it does affect the mother the most.

Ellis

I think Ellis's story is very powerful. It gives people who have prejudice a different view or a chance to see a different view of something that he or she is prejudice against. There are several reasons why this story is so powerful. One of them is because it is a personal story, just like Incidents in the life of a slave girl. However, I do not believe that there could be a “solution” because of the fact that not everyone could relate to Ellis’s story. Also, just because someone could relate to his story does not mean he or she will change and get rid of their judgment about certain groups. However, this story encourages people to interact with people who are different from us, which, I think, is a good start to getting rid of prejudice.

yoshino

By “the mainstream is a myth” Yoshino means that the “mainstream” is falsely represented. It is because people need to hide their differences in order to fit in the society. Since everyone is hiding his or her differences, there isn’t any truth.
Yoshino gives various examples to persuade the audience. The examples vary from general ideas to specific cases of discrimination of people for being different. I would say that his reasoning is persuasive because it is personal. He does not only give one general example, but he gives few different specific examples so that different people could relate easily, which makes his argument even stronger to appeal to the audience.
I would define “mainstream” as something that is not deep but only the image of what people see on the surface. Perhaps similar to when you’re at an art museum, when you’re just glancing over at an art piece would be “mainstream”, when you could take more time and really observe what is happening in the piece.

freedom

Mrs. Bruce offers to buy Linda and give her freedom. Linda disagrees with Mrs. Bruce’s idea and turns down the offer. However, Mrs. Bruce buys Linda anyways, and Linda was finally free. At the end of the book, Linda has mixed feelings about this because of three different reasons. One is that she gained her freedom in a rather unusual way, which seems to make her uncomfortable because now she owes Mrs. Bruce. Overall, she seems pretty happy to be free. The reason number two is because she can’t erase the past. Even though she is a free woman, she still has to face prejudices. Also, she can’t forget what happened to her as a slave and how people treated her and her family. Lastly, the last reason why she has mixed feelings is because being free does not necessary mean that she has a “normal” life. at the end of the book, she briefly talks about how she does not have a house where she lives with her children. She is missing the “normal” bits of life, which leads her to feel sad about her life, but at the same time she is free at last.

Passage

Really, any passage where she stops narrating the story and starts reasoning with the readers why she has done certain things or explain how she felt at the moment, she is using her credibility. The very last two paragraphs of the book is an example of a passage in which Jacobs is using her own honesty to establish her credibility. She clearly addresses the audience by writing “readers” so that all the readers know that she is directly speaking to us. By using direct language, her writing becomes more personal. And by making it personal, the readers become more attached to the story, and it is easier for the readers to sympathize with her. She establishes her credibility by talking about how she gained her freedom, which indicates that she was a slave. She does this because knowing that the writer has a legit credibility encourages the readers to believe the writer.

Prejudices

The “socialization process” is something people shape based on their beliefs, morals, attitudes, and perceptions of the culture and subculture, including religion, nationality and social class. Young kids do not usually have prejudices, however, it is because of their parents who make comments about things and how they see things, kids often resemble their parents. Because the parents are the ones who are in charge of the kids, parents are ALWAYS right.
I believe that prejudices or any other beliefs are “instilled” in people’s mind. People’s background, environment (or surrounding), and most importantly the people surrounding are the ones who instill prejudices. Because people adapt and adjust to each other and their environment, they observe and listen to what people do and what people say, and they learn.

Douglas

In his speech, he successfully appeals to logos, ethos and pathos. He was a slave himself; therefore the audience is appealed to pathos. The subject evokes their emotions already, which is the ethos. Then, he does a good job of going step by step with the audience the reason why he doesn’t need to argue that slaves are “people”. One of his arguments was that slave owners “punish” slaves, which means that they force slaves to “think”, and reason. Only the humans can think and reason, which means that slaves are humans.

Jefferson

The image most of the students get of Jefferson is that he is a good man who achieved many things. He has done so many things for the country and he is considered one of the Founding Fathers. In the passage he described slaves as “animals”. However, when you see the picture of his descendents on page 82, there are people who are mixed, which indicates that he slept with his slaves. Jefferson said offensive things in the passage, and one would never imagine that he slept with the “thing” that he was describing. It seemed like he believed that there shouldn’t be an integration of races, however the picture contradicts that. I am a little bit disappointed to really figure out who he is and what he believed. He is different from what the textbooks and other texts made him to be.