Tuesday, December 17, 2019
How Nora was a victim and victimizer in A Dolls House by...
It is easy to forget how far our society has come in the last hundred years in recognizing the equality of all people. Often when we take a look into the past what we see is very shocking. Such is the case in a Doll House by Henrik Ibsen. Here we see Nora presented as a victim of her father and male dominated society; however she also plays the role of victimizer against her husband, family, and friends. As Nora takes both sides of the conflict we see how she is forced into both roles. Nora plays with Dr. Rank s emotions; though by accident, she does so more than she had intended. Nora becomes desperate for money at one point and intends to use her sex appeal and subtle charm to get some from Dr. Rank. Nora is in the process of flirtingâ⬠¦show more contentâ⬠¦We also see his demeaning behavior when he underestimates her ability to handle money. Herman Weigand points out that Torvald tells her in money matters she has inherited her father s disposition (Weigand 27). So Torvald s condescending language and names keep Nora in her place as a doll where he likes her to be. James Huneker put it best when he said It is Nora as an individual cheated of her true rights that the dramatists first depicts, for her marriage, as she discovers in the crisis, has been merely material and not that spiritual tie Ibsen insists upon as the only happy on in this relationship. (Huneker 64) Krogstad victimizes Nora in a very different way than her husband and father. Krogstad does not use his position of dominance as a man to control her. Instead he uses blackmail to manipulate Nora to his will. As we examine her situation Nora seems more a victim of circumstance here than of the not so evil will of her blackmailer. Each time Nora finds herself unable to help herself the problem is easily directly traced back to her husband, her father, and to the overbearing dominance of the male society. She tries to save the life of the man she thinks she loves and in doing so sees how she has become a victim of her own ignorance which has been brought upon her by the men in her life. Works Cited Hunker, James. Iconoclast a Book of Dramatist. New York: Charles
Monday, December 9, 2019
Observing a Scene free essay sample
A common place amongst this university to some would be the housing dormitories. As some may consider me as a loner, I consider myself someone who is keen of privacy. My dorm is a place where I can gather my thoughts, my emotions and grasp reality. Being new to Massachusetts, I could describe any place I gaze upon; all being a new sight. It is too bland of an experience to describe a park, a beach, or a garden, because everyone has painted their own unique pictures of these familiar experiences. So I chose the campus dormitories, well my dorm. The sights, sounds, feelings and smells that occur are just as remarkable as sitting in a park observing the life around me. Looking through my fifth floor window I can easily see two miles into the distance. The sun sets off an explosion of reds, blues, oranges and purples into the sky, that are visible to any naked eye. We will write a custom essay sample on Observing a Scene or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The red rooftops infiltrate my window screen and reflect off my mirror. The streetlights resemble stars that are masked by Salemââ¬â¢s inner city light pollution. The naked maple trees in the near distance are breaching over the multifamily homes; the abundant pine trees are full of life and blooming with greens and strength. Living in Florida for almost all of my life, I never experienced natureââ¬â¢s diversity. When the seasons change it is like watching a slow motion movie take place right before my eyes. The trees transform as the fall approaches. From lively green leaves and bushes turn into to red, orange and browns preparing the ambiance of fallââ¬â¢s serenity. The wind begins to pick up relinquishing summerââ¬â¢s heavy humidity. Lasting roughly three months, the warmth begins to diminish and the icy air begins to emerge from natureââ¬â¢s closet. Winters approaching and the lively, colorful leaves begin to disappear by the branch. Winter is here and the ambiance of the whole city has changed; especially when snow is expected. After a long winter night, the sun rises over those same roofs yet when the snow glistens it creates an image of a winter wonderland. To most, these mornings symbolize gruesome work. To those it is a burden to shovel up a pathway through the freshly fallen snow. Although through my inexperienced eyes, it is beautiful and quite peaceful in a way that stops time for a slight moment. I take a deep breath and the cold air just fills my body with a different life. There are these projects right behind my dorm and at all hours of the day I can hear laughter that the wind carried five stories up into my window penetrating my ears with the sound of innocence. Along with