The Civil Rights Movement Essay -- Black struggle for civil rights in

In a Democracy the majority does not need any protection, because it is the majority which has control. However, as seen through history, even majorities can be tyrannical, and the minority needs protection from them. â€Å"Civil rights† is the term used when speaking of the privileges, immunities, and practices of freedom which are protected from violation by other citizens. That is the definition of civil rights, although when most people think of civil rights they instantly think it means black civil rights. This is understandable since blacks, more than any other minority group in America, have had the toughest and therefore the best known struggle for equal rights. This is due to the fact that most of the majority believed that when the people in the minority group are of another color, they are also different in other ways, and therefore, not entitled to quite the same rights and privileges. This belief was not limited to just the South. Discrimination has always been pervasive throughout all of Western civilization. This racist ideology has held the African Americans down in America for many years. It was not more than 150 years ago that Blacks were considered so inferior that they were held as slaves. African Americans have fought hard against the overwhelming racist powers to earn the rights that they have now. To say it has been a battle for civil rights is an understatement. It has been a hard fought war. A battle implies one fight, one clash. But it has taken fight after fight for African Americans to earn their freedom and equal rights. After earning freedom from slavery, Blacks fought for more than one hundred years to be considered equals in society. That struggle reached its climax during the1960s, when the biggest gains in the area of civil rights were made. Up to that time blacks and whites remained separate and blacks were still treated as inferiors. Everything from water fountains to city parks was segregated. Signs that read, â€Å"whites only, no coloreds† were all too commonplace on the doors of stores and restaurants throughout the southern states. Blacks and whites went to different schools where black children would have classes in shabby classrooms with poor, secondhand supplies. These are just a few examples of some of the many racial discriminations which blacks once had to face in America prior to the 1960s. ... ...is , 1990 This was also a pretty decent book. It was also not very substantive and is young adult/moron reading level. Although it is a simple, easy read, it did have some very interesting anecdotes which provide very good insight into King’s life which is not available anywhere else I looked Lewis, David L.- King:Critical Biography: Praeger Publishers: New York/Washington 1970- This was a very useful book. It provided some very good information on King. Although it is an extremely hard read it was very, very helpful. Current, Williams, Freidel, Brinkley. American History A Survey New York: Alfred A. Knopf inc, 1983-Used the textbook for info on the civil rights and King Haskins, James The Life and Death of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York:, Beach Tree Books 1977- This was a fair book. Has a nice biography but lacks anything real original. It was really just another bland King Biography that is just the facts and no real opinions or insight. Paris,Peter,. Black Religious Leaders New York: Westminster John Knox inc, 1991 –good book for my comparative analysis of King and X. Really provided insight into Malcolm’s beliefs and how they contrasted with King’s. The Civil Rights Movement Essay -- Black struggle for civil rights in In a Democracy the majority does not need any protection, because it is the majority which has control. However, as seen through history, even majorities can be tyrannical, and the minority needs protection from them. â€Å"Civil rights† is the term used when speaking of the privileges, immunities, and practices of freedom which are protected from violation by other citizens. That is the definition of civil rights, although when most people think of civil rights they instantly think it means black civil rights. This is understandable since blacks, more than any other minority group in America, have had the toughest and therefore the best known struggle for equal rights. This is due to the fact that most of the majority believed that when the people in the minority group are of another color, they are also different in other ways, and therefore, not entitled to quite the same rights and privileges. This belief was not limited to just the South. Discrimination has always been pervasive throughout all of Western civilization. This racist ideology has held the African Americans down in America for many years. It was not more than 150 years ago that Blacks were considered so inferior that they were held as slaves. African Americans have fought hard against the overwhelming racist powers to earn the rights that they have now. To say it has been a battle for civil rights is an understatement. It has been a hard fought war. A battle implies one fight, one clash. But it has taken fight after fight for African Americans to earn their freedom and equal rights. After earning freedom from slavery, Blacks fought for more than one hundred years to be considered equals in society. That struggle reached its climax during the1960s, when the biggest gains in the area of civil rights were made. Up to that time blacks and whites remained separate and blacks were still treated as inferiors. Everything from water fountains to city parks was segregated. Signs that read, â€Å"whites only, no coloreds† were all too commonplace on the doors of stores and restaurants throughout the southern states. Blacks and whites went to different schools where black children would have classes in shabby classrooms with poor, secondhand supplies. These are just a few examples of some of the many racial discriminations which blacks once had to face in America prior to the 1960s. ... ...is , 1990 This was also a pretty decent book. It was also not very substantive and is young adult/moron reading level. Although it is a simple, easy read, it did have some very interesting anecdotes which provide very good insight into King’s life which is not available anywhere else I looked Lewis, David L.- King:Critical Biography: Praeger Publishers: New York/Washington 1970- This was a very useful book. It provided some very good information on King. Although it is an extremely hard read it was very, very helpful. Current, Williams, Freidel, Brinkley. American History A Survey New York: Alfred A. Knopf inc, 1983-Used the textbook for info on the civil rights and King Haskins, James The Life and Death of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York:, Beach Tree Books 1977- This was a fair book. Has a nice biography but lacks anything real original. It was really just another bland King Biography that is just the facts and no real opinions or insight. Paris,Peter,. Black Religious Leaders New York: Westminster John Knox inc, 1991 –good book for my comparative analysis of King and X. Really provided insight into Malcolm’s beliefs and how they contrasted with King’s.

