NOWCOMMENT Native Son Building Our Knowledge Base (Groups 3, 4, & 7)
BUILDING OUR KNOWLEDGE BASE
● Click on the videos to add your initial thoughts/reactions.
● Then, for every video, take notes in your notebook and write your responses to 1-5 on here.
● Respond to each other and build off of each other with meaningful reflections. Don’t just put “I agree” and restate the ideas they just posted. Instead, only respond if you can add to their perspective.
● We will use this information to gain a better understanding of the texts we’ve read and will read, so keep these notes and make them well thought out as well as organized.
HOUSING SEGREGATION AND REDLIING IN AMERICA (6:36 mins) [REQUIRED]
#1A. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2A. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3A. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4A. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5A. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5FBJyqfoLM
RACIAL WEALTH GAP (16:12) [REQUIRED]
#1B. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2B. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3B. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4B. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5B. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqrhn8khGLM
RICHARD WRIGHT BIO [REQUIRED]
#1C. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specific words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2C. What are some topics covered in this passage?
#3C. What information did you learn that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4C. How does this text relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5C. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
https://www.biography.com/writer/richard-wright
Richard Wright Biography (1908–1960)
UPDATED:SEP 15, 2020 ORIGINAL:FEB 17, 2018
Pioneering African American writer Richard Wright is best known for the classic texts 'Black Boy' and 'Native Son.
Who Was Richard Wright?
Richard Wright was an African American writer and poet who published his first short story at the age of 16. Later, he found employment with the Federal Writers' Project and received critical acclaim for Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of four stories. He is well-known for his 1940 bestseller Native Son and his 1945 autobiography, Black Boy.
Early Life
Richard Nathaniel Wright was born on September 4, 1908, in Roxie, Mississippi. The grandson of slaves and the son of a sharecropper, Wright was largely raised by his mother, a caring woman who became a single parent after her husband left the family when Wright was five years old.
Schooled in Jackson, Mississippi, Wright only managed to get a ninth-grade education, but he was a voracious reader and showed early on that he had a way with words. When he was 16, a short story of his was published in a Southern African American newspaper, an encouraging sign for future prospects. After leaving school, Wright worked a series of odd jobs, and in his free time, he delved into American literature. To pursue his literary interests, Wright went as far as to forge notes so he could take out books on a white coworker's library card, as Black people were not allowed to use the public libraries in Memphis. The more he read about the world, the more Wright longed to see it and make a permanent break from the Jim Crow South. "I want my life to count for something," he told a friend.
Chicago, New York and the Communist Party
In 1927, Wright finally left the South and moved to Chicago, where he worked at a post office and also swept streets. Like so many Americans struggling through the Depression, Wright fell prey to bouts of poverty. Along the way, his frustration with American capitalism led him to join the Communist Party in 1932. When he could, Wright continued to plow through books and write. He eventually joined the Federal Writers’ Project, and in 1937, with dreams of making it as a writer, he moved to New York City, where he was told he stood a better chance of getting published.
Commercial and Critical Successes
Uncle Tom's Children
In 1938, Wright published Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of four stories that marked a significant turning point in his career. The stories earned him a $500 prize from Story magazine and led to a 1939 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Native Son
More acclaim followed in 1940 with the publication of the novel Native Son, which told the story of a 20-year-old African American man named Bigger Thomas. The book brought Wright fame and freedom to write. It was a regular atop the bestseller lists and became the first book by an African American writer to be selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club. A stage version, written by Wright and Paul Green, followed in 1941, and Wright himself later played the title role in a film version made in Argentina.
Black Boy
In 1945, Wright published Black Boy, which offered a moving account of his childhood and youth in the South. It also depicts extreme poverty and his accounts of racial violence against Black people.
Later Years and Career
After living mainly in Mexico from 1940 to 1946, Wright became so disillusioned with both the Communist Party and white America that he went off to Paris, where he lived the rest of his life as an expatriate. He continued to write novels, including The Outsider (1953) and The Long Dream (1958), and nonfiction, such as Black Power (1954) and White Man, Listen! (1957)
Wright died of a heart attack on November 28, 1960, in Paris, France. His naturalistic fiction no longer has the standing it once enjoyed, but his life and works remain exemplary.