the bouncing of basketballs while they play on the court. There is this disgusting dump truck, which attracts all types of wildlife, right before the sun goes down you can hear the squawking of seagulls. Within the building, I can hear the diversity spread among the hundreds of students occupying Bowditch Hall. As they blast their music, their television, and argue on their phones. We have a large number of heavy walkers who seem to be stampeding right above my room like they are a herd of elephants, just before you drift to sleep. The many days during the early afternoons, the aroma of burnt popcorn coats this building like dust. You wake up to the crisp, cold air weighing down on your chest. To start what feels like, a never-ending day is a struggle. Gaining the motivation to take the first steps onto the lifeless, cold tile, makes you want to curl back up into bed and close your eyes, until you feel the vibration and loud bells ringing from your alarm clock. Taking those first steps of the morning making your way into the bathroom, you are bombarded with steam, it seems like everyone is up at 6:45 A. M all preparing for his or her day. It is too early in the morning for all the different fragrances. The mixture of body wash and shampoos begin to form a headache, the smell of roses, spearmint, lavender, sweet pea, and my favorite, coconut. They are all so vivid. I finish washing my face, go to my room and brew a nice large cup of strong hazelnut coffee. The smell infiltrates the air and it always wakes my roommate out of a dead sleep. I pour it into my to-go cup with a splash of cream and one sugar and storm out, realizing that I am five minutes late to class.
Sunday, December 1, 2019
Why Copywriters Journalists Just Canââ¬â¢t Get Along - The Writers For Hire
WHY COPYWRITERS AND JOURNALISTS JUST CANââ¬â¢T GET ALONG Versatile writers are hard to find. For a long time I was surprised when Iââ¬â¢d get great journalism samples from a writer, but the minute I put them on a copywriting project, it was a total flop ââ¬â and vice versa. But Iââ¬â¢ve finally discovered the disconnect: the real reason that some writers have such a hard time, fundamentally, switching between these two genres. The reason is that organization-wise, journalism is the opposite of copywriting. Let me explain The purpose of journalistic writing is NOT to tell the reader everything ââ¬â at least not right away. You want to tease. You want to raise questions in the readers mind. You want them to keep reading to find out what you mean by your headline, or to discover the solution to the problem that you posed in your intro. In journalism, you want to create intrigue. The purpose of copywriting is opposite. You want to get your biggest baddest benefit for your product upfront, in the readerââ¬â¢s face, no holds barred. You want to lead with a benefit that the reader needs to have. You donââ¬â¢t want secrets. You donââ¬â¢t want intrigue. And you certainly donââ¬â¢t want to depend on the reader actually reading your copy. To help clarify what I mean, following are a couple of examples of the right and wrong ways to start a journalistic article vs. a copywriting piece. Good and Bad Journalism: Wrong: When I arrived at my guest house, a special turn-down present of olive oils, vinegars, and recipes nestled in my down pillows. It was signed by Chef Eric Francis. Why is this bad? Youââ¬â¢ve given the reader all the information they need in these lines. It doesnââ¬â¢t raise any questions. It doesnââ¬â¢t compel them to read on. Basically, itââ¬â¢s boring. So how do you fix it? I mean, after all, how exciting can writing about some resort be? Try something like this Right: Chef Eric Francis gifts a signature keepsake to all of Calistogaââ¬â¢s visitors ââ¬â and itââ¬â¢s not served with dinner. See? Now the reader wants to find out what the keepsake might be. This technique works with fiction too, but what it doesnââ¬â¢t work with is, you guessed it: Copywriting! Good and Bad Copywriting: Wrong: They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But it shouldnââ¬â¢t cost you millions to manage your brand. Here, the writer is obviously attempting to raise curiosity in the reader, much you like you might do with a journalistic piece. But this is exactly the wrong thing to do in good copywriting. In good copywriting you do not want to waste time trying to tease readers along. I believe it was Bob Bly who said that when a reader comes across a curiosity headline he will read it if he has time; when he comes across a benefit-oriented headline, he will make the time to read it. That mantra goes for copywriting intros as well. You need to lead with your best benefit. First. Always. Soâ⬠¦the right way to start this ad would be something like: Right: CRS staging sets are more affordable than traditional, bulky sets, and they can be customized, shipped, and ready on site within five working days. Now, if you were looking for a staging set, wouldnââ¬â¢t you be interested?