Psychometric assessment Essay

Certain people tend to be more obedient than others. Individuals who have the tendency to adopt a submissive, uncritical attitude toward authority figures – authoritarian submission (Adorno, 1950) tends to perform tasks when demanded. Also, people with an external locus of control (a sense that fate rules their life rather than their own actions) tend to be more obedient. However, despite the popular myth that women are more submissive, women and men are relatively equal in the degree to which they will obey demands (Eagly & Carli, 1981). Dehumanisation or deindividuation is the loss of the sense of individual identity and control over our behaviour. Sensory overload, arousal, anonymity, and reduced self awareness are key factors which loosen inhibitions and thus uncharacteristic behaviour is not inline with usual internal standards. According to deindividuation theory, the psychological state of deindividuation is aroused when individuals join crowds or large groups. The state is characterized by diminished awareness of self and individuality. This in turn reduces an individual’s self-restraint and normative regulation of behaviour. In social psychology, deindividuation is a major theory of group behaviour: it provides an explanation of collective behaviour of violent crowds, mindless hooligans, and the lynch mob. In addition, deindividuation has been associated with other social phenomena such as genocide, stereotyping, and disinhibition in other settings such as computer-mediated communication. Several influential studies were conducted to illustrate the force of deindividuation. For example, Zimbardo (1969) carried out a study that inspired much subsequent deindividuation research. In this study, participants were rendered anonymous by clothing them in oversized lab coats and hoods, compared with normal clothes and name tags in the control condition. The participants’ task was to shock a confederate in a situation similar to the classic Milgram studies on obedience. In a first experiment using groups of female students, Zimbardo demonstrated that anonymous participants shocked longer (and therefore more painfully) than identifiable participants, in confirmation of his theory. Another area of controversy in psychology is the area of psychometric testing, which aim to make important decisions affecting individuals and society. Tests are used in a variety of settings to aid selection in education and work and for diagnosis for those with learning and psychological problems. Ability tests were amongst the first psychometric tests to be developed, and controversy has surrounded their use since. Binet and Simon (1905) were commissioned by the French government to find a method to differentiate between children who were intellectually normal and those who were inferior. The purpose was to put the latter into special schools where they would receive more individual attention. In this way the disruption they caused in the education of intellectually normal children could be avoided. This led to the development of the Binet-Simon Scale, and constituted a revolutionary approach to the assessment of individual mental ability. Revisions to the Binet-Simon Scale resulted in the concept of ‘mental age’, an easily understandable concept which significantly increased the popularity of ability testing. Further developments of the tests produced the concept of intelligence quotient (IQ) and resulted in one of the currently most widely used tests, the Stanford Binet Scale. Most intelligence tests measure the general reasoning ability that is involved in many different types of problem solving behaviour. Older types of tests referred to this intelligence factor as general ability, whereas more recent tests have tended to divide the general ability into fluid intelligence (innate and not particularly influenced by one’s environment) and crystallised intelligence (underlying fluid intelligence that is a product of environmental experiences. In recent years, the introduction of the ‘eleven plus’ exam, which is largely compiled of IQ tests, was used to distinguish those who would proceed to grammar school and those who would be relegated to academically inferior secondary schools. Research into the psychometric assessment of intelligence has been the focus of many eminent psychologists including Spearmen, Burt, Eysenck, and Cattell. The latter two also went on further to develop (separate) personality tests, Cattell’s 16PF in 1970, and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) in 1975. These involve analysing a series of short â€Å"yes/no† questions in an attempt to decipher the nature and character of the person answering them. Today, personality assessments are mainly used in clinical settings, with their use in occupational settings increasing. They may also be used in educational settings in assessing individuals with learning problems and are still widely used and developed within academic and research settings. Personality tests are also widely used today within the work environment, perhaps for deciding whether to employ someone or not, or even to decide who gets made redundant. On the whole, psychometric tests have acceptable validity and therefore make them less prone to error than other types of assessment. The interpretation of psychometric data requires the use of ‘norms’, against which the scores of a particular individual can be compared. Psychometric assessments tend to be the only measures for which norms are available. Psychometric tests