LITERARY CRITICISM EXCERPT [REQUIRED]
#1D. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specific words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2D. What are some topics covered in this passage?
#3D. What information did you learn that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4D. How does this text relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5D. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
James Baldwin Denounced Richard Wright’s ‘Native Son’ As a ‘Protest Novel.’ Was He Right?
By Ayana Mathis and Pankaj Mishra Feb. 24, 2015
By Ayana Mathis
I don’t imagine many black people would have embraced such a grotesque portrait of themselves.
Ayana Mathis
Credit...
Illustration by R. Kikuo Johnson
James Baldwin excoriated the protest novel as a pamphlet in literary disguise, tenanted by caricatures in service to a social or political agenda. Its failure, he wrote, lay in “its insistence that it is . . . categorization alone which is real and which cannot be transcended.” Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of Richard Wright’s “Native Son,” cannot transcend blackness, and his blackness, in Wright’s hands, is as ugly and debased a thing as ever was. Whether the book is a protest novel, or even whether it fails as a work of literature, are questions unworthy of a groundbreaking work that continues to inspire debate 75 years after its publication. More relevant is the matter of its resonance in our time, so distant from Wright’s own.
“Native Son” sold an astonishing 215,000 copies within three weeks of publication. Thus, a great many people received a swift and unsparing education in the conditions in which blacks lived in ghettos all over America. Of course, black people already knew about all of that, so it is safe to conclude that Wright’s intended audience was white. And, in any case, I don’t imagine many black people would have embraced such a grotesque portrait of themselves. Bigger Thomas is a rapist and a murderer motivated only by fear, hate and a slew of animal impulses. He is the black ape gone berserk that reigned supreme in the white racial imagination. Other black characters in the novel don’t fare much better — they are petty criminals or mammies or have been so ground under the heel of oppression as to be without agency or even intelligence. Wright’s is a bleak and ungenerous depiction of black life.
Wright knew this, of course — his characters were purposely exaggerated, in part to elicit a white audience’s sympathy and to shock it into racial awareness and political action. But where does that leave his black subjects? Let us consider some other works published in roughly the same era: Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Jean Toomer’s “Cane,” Ann Petry’s “The Street.” Like Bigger Thomas, the protagonists in these books are black, suffering under segregation and, for the most part, poor. Unlike Bigger Thomas, they are robust and nuanced characters — not caricatures endlessly acting out the pathologies of race. Much of the black literature of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, explicitly or implicitly, was concerned with race in America. How could it have been otherwise? For better or worse, many of the characters in the literature of that period were representational to some extent — black people in the real world were the correlative to black characters on the page. And this is significant, because when black writers affirmed their black subjects’ full humanity, the scope of their novels included the expectation that the real world would change radically so that it too could affirm and acknowledge that humanity. I am led to wonder, then, about a character like Bigger Thomas. What future, what vision is reflected in such a miserable and incompletely realized creature?
...
Ayana Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a recipient of the 2014-15 New York Public Library’s Cullman Center Fellowship. “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie,” her first novel, was a New York Times Bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, one of NPR’s Best Books of 2013 and was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as the second selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. Ayana taught Creative Writing at The Writer’s Foundry MFA Program at St. Joseph’s College, Brooklyn. She is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
--- SPLIT THE REST OF THESE VIDEOS AMONGST YOUR GROUP---
You can always come back to watch more or find other sources to elaborate on these topics.
CHILDREN IN PERSISTENT POVERTY (5:47 mins)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
MALADAPTIVE COPING MECHANISMS (2:31)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
SCHOOLS & SOCIAL INEQUALITY (11:26 mins)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYMk3Bk08NA
ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES (9:17 mins)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
RESPECTABILITY POLITICS (4:36 mins)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
THE BIRTH OF A NATION (8:15 mins)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
GREENWOOD & TULSA RIOTS (3:24 mins)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yceK9LHFSA
1919 CHICAGO RACE RIOTS (6:08)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dktk8nr8IhI&t=1s
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE (3:01)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gboEyrj02g
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE LITERATURE (3:24)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nea0rMpolNE
REALISM (3:22)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTOnDOkqp3o
TERROR LYNCHING IN AMERICA (5:17)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS61QFzk2tI&t=5s
RICHARD WRIGHT (4:31)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
RICHARD WRIGHT (8:57)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
JAMES BALDWIN ON THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA (8:04)
#1. In your notes, write down new vocabulary terms and jargon. What are specifics words/phrases you plan to incorporate into your discussions now.