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Free Essays on Gandolf In The Lord Of The Rings
Geoffrey Chaucer began the Canterbury tales in 1387. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories set within a framing story of a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral, the shrine of Saint Thomas a Becket. The poet joins a band of pilgrims, vividly described in the General Prologue, who assemble at the Tabard Inn outside London for the journey to Canterbury. There were approximately 30 pilgrims going to the shrine of Saint Thomas a Becket. These pilgrims ranged anywhere from a knight, a miller, to a priest. Each pilgrim was supposed to tell 3 to 4 tales, Chaucer only wrote 22 tales. The two tales that will be compared and contrasted in this paper are the Knightââ¬â¢s tale and the Millerââ¬â¢s tale. When the two tales are compared and contrasted we will be looking at the characters, the theme, and the different endings of each tale. In the Knightââ¬â¢s tale, a great conqueror and duke named Theseus ruled the city of Athens. Theseus conquers Thebes, but finds two wounded enemy soldiers lying on the battlefield, nearing death. Rather than kill them, he mercifully heals the Theban soldiers' injuries, but condemns them to a life of imprisonment in a tower in Athens. The prisoners, named Palamon and Arcite, are cousins and sworn brothers. Both live in the prison tower for several years. They both fall in love with a woman named Emeyle. They argue over her but realize that they will never get out of the prison they are in. One day, a duke named Perotheus, friend both to Theseus and Arcite, petitions for Arcite's freedom. Theseus agrees to let Arcite go. Arcite returns to Thebes jealous at Palamon because he can still see Emeyle everyday, and Palamon is scared that Arcite will try and take Athens by force to have Emeyle. Arcite returns to Athens to be closer to his beloved. He enters the city disguised so t hat he cannot be recognized. Arcite takes on a job as a page in Emelye's chamber under the pseudonym Philostrate. This puts hi... Free Essays on Gandolf In The Lord Of The Rings Free Essays on Gandolf In The Lord Of The Rings Geoffrey Chaucer began the Canterbury tales in 1387. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories set within a framing story of a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral, the shrine of Saint Thomas a Becket. The poet joins a band of pilgrims, vividly described in the General Prologue, who assemble at the Tabard Inn outside London for the journey to Canterbury. There were approximately 30 pilgrims going to the shrine of Saint Thomas a Becket. These pilgrims ranged anywhere from a knight, a miller, to a priest. Each pilgrim was supposed to tell 3 to 4 tales, Chaucer only wrote 22 tales. The two tales that will be compared and contrasted in this paper are the Knightââ¬â¢s tale and the Millerââ¬â¢s tale. When the two tales are compared and contrasted we will be looking at the characters, the theme, and the different endings of each tale. In the Knightââ¬â¢s tale, a great conqueror and duke named Theseus ruled the city of Athens. Theseus conquers Thebes, but finds two wounded enemy soldiers lying on the battlefield, nearing death. Rather than kill them, he mercifully heals the Theban soldiers' injuries, but condemns them to a life of imprisonment in a tower in Athens. The prisoners, named Palamon and Arcite, are cousins and sworn brothers. Both live in the prison tower for several years. They both fall in love with a woman named Emeyle. They argue over her but realize that they will never get out of the prison they are in. One day, a duke named Perotheus, friend both to Theseus and Arcite, petitions for Arcite's freedom. Theseus agrees to let Arcite go. Arcite returns to Thebes jealous at Palamon because he can still see Emeyle everyday, and Palamon is scared that Arcite will try and take Athens by force to have Emeyle. Arcite returns to Athens to be closer to his beloved. He enters the city disguised so t hat he cannot be recognized. Arcite takes on a job as a page in Emelye's chamber under the pseudonym Philostrate. This puts hi...