are fairly short and therefore time and cost efficient. Many are group tests, and so can be given to a number of people at the same time. In fact the development of computer programmes concerned with psychometric testing means that tests can be administered and scored by a computer, enabling results to be made available quickly and can form the basis of a discussion. Personality tests are particularly cost efficient as they prevent money being wasted on training unsuitable personnel. However, there can be an undue reliance on the results of psychometric tests. Simply discovering that a person has an aptitude for a particular occupation does not guarantee that they will be successful at that job. The mystique of psychometric test results means that they are frequently not discussed with those who complete them. In this sense there is a failure to use psychological testing humanely. Test scores can also be misused. The results of tests should not be used to withhold educational or occupational opportunities from those who may perform less well on tests of ability due to factors that have little to do with intelligence. In any instance, the results can be faked by the participant to influence the results in their favour, and so can be unknowingly misinterpreted anyway. Because of the cheapness and predictive success of many psychometric tests, there may be a failure to use other important information. Psychometric test results should ideally be used alongside other reliable information about a person, otherwise they may wrongly stereotype an individual. Furthermore, there are many cultural and sub-cultural issues that can arise when measuring IQ, which causes much controversy. At the extreme, IQ tests were used to keep out certain immigrant groups from the United States during the 1920’s. Jenson (1969) suggested that genetic differences were the cause of consistently lower IQ scores observed in non white racial groups. Recent controversies relate to the systematic differences attained by different groups in society. Critics say these are the results of bias in test items. Typical examples relate to previously learned information and items using verbal information, typically English, which require reading and writing. Even when tests are translated to the native language of the participants, questions are still raised over the cultural equivalence of certain items (Zindi, 1994). Even tests which explicitly attempt to be culture fair have been questioned. The Raven’s Progressive Matrices test showed that the performance of Asian immigrants has been found to improve over a five year period by an average of 15-20 points, which demonstrates that minorities will be disadvantaged in taking them until they learn different ways of approaching them (Roth, 1990). In 1972, Williams produced the Black Intelligent Test of Cultural Homogeneity (BITCH) in an attempt to highlight cultural biases in test items, which was heavily loaded towards black minorities. Using this test, it is black people who tend to score higher than whites. Particularly in IQ tests that use visual cues, participants may misinterpret an action, and their own cultural biases produce expectations which can alter what they ‘see’. They may use methods derived from an alien culture (emics/etics) and may have a hostile reception which will bias their observations. Observations are made of a sample and may not be typical of the whole culture being studies. It is also wrong to imagine a culture as being a homogenous group of people; differences within a culture may be as large as those between cultures.

Essay about Of Mice and Men By John Steinbeck - 1861 Words

Of Mice and Men By John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men was set in the 1930s in North California. This was a time of economic hardship due to the Wall Street Crash. Men were forced to leave their families and find work on ranches. Pay and working conditions were poor. Men scraped by, spending any extra money they had gambling or in one of the many whore houses. This is where Steinbeck drew his inspiration from; he spent time on the ranches experiencing the hardships experienced by the workers. The book is about these workers and the extremely lonely lives they led. It also exposes underlying themes of racism and how badly the disabled were treated. This was a time when people looked after number†¦show more content†¦He is small, dark and quick, and is cautious about his surroundings; The small man stepped nervouslyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ George is always on the look out and he knows how to look after himself. The town they had just come from was called Weed which could signify that they were unwanted, like a weed, there: they were forced out of there because Lennie made a mistake. He had grabbed a woman and she said that he had raped her. George is very much the dominant figure in the relationship and makes all the decisions. At the very start you can tell this because Lennie copies George in the way he looks and acts; Lennie, who had been watching imitated George exactly. This suggests that Lennie looks up to George and wants to be just like him. This is quite sad really as he has ended up nothing like him. Lennie hates to make George angry, like a dog that hates to make his master angry. George feels responsible for Lennie. He is like a father figure to him, and he knows that Lennie would never be able to survive without him. He feels a sense of duty because Aunt Clara told him to look after Lennie. The other reasonShow MoreRelatedOf Mice and Men by John Steinbeck973 Words   |  4 PagesIntroduction: I. Background A. John Steinbeck was born on February 27th, 1902 in Salinas, California. 