A Summary Of Tupac Shakur's Liberty Needs Glasses

In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” he uses periodic sentences, syntax, diction, and allusions to write about his beliefs about the immense struggles African Americans experienced to gain their rights, how he views just and unjust laws, the many different influences have in their lives, and the cruel nature of the citizens, which are still prevalent today.

In the short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin there were characters whose dreams were stated, one of which were shattered by drugs and misfortune and others which would eventually come to be true. Harlem-life has been retold throughout many pieces of African-American literature, ranging from voices expressed in 1925 publication of “The New Negro” to James Baldwin’s fictional short story “Sonny’s Blues,” published in 1957. Echoing throughout different pieces are the words and visions of “a dream deferred,” challenging readers to place themselves into the harsh culture that African-Americans have to wake up to every morning. In “Sonny’s Blues,” a character offers this account of Harlem: “All that hatred down there… all that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it

In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in The Era of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, she begins by points out the underlying problem in our Criminal Justice system. The problem being prioritizing the control of those in this racial caste rather than focusing on reasonable punishment and efforts to deter crime. Alexander begins by speaking of her experience as a civil rights lawyer and what soon became her priority after seeing a poster that mentioned how the war on drugs is the new jim crow when it comes to the application and outcome of it. As Alexander points out the correlation between the war on drugs and it being the new jim crow, she discusses the mass incarceration that is prevalent in our society and the number of African American

Soto uses repetition and motif to describe how weather can depict the mood of a story and how little things can have great effects on people. Gary Soto includes a motif of weather throughout the poem to illustrate the mood and setting of the poem. Soto begins with “December. Frost cracking,beneath my steps, my breath before me. Her house the one who burned yellow night and day, in any weather” (5-8). This motif describes what is going on in the beginning of the poem and hints what the story will be like based on the mood that it sets. Soto uses the motif throughout the poem and he uses it a second time as he leaves the store “Outside, A few cars hissing past, Fog hanging like old Coats between the trees”(44-47). This time, Soto displayed the

In Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “A Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” he provides answers to fundamental metaphysical questions regarding the nature of the human soul. Though his letter is addressed to a group of eight clergymen criticizing his direct action campaign in Birmingham, his ultimate aim is the uplifting of human personhood. Underlying King’s letter is a philosophical, hylemorphic anthropology which puts an anchor deep into a certain conception of personhood, and binds all people who are to read it. He looks deeply at the nature of human beings, as rational creatures who are made to love and be loved, and from thence, deliberates that there is a universal Gospel of Freedom and Justice. Martin Luther King, Jr. asserts that there are universal principles justifying what actions are morally right and wrong, just and unjust. The principles King lays out rest in our hylemorphic nature: our innate ability to reason objectively so as to lead our emotions, our ability to ascertain whether the human law squares with the moral and eternal law, and our vocation to be pursuers of divine wisdom.

The American dream at one point was what drew people to American; the right to life, liberty, and the happiness. The American dream is the hope to acquire currency, large homes, raise a middle-class family, and pursue what brings people joy in life. But in the year 2016, the American dream becomes hard to believe in. The American dream may still exist, but it is not equally accessible to all Americans. This is true because the American dream is not affordable for everyone, it is not available to everyone from different degrees of education, and race and ethnicity creates large social barriers.

Over the past 40 years U.S. incarceration has grown at an extraordinary rate, with the United States’ prison population increasing from 320,000 inmates in 1980 to nearly 2.3 million inmates in 2013. The growth in prison population is in part due to society’s shift toward tough on crime policies including determinate sentencing, truth-in-sentencing laws, and mandatory minimums. These tough on crime policies resulted in more individuals committing less serious crimes being sentenced to serve time and longer prison sentences.

The poem “Miniver Cheevy,” is about a man who spends his days wishing that he had been born in a different era than the one he spends his days in. Looking back on the olden days Miniver Cheevy feels that the olden days were much better than modern times and the poem goes on to show his love for the past. However, instead of doing something about his love and curiosity for the past he chooses to reminisce about the past and drink his misery away. Throughout this paper I will discuss the poem’s central purpose and its attitude towards its subject matter, and how the author uses allusion to reinforce the poems central purpose and attitude.

Taking all of the studies, background knowledge, and statistics into consideration, I do believe that there is an unproportionate amount of black men serving time in the criminal justice system. It has been proven that men of color are particularly likely to be imprisoned, in comparison to their non black counterparts. “African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months). (Sentencing Project)” The sentencing of black men is commonly dealt with in a harsher manner, than with other races. There are specific laws and stereotypes that continue to be upheld by society, which specifically work against the favor of black men. The issue of predominantly black areas

Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New

We live in a wonderful society nowadays compared to what it was like, say 50 years ago. Blacks can walk down the street and get arrested merely for having a hood up! I mean it we are talking about the early 19th and 20th century, that's nothing compared to be being killed for just simply being black! Gladly we don't live in a society like Jesse Washington did; otherwise all blacks would constantly be strung up on poles and burned alive for crimes there was no proof they committed. Thank god we don't live in a society where lynching of blacks was a regular thing, and part of a white man's daily entertainment. I mean sure 91% of the people killed by police in Chicago in 2012 were black (“How Often”); sure blacks are incarcerated at nearly six

The reading “Facing the Demon Head On: Race and the Prison Industrial Complex” by Manning Marable is about race and the prison industrial complex in the U.S. Manning first talked about what he saw and experienced when he visit the prisons, and then he talked about the New York Theological seminary (NYTS) program in the prisons. He found out that there were number of people in the prisons who wanted to earn their bachelor’s degrees and learn more. Also, he discussed the racial discrimination in the U.S. He stated a lot of data to show people that black and minority prisoners are a lot more than the white people. Even the black and white people facing the same charge, black people usually sentence longer time in prison than white people. Manning

The second speaker also reshapes the first two lines of the entire poem into a plea to the majority. Beforehand, the first speaker uses those lines as a call for the old American spirit to be revived: “Let America be America again / Let it be the dream it used to be” (1-2). Both speakers change the meaning of the lines to express their thoughts on America. As a result, the poem expresses the desire for everyone to be treated equally in the land of freedom. The readers can relate to the speaker because they wish that everyone has equal rights in the country that proclaims itself to be the symbol of freedom. And they can also relate to the fighting spirit that the second speaker has to make the majority recognize the hard work and determination of the minority especially

In our country today, we account for roughly five percent of the world’s population, yet we hold over twenty-five percent of the globe’s inmate population. According to John Irwin, we currently imprison more people for lesser crimes than any other country in the world. In 1987 alone, our prison population rested steadily at just 500,000 incarcerated inmates in the U.S. Although in the past twenty-seven years, the American prison population has actually quadruped to almost 2.4 million (Pratt, 2009). With that being said, we as a nation hold the highest recidivism rates compared to any other country. Each year, state, federal and local penitentiary’s release more than 630,000 prison inmates back into the general

"If they make the Ku Klux Klan nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. ... But as long as you've got somebody else not being nonviolent, I don't want anybody coming to me talking any kind of nonviolent talk." He noted that there is no point if only a group of people who is trying hard to become nonviolence, but on the other hand, there were also another group of people who do violence and this is where the topic of justice comes along and according to him, if the Whites are using violence, therefore, the Blacks also need to use violence. At the outset, I did not somehow agree with his judgement but as I go along, I really managed to read what he really stands for. From my own discernment, I conceived that what Malcolm tries to deliver is that when people attack us in any manner, we should somehow attack them back in a way to protect ourselves so that others will not simply oppress and use up an action to