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Proof That Publishing More Content Wont Grow Blog Traffic
Proof That Publishing More Content Wont Grow Blog Traffic Its a little bold to say that publishing more content wont grow your blog traffic. I mean, more content + more social shares = more blog traffic Right? But this comesà from experience of what happened to us at when we published more content recently. Our social shares droppedà and our blog traffic wasnt too impressive either. And thats happened to us twice after we increased our publishing frequency. So I had to ask myself, Hey Nathan, could there really be a sweet spot for how many posts we shouldà publish a week to get the most social shares and blog traffic? After all, the answer may not be a lot of blog posts a week, but only a couple. And thats exactly what I found out. How To Publish More Content (And Get Less Blog Traffic) #blogging #contentmarketingWhy Publishing More Content Wont (Necessarily) Grow Your Blog Traffic Well- to be clear- it might but it also might not be worth your effort. Four weeks ago, we switched from publishing two posts a week to three. Thats a lot more content to create (especially considering our posts average 2,000 words and have about 8 graphics in them). So we really wanted to make sure the payoff was worth our time. This is what publishing 2 posts a week looked like. Before we made the switch to publish more content, 4 blog posts (2 a week)à averaged these stats within 2 weeks of being published: Social shares averaged 561 per post. Pageviews averaged 6,074 per post. Comments from readers averaged 6.5 per post. Not bad. So we should have beenà able to get aà lot more results with 3à posts a week, right? This is what publishing 3 posts a week looked like. This is what our stats looks like for 6 blog posts (3 a week) within 2 weeks of being published: Social shares averaged 325à per post. Pageviews averaged 4,367à per post. Comments from readers averaged 3 per post. Not so good. This is what it looks like when you compare theà data. So whatever, right? I mean, thats not so bad. In fact, didnt blog traffic increase because we published more content? When you compare the data, switching from publishing 2à blog posts a week to 3: Decreased social shares an average of 236 per post. Thats a grand total of 1,950à which was 294à less than the previous average of 2,244. Yikes. Increased pageviews by 317.5 per post. Yes, that is an increase. It makes a total of 26,204 pageviews compared to 24,299. Thats an increase of only 1,905 pageviews to publish 2 more blog posts in a 2-week period. Decreased comments by 4 per post. So thats 17 compared to the previous 26. So Im kind of full of crap, right? I mean, we did increase our blog traffic. But to me, its not worth publishing two more posts to get fewer than a thousand pageviews per post. But was it really the publishing frequency? Now, there are a ton of outliers to consider into this: Who were the authors and did they have lots of followers? Were the topics we chose to cover not quite right for our audience? Shouldà we have experimented more with different publish days and times? Should we have shared our content differently with social media? Did we mess up when we emailed our subscribers (aka, you guys)? Did we give this study enough time for our audience to get used to the change? Not to mention: All of these posts target specific keywords that should help us grow our blog traffic in the long term. The posts published in the 3-a-week periods have been gaining a lot ofà social shares just this week. Blog traffic has increased for all 10 posts in this study. And Im sure there were a billion other things on my mind once I realized our posts werent performing as well as they used to. Proof That Publishing More Content Wont Grow Your #Blog Traffic (And How To Do That)So I became Sherlock Holmes. The thing was our samples from each data set (2 posts a week,à 3 posts a week) were very average for our content (no outliers to throw off the data I analyzed). I even looked at our email open rates: They were nearly the same as always. And during the testing time when we published 3 blog posts a week, we grew ourà number of email subscribers. But the momentà our social media shares dropped, so did our blog traffic. My biggest conjecture on this: We gave our audience (you guys) so much content to share that you had to pick and choose what was worthy enough for you to share.à Even if we published 3à awesome posts a week, you needed a little diversity in your social shares- not all from one source. So when social shares drop, so does blog traffic. And that, my dearà Watson, is a complete guess. What do you think? Id love to hear your thoughts about this in the comments. 