Du Bois and Being White in Philly

       I want to use this post not only to critique W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, but to also connect it to an article titled “Being White in Philly,” written by  Robert Huber. The Souls of Black Folk was published in 1903, and “Being White in Philly” was not released until March, 2013. Over a century later, why are we still facing the same problems, rooted in racism? Will we ever learn, and is there an end in sight? Du Bois places a huge emphasis on education in his writing. After slavery had been abolished, the biggest issue was that African Americans did not know what to do with themselves. There were little opportunities for success because it was extremely difficult to make money without an education, and it was even harder to own land. Du Bois emphasizes the need for educators, like himself, because that is the first step to educating the youth. He bases many of his stories in the Black Belt, in Georgia, and area that is populated by the majority of black people, but the whites still have the power over them as their landlords and etc.

       Is this how we are in Philadelphia? In his article, Huber interviews people from mostly the Fairmount area, all of them are white. They tell him they rarely venture above Girard Avenue; the unofficial but seemingly official boundary of North Philly, a “color line,” Du Bois would call this “The Veil.” Being a white, female student at Temple, I completely understand color lines. I am only a freshman but it did not take long to learn that there are streets that you should not go beyond after dark. Some students will never cross these streets, even in the daytime. I am from a Temple family, my dad is a graduate and my older sister is a current junior, so I am familiar with campus and the city – but you never really understand until you live here. Believe me when I say I have no regrets about coming to Temple, but it is definitely not for everyone.  Color lines have been here since the slaves were emancipated, and if they are still this prominent in 2013 it is going to be a long time before they go away, if ever. Huber looks at education in his article, focusing on a mother who was the first in her neighborhood to send her white child to a predominately black elementary school. The school was comparable in test scores to the preferred school in her area by parents, which was near Rittenhouse Square, and was also much closer. Basically, the parents did not want to be the only ones to send their children to a black school, so they felt safer with strength in numbers. This is not the way it should be. School should be chosen for academic standing, not the race of the students. Du Bois preached for education for African Americans, and if he was still around today, he would unfortunately still be preaching. Things need to change.

The Trials of Socrates

     It is hard to put into words why Temple University requires its students to read The Trials of Socrates. I read the texts by Plato, Aristophanes, and Xenophon. A possible and the most in-your-face reason would be the emphasis on education. Although, it is not traditional education, and there is no agreement reached on what is the best way to learn. Socrates was an innovator because he went against the grain, and fought back with leaders of the times; arguing about their intellectual abilities and whether they were deserving of their high positions. However, his outlandish ways ultimately lead to his demise. I do not think Temple wants us to take from the book that if you stand up for what you believe is right, you will be persecuted and eventually killed.  Instead, this could be interpreted that Temple does want us to be individuals, since Socrates died with respect instead of begging for his life and giving up his vision.

     The most interesting text to me was Clouds, by Aristophanes. I found it very hard to follow because one man, Strepsiades, was very flakey. First he was all about Socrates and his school because he thought the education would be good for his son, Pheidippides, to escape his debt.  Clouds is very obviously a parody. This comedy caught me off guard as I was reading because of the seriousness of Plato’s writing.

     As a student in college, or anyone really, it is important to be able to recognize a parody when you read one and understand what it is truly trying to say. Nobody wants to be the one who doesn’t get the joke. Trust me, I know. I was in the gullible student who thought Jonathan Swift actually believed eating babies was an acceptable way to feed people. Moral of the story – exposure is the best way to pick up on a satire, and that is an additional reason why Temple has us read The Trials of Socrates.

Lastly, I want to talk about Socrates himself. Unlike the common man of the time, he does not believe in the Gods, and is the first of his time to take a close-to-scientific approach.  He believes it is the clouds that determine the weather and not the gods. With our knowledge today, we know that this is a much more logical approach than a god is mad so that’s why it is raining and there is a thunderstorm. Temple wanted to introduce us to the earliest examples of rational thinking. 

George Lippard

For my research project on the history of Philadelphia and the people who shaped it, I have been reading The Quaker City by George Lippard. Lippard was once an extremely important and influential man in this city, but unfortunately many of his works and ideas have been forgotten. We still battle with many of the social issues he fought to end, so it is a shame that he is overlooked in literature. The Quaker City is a very unconventional novel. The plot is based around a corrupt, secret club, The Monks of Monk Hall, as well as the rape of a young girl. The rape reflected an actual situation that occurred in Philadelphia about a year prior to Lippard’s reinterpretation. A man whose name I do not remember raped a young girl from a well-to-do family. The girl’s brother found out who the man was and hunted him down. The showdown ended on the ferry, leaving port in Philadelphia, bound for Camden. The brother found the rapist while he was trying to escape on the ferry, and fired four shots at him, killing him. This is the historic site I chose to visit.

