Author: Bleron Suma

After reviewing/watching the YouTube video, ‘’Viruses vs. Bacteria | What’s the Difference’’, I was enlighten by the extensive differences between a Virus and bacterial infection. In the video that was presented, Dr. Finch expresses it into detail about how both of the virus and bacteria microscopic and can cause severe illnesses to human population, plants, and animals. During the Corona Virus (COVID-19) spreading faster than ever, it is very important to for people to stay indoors. This is quarantine when residents stay indoors to stop the spread of any bacterial infections. This will help people keep distance from another and stop from making contact. I started to realize to understand that when people don’t wash their hands and touch surfaces, this action will make the virus move from people to people.

Bleron Suma

After analyzing Professor Edna Greene Medford’s lecture “Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation”, I was able to obtain a better understanding of President Lincoln’s percussion on the freedom of African Americans. Lincoln desired to free African Americans from slavery because he didn’t understand those who would claim the promise of the declaration of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for themselves but not for others. He understood that if people weren’t going to fight for the lives of African Americas then he would have to do all he could alongside blacks to gain their freedoms and preserve the union. I knew that President Lincoln was a strong advocate for the black’s freedom, but I was unaware that he represented an African American woman’s court case. He argued that selling African Americans in Illinois was illegal due to Illinois being a free state.

In the one of the sections of her writing, she illustrates  into Lincoln’s actions to invite these former slaves and inform them that he was able to get congress to acquire funds to ship black people once freed to a whole other country. This doesn’t add up. Why would President Lincoln insist they fight in a war for their freedom in America just to be shipped to another country for their efforts? Knowing this, it made me question Professor Medford’s statement when she says that Lincoln did not want to originally include black men in the military because they wouldn’t be strong enough to stand up against their former owners on the battlefield. She then states, “He found out very quickly that black men were anything but cowards and that they were spoiling for a fight”. I believe he was very disappointed in what America has become and he knew that even with time African Americans will still be wrongly treated within America, but he wanted to ensure that equality was written truthfully within the lines of the constitution.

Bleron Suma

Word count: 430

 

After analyzing Hannah-Jone’s views on slavery in “The 1619 Project” and expanding my ideas of other writers’ views by reading Wilentz’,” American Slavery and the Relentless Unforeseen” I was able to see understand sides main points. Wilentz makes a point that it was not inevitable that slavery would be abolished. He made it clear that it was a great fight between abolitionists and antievolutionists due to their differing views to reach an end of slavery. He doesn’t go into the struggles of slaves in America, but he expresses the trials and tribulation that people went through to make adjustment in America. It was not only slaves or freed slaves that fought for the rights of African Americans, but it was also a human effort that sought for dramatic change. In Hannah Jones’s writing, she makes it seem as though the origins of America were completely bad when it came to the treatment of African Americans. She doesn’t visualize the shade of gray within it all. Wilentz makes a good point that America had a turning point within the 1740s and the 1750s. This was known as the anti-slavery movement. Within this timeline America got to “look at themselves in the mirror”, they got to see the monster that they had become from the dehumanization of people based on race. It was an awakening for some of humanity to see the evil that was within the ideals of slavery. 

The battle for the abolishment of slavery was not planned, it came quite abruptly. The power that slavery had, began to weaken and seventeen years down the line of this movement, the ideals of slavery began to lose it’s significant and change for African Americans began to slowly take come into effect. Wilentz quoted, “the neglect of historical understanding of the anti-slavery impulse, especially in its early decades, alters how we view not just our nation’s history but the nation itself”. This is significant because it made me think of the views that Hannah Jones presented within her essay. Although Hannah Jones and Sean Wilentz have never experienced the acts of slavery firsthand, they both have great knowledge on the topic. I believe that Wilentz gives a more neutral statement on the topic in comparison to Hannah Jones. In a way, Hannah Jones paints America as the “evil supervillain” in the story of African Americans. The people that wrote the constitution may have failed to include African Americans, but people have worked remarkably hard to make up for the wrongs that have been emplaced.

Hannah Jones believes the leading role of an African American in the U.S is to achieve a goal of freedom and equality. I conclude this is true and it’s still a goal now, not just for African Americans. You will think in 2020 we are more structured and modernized, but some people are still ignorant. Previous it was worse than it is now but now African Americans have so many stereotypes that they all label as a thug, nothing has changed. They are still being killed, for example, there have been a lot of cases where police officers have killed unarmed African American because they thought they were a thug and were scared. No matter what we do it will always be the same because this country needs to blame someone or look down on people. This country might not have started slavery as it quoted in “After All, Didn’t America Invent Slavery” illustrated by Tom Lindsay but they continued it. Immigration is a big topic; immigrants are starting to become a bigger target to the U.S since Trump became president. These past years awakened me. I couldn’t grasp how close-minded people are. They were waiting for someone to give them the free pass to be able to attack people by telling them to go back to their country. People always need someone to blame for their behavior. In some way, it wasn’t Trump’s fault for people being racist because they were always there. Trump showed us, people, true colors. I find this topic so important to me because my whole family is affected by this. Seeing a family being torn apart, it doesn’t matter if it is not my own family, but I feel like it is. For families being torn apart will not benefit anyone in anyway only in a negative way. There will be tons of families being torn apart because of their color and what they believe in. This concept has a big effect on families all over the world. Nobody should be affected just because on their skin color and religion. There should a be a valid reason for taking families in.

Bleron Suma

Reflection

 

 

In the story Drown by Diaz, he shows a big portion of Yunior’s relationships. He understands his connection and view of them, this view the person he will become later in life. For instance, Yuniors’s relationship with his mother is very different from the one he has with his papa and brother. Yunior and his mother have a close bond with each other.  Yunior’s mother thought the course of the reading try to protect Yunior from his father in aggressive ways, for example in the chapter “Fiesta”, Yunior understands he is not allowed to eat before getting into the car because he gets car sick and throws up, if this happens the father will grab him up and yell at him. The mother will interfere in the fight almost as if it was second nature to try protect Yunior from his father’s aggressiveness and try to take some of the blame. Yunior also tries to be protect his mother from the father, specifically of her feeling sad or discouraged. When Papi takes Yunior and Rafa out to meet  his “Puerto Rican mistress” and later that day when his mom questioned him what’s wrong he does not tell her about the mistress because he doesn’t know how his mom will take the new but more importantly because there is no right way to bring up something like that and not tear apart what’s left of his family as well as his moms happiness. Even though Yunior and his mother are close their mother-son relationship changes depending on the situation or setting.

Yunior relationship of his father and brother is more as a model opposed to a support system like his mom. His Father and brother both express this aggressive role and Yunior values them even though throughout the reading they both don’t treat him ok.  Growing up with Rafa as his “older” male role model, he was always trying to have his brother approval. In “Ysreal”, He tells of wanting to hang with him and his friend and be seen as an equal even Rafa barely speaks to them when they are home. In “Ysreal” Rafa treats Yunior polite and lets him hang around him more even telling him story. Yunior hangs on to every word of Rafa’s story even though he does not totally understand what Rafa is telling him as if the story as some secret life lesson in it that Yunior will need to know for later on in life. Yuniors father was absent for a big part of his early childhood as well as very aggressive with Yunior even so Yunior care about what his father thinks about him and does not want to disappoint him. His Father and brother constantly thought the book pick on Yunior. To Yunior these were his examples of how a male should act or showcase to the world. And later on, as the book goes on you can see that Yunior begins to showcase more of his father and brother’s aggressive behavior then of his mom soft and loving behavior.