10 Things You Should Learn From Publishing More Content Honestly, it could have been a dozen things that led to a bit less blog traffic than I was hoping for. So here are my lessons learned from this experiment that will help you choose the right publishing frequency for your blog: 1. Dont be afraid to try new things. While this analysis is a bit young (it happened with content we published in February), I learned a lot by publishing more content. The entire team here at worked hard to mature our processes to create content super efficiently. That is a huge win well keep with us as we continue to create content our readers should really love. And we would have never known that publishing more might not be what our audience wants until we did it. And you can bet that Ill continue to look at the results of those posts to see if my thoughts about this change in a couple months. The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it. - Warren Bennis Should the drop in blog traffic prevent us from publishing more content? This experiment- though ultimately not resulting inà the blog traffic I wanted- didnt impact our email subscribers, let alone product signups. Both of those figures were the highest theyve ever been at this time. So that is definitely something to consider for this: Should we really publish less content if stats like new signups are so high? Never be satisfied with status quo. Youll never know if you could be doing something that ends with much higher results. 2. Base your publishing decisions on data. I mentioned that weve bounced around with our publishing frequency a lot at . Thats a little funny coming from the guys who preach how to publish more consistent content, right? This is what our publishing frequency looked like for a couple months in 2014: The point is, we were testing to figure out what would work best for us. We were publishing the content we had. And we werent afraid to get scrappy to get things done. But in the end, we started focusing on publishing the right amount of times to get the most out of our content. By the time November rolled around last year, that right amount for us was twice a week. And hey, at the time, we saw blog traffic increase as we published less content. We published that way to create our own data. But, whats really ironic about this, is that theres already some data that basically says companiesà that increase their publishing frequency from 3ââ¬â5 times a month to 6ââ¬â8 nearly double their leads.à So while this data is about leads and not blog traffic, publishing 2 posts a week should be a sweet spot. If there isnt any data, make your own. #contentmarketingIt would have been cool to know that information before we started just to measure that even better! 3. Planà your publishing frequency toà achieve your marketing goals. I would have never cared about these slight changes- or added up the totals for this study- if I wasnt counting on every single blog post to contribute to a much larger goal. For every post we publish at , I measure initial success by the number of social shares and pageviews. For the special posts when we create free blog giveaways, I also monitor how many times you guys download those resources (infographics, checklists, templates, e-books, and more). Every post must contribute to our overall marketing goals to increase: Social media shares. Traffic in general. Email subscribers. signups. Doing the math, its easy to see how publishing more content may help us achieve our goals: Just divide your metrics goal by what an average blog post contributes to that goal. Thats a really rough estimate of how many posts you need to write to hit that goal. 4. Build momentum as you establish your publishing frequency. You shouldnt just rush in to publishingà more content. When we went from publishing 2 posts a week to publishing 3, we just switched to 3 and kept going. In hindsight, I wish I had given the team a bit of breathing room to build up our momentum by staggering several weeksà of publishing 2 posts then 3 posts. That would have helped us work through our processes with a bit less runaround.à But weà got it done because the entire teamà had the ambitionà to do it (and thanks for helping me out, Ashton and Krista!). Even for the pros, we still need to understand that running a marathon without training ends in fatigue. 5. Test the best days and times for publishing and sharing. A year ago,à we would literally publish new posts every single day of the work week. Then wed publish 3à posts the next week, and 4à the following. Were no strangers to testing what will work for us to achieve our marketing goals. But we needed to do that to know what would work for us. So when we decided to bump our frequency up to 3 posts a week, we used data from the best times to publish andà chose Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday since blog posts published later in the week tend to perform a bit lower. We also bounced this idea off a few of our friends in a content marketing community to get their opinions on the best times to publish. Sometimes its worth it to publish on different days and times to understand how that impacts your blogs performance. 