To get there, I took the Broad Street subway line down to City Hall with a friend, where we got off to do some work for another class. Looking back on it, we probably should have used our free transfer over to the Market Frankford line and taken that down to Penn’s Landing. Instead, we walked down to Penn’s Landing from Center City, taking Walnut to where it hits the Delaware River. The port itself was less than exciting. The Ferry does not run in the winter I am assuming, because there was no ferry in sight, nor was the ticket office open. The ticket office itself was a small rectangular building, no bigger than a single car garage, I would estimate. Going to the Penn’s Landing with the knowledge of what had occurred at this same place, I wondered what it had looked like at that time, in 1843. To get to Penn’s landing, you have to walk over and overpass, with I-95 running below. This creates a grand entrance of multiple stairwells, complimented with places to sit and even a few fountains. The whole strip of Penn’s Landing is done in stone, to relate with the rest of Old City. During Lippard’s lifetime, I-95 was not was not there. This saddens me cause I know that the entire coast along the river must have looked entirely different. Despite this one glaring fact, it was still very interesting to visit the location of an actual murder – as dark as that is.

There is still a lot more I want to know about George Lippard. Unfortunately, because he has been so forgotten much about his life was either never recorded or has been lost. I would like to find out at least the area where he lived. Also, he ran a newspaper, so it would be very interesting to find out where that was printed as well. Other than that, I will continue research and reading The Quaker City.

Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera

Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa has been my favorite reading thus far. This novel is written by a woman who identifies with so many cultures that can often conflict with eachother. She also reflects on the individual challenges that face each different culture. Anzaldúa was born into a family of Mexican and Indian descent. She is a woman, and must always struggle with the dominance of men. She is Tejana, because she lives in Texas and is Spanish. She is Chicana because she is a Mexican living in the Unites States. She is American, because this is the country in which she was born. And finally, arguably her hardest identity to deal with is that she is a lesbian. I want to focus the blog post on her struggles with her sexual orientation.

One of the most memorable moments in the book is when Anzaldúa discusses homophobia. A student of hers, who is also a lesbian, thought homophobia was the fear of going home. We know that this is not true, and that homophobia is actually the fear or hatred of homosexuals. Despite the error, Anzaldúa agreed with this new definition and found it very relatable. Her traditional family did not accept her as a lesbian and she often does not visit them in her adult life. This reveals the grim truth about what many lesbians and gay men must deal with. Many are uprooted from the lives they have experienced in their childhood once they come out, and are forced start a new life with their new identities. As someone who is not part of the gay community, I like to believe that how gays are treated by the community has improved, even since this book was published, but this is probably not true. It pains me to think that someone can be discriminated against for a characteristic they are born with.

Discrimination spreads farther than judging people for their sexual orientation, there is also discrimination is our society against someone for their race. Anzaldúa has witnessed, first hand, this type of discrimination. She is angered that her family has been living on the land that is now Texas before the land was part of the United States – before the United States were even a conceivable idea. In the time of her ancestors, the nomadic Indians were able to move to wherever they desired, usually traveling with the animals that supplied their food, and where there were the most natural resources. Anzaldúa calls the border at the edge of Texas, diving the United States and Mexico, is a scar in the land. It is harsh and defies the idea of nature, and it should not be there. Borders go against America’s representation of ‘the land of the free’- but who is free to come in? It is not fair that the first Americans to come over from Europe set in place an example of discrimination against the natives the still plagues our country until this day. Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera is the prime example of the other side of discrimination, the victims. 

Freud's Lectures on Psycho-Analysis

     I do not know how to explain my feeling towards Freud. He is absolutely insane, there is no doubt about that, but that does not mean there is no truth behind what he has learned and taught about psychoanalysis. The first example of how I can see a relation between Freud’s beliefs and myself is the Oedipus complex. Before you make any rash assumption, I do not want to kill my mother nor do I want to marry my dad. This being said, I do have the most problems with my mom and a great relationship with my dad. This holds true for a lot of girls my age, and it no way means I want to end her life, whatsoever. Also, I find striking similarities between my current boyfriend and my dad. I was not initially attracted to him because he was like my father, these are just things I notices as are relationship continued. For example, both cannot hold a phone conversation, exhibit horrible road rage, and are very protective. Are these things I look for in a man? No, but still the two male figures in my life have these characteristics.

