Black Boy Essays - Black Boy, Richard Wright, Racism, Free Essays

Black Boy Essays - Black Boy, Richard Wright, Racism, Free Essays Black Boy 3. Black Boy, Richard Wright Black Boy, is both an indictment of American racism and a narrative of the artist's development. As a child growing up in the Jim Crow South, Richard faced constant pressure to submit to white authority. However, even from an early age, Richard had a fierce spirit of rebellion. Had he lacked the resilience to be different despite the pressure to conform to social expectations, he would probably never have become an internationally renowned writer. The entire system of institutional racism was designed to prevent the American black's development of aspirations beyond menial labor. Racist whites were extremely hostile to black literacy and even more so to black Americans who wanted to make writing a career. However, Richard did not only face opposition to his dreams from racist whites. In many ways, his own family and the black community fiercely opposed his aspirations. His grandmother, a strict, illiterate Seventh Day Adventist, considered reading and writing about anything other than God sinful. Richard's peers considered him silly and unrealistic and maybe dangerous. Throughout his childhood, Richard suffered violence at the hands of his family for daring to rebel against his assigned role of humble silence. In Black Boy, he often charges the black community with perpetuating the agenda of white racism. Throughout his childhood and adulthood, Richard reacted with bitter contempt toward what he saw as the submission of other black people to white authority. Wright has often been criticized for failing to acknowledge or appreciate the richness of the American black community. However, his personal experiences clearly affected his relationship with it. Just as he suffered abuse and hostility from his own family, so did he receive little comfort from the larger black community. Wright constantly clashed with what he saw as Black American submission, and, for personal reasons, clashed with all religious dogmatism. The black community reacted to his rebellion in kind, and Richard suffered intense isolation and loneliness during the formative years of his life. He did not understand until later that his family and the black community discouraged his rebellion because pragmatic submission to the expectations of racist whites was a means to ensure the collective survival of the community. A rebellious act of one individual not only represented a threat to his or her life but also to the lives of his or her family and the black community as a whole. This tension, between the need to conform for survival and the need to rebel in order to achieve individual and community dreams, is one that animated Wright's life and his autobiography. In the book, Richard lays bare the paranoia and difficulty of being a black man in America, even the supposedly non-racist America of the North. When he fled from the south to Chicago, Wright suddenly entered a new environment: The culture was more tolerant, but lingering beneath was a latent racism. Richard found that the fear of uncertainty engendered by this racism, by the constant subconscious knowledge that blacks in America were second class citizens, could drive many American blacks to submit to white authority simply because it offered the security of knowing what to expect. In the North, Richard could sit next to white man on public transportation, and he could even accuse a white co-worker of spitting in the food at a restaurant where he worked. However, for a long while, Richard did not know how to act. He, like many blacks, feared committing an offense that might lead to the revocation of the meager rights they had finally achieved. Richard's search for belonging eventually brought him to Communism. But just as Wright found insufficient the dictates of the black community and of religion, he soon came to find the paranoia, fear, pettiness, and dogmatism of the communist party to be too much. He agreed with Communist political philosophy but not with its practice. Wright's search for self, a theme that runs throughout his life of rebellion

Free Personal Strengths and Weakness Essay Example

Free Personal Strengths and Weakness Essay Example I believe one of my personal strengths in communication is that I can talk to just about anyone. I enjoy talking with people. In communication, my strength would be that I have the ability to listen as well as respond. I enjoy having conversation with people of different cultures, because it gives me a chance to learn more about their lifestyle. I have learned to communicate well with people, because I am an outgoing person. I communicate better one on one. I have a weakness with communication when it comes to having to speak to a large group of people. I become very nervous, and will sometimes forget what I wanted to say. My weakness in communication is also when I have to speak in front of the class, or in front of a very large group of people I become nervous, because my weakness of thinking that they are more focused on me than on the information that I will be presenting. I work at that weakness by having the personal strength to try to make the presentation enjoyable so that the focus will not be so much on the speaker but the information be presented to the group. I have learned through the years that it is important to stay focused on your strengths and not your weaknesses and to realize that for the most part everybody else is probably just as nervous as I am. I have strength in the fact that I can talk about most subjects very freely. I try to communicate just the point I am trying to make and have the point understandable to those who are listening. Communication for me is easy depending on the topic being discussed. I sometimes have a weakness in the fact that I may be too honest with my answer and do not think before answering. I realize that when you are communicating with people, they really do not want the truth because it hurts and is offensive. I find that it is much easier for me to communicate, when I have knowledge of the conversation being discussed. I am very weak when it comes to starting a conversation and leading the discussion. I will avoid a conversation as much as possible when I have to present the information to be discussed. In communication, I am also weak in the area that I will choose to listen more that participate. I also have a weakness in my non-verbal communication skills. The weakness is that sometimes my body language will give a different answer than what I would have spoken. When I am using non-verbal communication as a point of contact I will point out or agree to something from just listening to the topic being discussed. I focus on my non-verbal communication skills, because I want the non-verbal to be just as understandable as the verbal. My body language must not present a different communication than intended. With non-verbal communication, I try to give more eye contact so that there is no misunderstanding of the communication intended. I find nodding your head helps in non-verbal communication, because a nod can say a lot. In my communication skills, I have learned that if I highlight the strengths. Then the weaknesses would not be so obvious. In having communicated with all different types of people, I once was told that if you stop and think for five seconds before you speak, your communication skills would present themselves in a most intelligent manner. Communication comes somewhat easy for me, because I like to talk, but just talking and not communicating would become a weakness. I try to always have something to communicate to other people that would be beneficial. Whether communicating verbally or non-verbally your actions will for the most part, represent how you are feeling about a particular subject or discussion. When it is possible always, try to communicate verbally and have the person you are communicating with acknowledge that they understand what you are saying. Communication, verbally or non-verbally is a very powerful tool and when you understand your strengths and weaknesses in that area you will be able to communicate much more efficiently with people. When you are communicating, with different types of people you will be able to decide if verbal or non-verbal communication would be the best approach according to their logic and the logic of the situation and surrounding environment. You can order a custom essay, term paper, research paper, thesis or dissertation on Personal Strengths and Weakness topics at our professional custom essay writing service which provides students with custom papers written by highly qualified academic writers. High quality and no plagiarism guarantee! Get professional essay writing help at an affordable cost.

Characteristics of Public Health Summary Measures Essay

Characteristics of Public Health Summary Measures - Essay Example Additionally, it will indicate how these characteristics contribute to and improve our understanding of diseases burden in the population. One of the characteristics that I believe a public health summary measures should possess is absolute or relative change. This should be in term of health status for a given period of time. For example, if the mortality rate is 10 percent in a given location for a certain month, then in the next month it increases to 12 percent, this indicates an absolute increase infant mortality (Zack, 1993). Measures should be taken to ensure that there is a reduction in relative change in infant mortality which is a useful measure of the public health. This will reduce the cost of living since the fund that would be used to cater for infant mortality will be used in other economic growth activities and increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The second characteristic is validity, which is a measure that indicates the health status of an individual like a report of health indicating as excellent, good, and poor among others means of rating. This means a record for this validity should be kept where it reflects a change in the health status of individuals (Murray, 1994). This characteristic will be of importance since when one visit a health care then his or her status will be known and intensive care will be undertaken depending on the report. The third characteristic is that population should be sensitive to major health changes for example in the case where alcohol and tobacco taxation is increased. This means the reduction in the consumption of alcohol and tobacco in the location, will be a measure to improve the health of individuals by addressing mental health, chronic diseases among others (McKenna and Michaud, 2005).  Ã‚