6. Analyze your data to actually know if youre reaching your goals. There is no way Id be writing this post if I didnt plan time to analyze our data. You write every post for a reason. Measure its success against that metric. Here is an easy way to do it: Divide your overarching goal by the number of posts you want to publish. That will give you a rough estimate for your goal per post. Tip: This isà similar to what you did in lesson #3. But its not the same. If you want to hit a marketing goal by maintaining the amount yourà current posts contribute to that goal, go with lesson #3. The algorithm shared here actually gives you something to shoot for toà improve every post to hit your goal. From here, you can determine new ways to promote your content to get the blog traffic (among other goals) your content deserves. You write every post for a reason. Measure every postsà success. #blogging7. Dont believe what they say about vanity metrics. unless they say that vanity metrics like social shares matter. There is so much to learn by understanding how people share your content. For example: People read what they know is popular. People share what they know is popular. People subscribe to what they know is popular. And beyond that- social shares provide a solid gauge on how your content is performing. I noticed something was strange with our content when we started publishing 3 posts a week because our social shares count was lower than it had been in a long time. From there, I completely analyzed our blog traffic patterns to gather the data in this post. And that ultimately helped me make the decision to publish only 2 posts a week. 8. Understand the trade-off for quality versus quantity (and go for quality). Yeah, yeah. You already know this. But here is what we did to be able to publish more content: Free blog giveaways dropped from being in 3 of 4 posts to 2 of 6 posts. Thats a bit of a hit for additional resources that we know you guys find super helpful. And thats how we also get a lot of new email subscribers for our content. Graphics per post on average fell from an average of 7.5 to 6. Content length also dropped slightlyà (with a couple outliers). While we made sure the topics were awesome- and the content wasà great stuff you should have really liked- we did sacrifice a few bonuses we usually had in our content to be able to publish more. So, once again, someone just toldà you that sacrificing content quality for quantity takes a hit on your social shares and blog traffic. But this time youà can actually see the data that backs up that claim.
Thursday, November 21, 2019
Rhetorical analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1
Rhetorical analysis - Essay Example It lays bare, only too well, the feelings and aspirations of a man who, like all of us, wants to obtain the object of his longing, all the while being completely aware of his inadequacies. One of the main reasons this song was a success was also due to the fact that the person singing the song, Thom Yorke, establishes his credibility from the start. Yorke is, to put it kindly, a very average looking man himself, and, thus, seems more than just a spokesperson, or singer, thereof; when he says ââ¬Å"What the hell am I doing here? I donââ¬â¢t belong hereâ⬠(Creep), it seems he is speaking right from the heart. Since Radiohead is an Alternative Rock band, the main audience of this song is young people, however, since it is written from the point of view of a man, perhaps young men would be the specific target audience. Though admittedly Alternative Rock is quite a popular genre of music, being the first single of the band, however, as there was no established fan-base of the ban d, the ethos for the song, musically, had to be built from scratch. Yorkeââ¬â¢s personality, in this regard, seems also to foster the image of a young, average looking man who does not see his love being returned for want of a handsome outlook. This seems to be the reason why Yorke seems to have chosen to have written for this audience. Although inclusive language does not form any part of this song ââ¬â it seems to be just the inner soliloquy of a man ââ¬â however, the theme of the song is quite common. ââ¬Å"But Iââ¬â¢m a creep, Iââ¬â¢m a weirdoâ⬠(Creep) are words used by many a young person, inwardly mostly similar to the soliloquist singer. Hence, there is a sense of inclusion portrayed in the song. In a rhetorical sense, the song also has an ethos-filled content. Creep is replete with emotional substance and passionate imagery. The beloved is described allegorically: ââ¬Å"angelâ⬠for instance. Whereas the passion of just how special the beloved is stressed by a vulgar vernacular expression: ââ¬Å"Youââ¬â¢re so fucking specialâ⬠(Creep). This stress is to describe just how highly stressed the specialness of the beloved is. On the other hand, words like ââ¬Å"creepâ⬠and ââ¬Å"weirdoâ⬠are used