1. Salinas River was one of the few centers for shipping, farming, and agriculture a. John Steinbeck worked as an employed laborer, digging canals and working beside men similar to characters in his novels. 2. In a discussion John Steinbeck said, I worked in the same country that the story is laid in. The characters are composites to a certain extent. Lennie was a real person. Hes in an insaneRead MoreOf Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck842 Words   |  4 Pages it was not uncommon to become morosely secluded while working. Men would go far away from their families in search of any jobs they could get, with only themselves to confide in; colleagues only filling in the void of friends and family partially. Naturally, John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men, written during this period, would reflect this fact as a major aspect of the story. Loneliness would become the sinew of Of Mice and Men, manifested in some of the story’s main characters: Candy, CrooksRead MoreOf Mice and Men by John Steinbeck1358 Words   |  6 Pagesthis expression to stress the fact that there are and will be difficulties in life. John Steinbeck, in his novella Of Mice and Men, does not fall short of the same views. It takes place in the year 1937, a period associated with the Great Depression, and illustrates the hardships of the time, and more so those that laborers such as George and Lennie experience. Life proves to be full of disappointments for both men who are victims of harsh circumstances in more ways than one. The two have a dreamRead MoreThe And Of Mice And Men By John Steinbeck1549 Words   |  7 PagesThis essay will be exploring the role of women in the texts ‘DNA’ by Dennis Kelly and ‘Of Mice and Men’ by John Steinbeck. Both texts are quite dissimilar for the most part, with ‘DNA’ being a contemporary play, dealing with problems faced by modern youth groups and ‘Of Mice and Men’ being a classic novella. Set in the 1930’s, the novella tells a story of two migrant workers who flee to Salinas, California, for work. In spite of this, both explore the presentation of female characters similarlyRead MoreOf Mi ce And Men By John Steinbeck894 Words   |  4 PagesOf Mice and Men Essay John Steinbeck once said, â€Å"A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us†. In his novella, Of Mice and Men, two men go on an unexpected journey in search for their dream of happiness. There are many themes that come from their journey such as, the gilded American dream, the bond of male friendships, the power of women and femininityRead MoreOf Mice And Men By John Steinbeck1433 Words   |  6 PagesI am writing a literary essay on the novella, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I will be responding to the question describe an important character and explain how the character helped you understand an important message. In the novella, Of Mice and Men, written by John Steinbeck, two characters, Crooks and Curley’s wife, help me understand the message ‘Discrimination isolates people’. The book takes place in Soledad, California, mid 1930’s, during the Great Depression, at a time when discriminationRead MoreOf Mice And Men By John Steinbeck1747 Words   |  7 Pages Of Mice and Men is a tragedy And The Pearl is a parable. Author s Name John Steinbeck -Title of Work #1: Of Mice and Men -Genre: Tragedy -Evidence of Genre (explain what makes the work an example of the genre): Tragedy is a branch of literature that uses a serious and dignified style the sad or unfortunate events encountered or caused by a heroic individual. In Of Mice and Men George and Lennie face a lot of tragic events. -Complete Summary of Work: Of Mice and Men is theRead MoreOf Mice And Men By John Steinbeck1354 Words   |  6 PagesThe novel ‘Of Mice and Men’, written by John Steinbeck, is set near the Salinas River in California, America during the Great Depression between 1930-1939. The Great Depression was a distressing time in the history of America as the unemployment rate was high which in turn led to poverty and hunger. During this time, many struggled to find work and this steered them to travel long distances, often without having anyone to talk to. Dreams were crafted by this travelling workforce and were somethingRead MoreMice Of Men By John Steinbeck785 Words   |  4 Pages It was an hopeless time period. For George in steinbeck s book mice of men by John Steinbeck,it was the great depression.This was a time period of a deep and dark economic downturn that affected the whole country. While the story focuses on George and Lennie s struggles through this hopeless time.They were best buds that got along great. They went to farm to farm as migrant works to get there pay. George had to take care of Lennie throughout the book and pick up the pieces, but lennie was a kindRead MoreOf Mice And Men By John Steinbeck1400 Words   |  6 PagesOf Mice and Men, it is not just a band! Of Mice and Men was originally a short novel written by John Steinbeck in the 1930s. Regardless of the shortness in length, though, it is a rather deep and emotional book with quite a few messages behind the fictional storyline. These messages, however, cannot be discovered right off the bat. To genuinely absorb the messages Steinbeck teaches and actually understand the meaning behind them, one must read the book in its entirety. Steinbeck educates readers