Monday, October 27, 2014

Hate, A big thing in our way of success


In the United States, people commit hate crimes for a multitude of reasons. Hate crimes are commited because of race, religion, ethnicity, sexuallity and disability. However, according to The FBI Uniform Crimes Reports, 54% of all hate crimes in America are committed against blacks, making them the top victims of hate crimes.  The KKK is just one example of an organization that commits hate crimes against black Americans.  According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, religion is the second highest ranking hate crime.  9/11 is arguably one of the worst religious/cultural/political hate crimes ever committed.  Hate crimes are also committed for reasons of ethnicity, sexuality, and disability.  Violent hate crimes are rooted in a fear of differences.  Tolerance for others could mean peace for all.    

The vast majority of hate crime offenders are white males. Other races also commit hate crimes. More white males commit hate crimes than Arabs, Asians, Hispanics and Native Americans combined according to  www.portlandmercury.com.  People who feel and think they are more superior may be offenders.  There is also a big fear factor of indifferences.   It doesn't matter who commits hates crimes, or who the victim is, it's always wrong and it's always about hate.


Monday, October 20, 2014

A memoir is a historical account or biography written from personal knowledge or special sources. They are very deep, emotional and a lot of the time very sad, however like every story, they have there moments that can be positive. For example, Ishmael Beah's "A long way gone" A collection of memories about some things when he was a kid which are extremely sad because of the traumatizing childhood he had being a child soldier. This is the sad part of the book however there is another side to it. Beah was forced into becoming a child soldier when he was  only 9 but before that he was very happy. This statement from the book confirms that. "My imagination at ten years old did not have the capacity to grasp what had taken away the happiness of the refugees."(Beah 6) This is an interesting point not only that he had nothing to do with the war when he was 10 but that he could not even comprehend what it did to others. Obviously Beah had a conflict begin within himself when he got involved in the war. Like several other memoirs like this one, characters have convict with themselves. For instance, in the book "Two kisses for Maddy" by Matt Logelin, one of the main reasons why he wrote the book is because he feels like he will not be a good enough father to take care of his daughter after his wife dies during child birth. That itself is self conflict. However another reason Logelin Wrote this book is to get things in a way off his chest, and so his daughter would understand when she is older. It is a story with underlying conflict, love and hope. These books are great examples of memoir because of there the many similar qualities.

In order to write a memoir you must be a great story teller. It is baffling that people from all over the world write them no matter how intellectually advanced they are. Humans have a nack for reflecting on themselves, and telling others about it. an example of this is the memoir called "A stolen life" by Jaycee dugard, in this memoir Dugard gets abducted from a school bus stop near her house for 18 years. She reflects apon every thing that happened to her, bad and horrible, she still tells a story. It takes courage to tell every thing that happened to her in that situation, but she still talks about it. One of the reasons is to let go of it emotionally. Some evidence from the book is "I had to stay in the same place id just been raped in. I didn't know  at the time that is what it is called. the word 'rape' was not in my vocabulary (Dugard 162) It shows the sheer emotion of this memoir, and a look into the horror that was Dugards life. It gives a peak to what an immence amount of courage it took to write a whole book with countless quotes just like this one. However they were not all sad. For example "I don't feel like rage inside of me thats building… I refuse to let my preditor to have that, he can't have that, he didn't get all of me." (Dugard 44) She takes away that nothing can break her after all that. Most of these people that wrote memoirs have probably come from from this state of mind or took it away after writing one.