     The biggest problem I struggled with while reading Freud’s Lectures was his interpretation of dreams. This is a topic in which I, in no way, agree with him. Freud believes our dreams are “unconscious wishful impulses” which we cannot have in real life, and therefore obtain in our sleep. This struck a personal chord with me, because I am plagued with bad dreams. Being a freshman in college, it was a big change moving out and away from my parents. Even now, in my spring semester, I am still haunted by dreams of my family at home being hurt by an intruder and there is nothing I can do. I have to watch as the gruesome acts take place against my beloved parents. This keeps me from sleeping many nights. Is Freud trying to say that somewhere tucked in my unconscious I want my parents to be murdered? That is absurd. He completely disregards nightmares in all of his lectures on dreaming, which makes him an unreliable source of information on the topic.

     I see a lot of truth behind Freud’s analysis of children. He talks about them as sexual beings, which turns many people off. It is understood that children are not capable of having sex, he uses this term very lightly. Children go through phases in which they learn by pleasure and exploration of themselves. Many of Freud’s patients’ problems can be rooted back to their childhood. Of all of his research, the most evidence supports this topic and it is, in some twisted way, logical. It is common knowledge that we are the most impressionable on at an early age, and the basic skills stay with us an entire lives. If a baby is deprived from being breast fed, they may yearn for sucking (or any action of the mouth) in their adult life – such as smoking cigarettes. In the phallic stage, children explore their body, which includes their genitalia. I am sure no one likes to see that little boy out shopping with his mom with his hand awkwardly in his pants, but this is part of maturing and needed, within a certain extent, to develop properly.

Destruction of the Indies

    Despite the revolting nature of Las Casas’ Destruction of the Indies, I found it very easy to read. It was well organized, and not too lengthy. It is an extreme turnoff when an author goes on about one subject for so long that it becomes overkill and I lose interest. The book was broken up into sections, mostly divided by on which island, or which part of the island, was being discussed. The use of language and rhetoric had a huge impact on the interpretation of the events. Las Casas is not a completely reliable narrator because he often exaggerates numbers or simply creates numbers when he had no real way of knowing. He uses specific adjectives to describe the Indians, such as “delicate” and “obedient,” to make the Spaniards look that much more devious for victimizing such gentle creatures. In reality, the Indians were of a violent nature, often warring between tribes, well before the Spaniards knew what an Indian was. Although, the Indians’ bloody background is in no way an excuse for what the Spaniards did. Las Casas and I can agree on that.

    Sepulveda, however, does not agree with us. In his writing A Treatise for Just Causes for War against the Indians, Sepulveda calls the Indians “sinners,” “subhuman,” and “barbarian.” He also believes that by the Spaniards wiping of the Indians, they are righting the wrong of their entire existence; ‘the wrong’ being that the Indians were not Christians. Las Casas prefers to describe the Spaniards as “tyrannical” and “cruel,” because this supports his claim that the Indians were victimized. Sepulveda and Las Casas use language to convince the reader to also favor the same group as themselves. Sepulveda’s use of the word ‘barbarian’ especially stood out to me because of its connection to Waiting for the Barbarians by John Maxwell Coetzee. In this novel, a large empire ruled an outpost, which was set far away from the capital city. All around the outpost was land that was not owned by anyone; instead it was inhabited by the nomadic barbarians. The Magistrate was the ruler of this outpost, and had no problem with the barbarians because they had always minded their own business; the opposite of the opinion of officials from the capital, who feared the barbarians and deemed them as evil. Waiting for the Barbarians and the Destruction of the Indies reflect each other in many ways. The Barbarians symbolize the Indians, and the Magistrate symbolizes Las Casas. Las Casas did not want to harm the Indians, and the Magistrate did not want to harm the Barbarians. Sepulveda can be related to the officials from the capital city, only seeing the evil in the unknown. The Indians/Barbarians are the unknown to Sepulveda/Capital because there was no witnessing or involvement between the two parties. Las Casas gains credibility by being in the Indies during the destruction, whereas Sepulveda was only a writer who based his works off the accounts of other people.