to describe the writer himself; again, vernacular is used to portray how low the personââ¬â¢s regard for himself is. There is much repetition in the song ââ¬â the words ââ¬Å"youâ⬠and ââ¬Å"Iâ⬠are used repetitively in the first and second verse. This repetition creates an aura of exclusion ââ¬â the writer is differentiating between himself and his beloved. This lays bare his idolization of his beloved: ââ¬Å"Youââ¬â¢re just like an angelâ⬠¦ You float like a featherâ⬠(Creep), while at the same time, the second verse stresses on his need to be good enough for the beloved: ââ¬Å"I want a perfect body, I want a perfect soulâ⬠(Creep). Though it does not do so directly, the so ng also has logos filled content. The logic of the impossibility of a ââ¬Å"weirdoâ⬠or a ââ¬Å"creepâ⬠to win the love of someone who is ââ¬Å"an angelâ⬠and who ââ¬Å"float[s] like a featherâ⬠is all too apparent. This is the reality of the world we live in, those who are beautiful do not, normally, tend to fall in love with those who lack any outward charm. All in all, the main rhetorical objective of this song seems to be to relay the hardship of unrequited, or unsaid, love, where the impossibility of gaining the love of someone ââ¬Å"perfectâ⬠seems to be at the forefront. This is exacerbated by the low self esteem of the person writing this song,
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Contemporary Diversity Issues Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words
Contemporary Diversity Issues Paper - Essay Example Increasing numbers of people belong to both a dominant culture and also an ethnic minority that has often been seen as submissive or lower down the hierarchy of power than the other position holds. For example, an African-American MD or Professor holds a high-status position within society because of their education, job and socio-economic status, but still belong to a race that is generally discriminated against. This type of duality may lead to a paradoxical sense of contradiction within the individuals involved. They "belong" to both cultures, but feel absolutely comfortable in none. An example of this is illustrated by John Edgar Wideman in Brothers and Keepers (Wideman, 1984). The book tells of Wideman, a Professor and award-winning writer and his relationship with his older brother who is in prison for murder. Wideman explores whether his brother is more "black" then he himself is, questioning whether worldly success removes an African-American from the culture that he was born into. Issues related to gender, race, and economic class are also an element of questions of diversity. The at times uneasy relationship between those who seek equality of races and those who seek equality between the genders has caused conflict within both movement. For example, while the Civil Rights movement of the 1950's/1960's, whether the peaceful one organized by Martin Luther King or the more militant one as represented by Malcolm X sought equality for African-Americans, such equality often did not extend to the women involved in the movement. Thus women were often relegated to subservient roles such as making meals and tea for the men who were doing the "real" work of the movement (Crawford, 1993). There is an apparent contradiction and even hypocrisy within the role given to women by men who preached the virtues of egalitarian societies and equality between the races. The striving toward or resistance of acculturation is another dynamic that often pulls apart ideas of diversity. As seen with Wideman, the ability of various individuals within traditionally under-represented racial minorities to succeed within a predominantly white society may be seen as acculturation. But such individuals are often rejected by the cultures from which they sprang, while never entirely accepted by the culture that they now, at least nominally, live within. Often those in the culture who have been left behind accuse the one who has "risen" socio-economically of "acting white" (McNamara, 2006) and perhaps even being a traitor to their race. Such resistance to acculturation is problematic. It seems to suggest that to "be black" within this society is in fact to remain at the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy. There is an element of despair and self-hatred redolent within such attitudes, but they are very prevalent within a number of minority communities. In contrast, some other racial cultures, such as Asian cultures, tend to embrace at least certain forms of acculturation. Thus the value placed on education by many Asian-Americans enables the children of first generation immigrants to rise out of the often poor circumstances into which they were born. This form of acculturation is not only accepted, but is actively encouraged. However, other forms of acculturation such as marrying outside the race tend to be much more frowned upon. Thus different patters of
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