#2. What are some topics covered in this video?
#3. What information did you learn in the video that helps you better understand Native Son, as well as other texts we’ve read, and videos we’ve seen in this class?
#4. How does this video relate to these texts and videos? How does it differ? (Make sure to focus on Native Son and other texts).
#5. Analyze the credibility of this source. What are some (potential) biases? Who are the speakers and sources used? What gives these speakers and sources credibility? Are there any issues with relevance or reliability? What are some holes, limitations, and/or questions that were not answered in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPaBXcEVpOE
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Based off the video a new vocabulary term I plan to use is “redlining”. Redlining is the practice of denying services, either directly or through selectively raising prices, to residents of certain areas based on their racial or ethnic of those areas. While some of the most famous examples of redlining regard denying financial services such as healthcare or insurance the most common example resides in Native Son Bigger’s family were charged an excessive amount for a one bedroom apartment because they were black. While whites are charged much less for the same type of room. Redlining affects the lives of many black families because families are placed in a neighborhood with homes that aren’t worth a lot and this affects their school funds. This can create opportunity problems.
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I think the video allowed me to gain some new information that hadn’t heard of or may have forgotten. The term "redlining comes off as familiar to me but I can’t seem to recall where I had heard, most likely during history class, but the video has helped me to expand my knowledge a bit more one the subject of how housing worked back then and how it may have been a similar situation for blacks in “Native Son”
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Some new vocabulary I plan to use that I learned from the video includes: redlining, housing segregation, and the Fair Housing Act.
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Some topics that were discussed in the video were the “Fair Housing Act of 1968” that was implemented during the New Deal but was never enforced. Some more general topics covered in the video were: unequal opportunities for colored people, for example it’s harder for a black person to get a mortgage or loan vs a white person. Social class and education in a black community were also some topics.
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Some topics that were covered in this video was how redlining played a role in housing segregation, and how the people living in these areas are affected. Housing segregation is the main reason that black families have less family wealth of white families. The video also talks about how housing affects education as well, better schools are put into neighborhoods with better houses, so these redlined areas don’t have schools with ample resources, or with nice looking buildings, etc.
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Some topics I was able to see within the video was Redlining the effects this had on schools, hospitals, and housings. Segregation and discrimination were also a big deal in this video.
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Topics that the video go over are the time period that the national housing act, 1930s, the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), redlining which was a part of a system where they categorized cities/certain areas by color coding them based on financial status or the kind of people there, how the housing is in some areas both poor and wealthy, and how education is also effected by the housing
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This video discusses the history of Redlining and the chain reaction it has on many black americans today. Redlining segregated housing on the basis of class and race. After the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was passed, Redlining “ended” but not really. Many black americans still live in poor housing areas and this affects the school and city services in that area.
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Surprisingly I learned more than I expected. I learned that housing segregation and redlining are still very present in this country today. I learned that where a person is located has a greater impact than what I thought. It impacts their education quality, their living conditions, and even their health. I think this will better help me understand Bigger from Native Son because we know that he lived in a poor black segregated community. The video greatly explains how individuals are affected by living in a place like that. So I understand why Bigger had such a negative mindset, why he believed he could not follow his dreams… because it seems like this country was setting up black people for failure back then and even today it seems like they still are. Now I truly understand how hard it is for people like Bigger to have a positive perspective about life and their future.
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After watching this video, I was able to reflect on what I’ve read in Native Son. Mr. Dalton was in the real estate business, but only offered poorer looking houses to black people, in rundown neighborhoods. The practice of housing segregation and redlining is very prominent in Native Son and Mr. Dalton is ‘exposed’ for it, he says he makes efforts to support black people, yet continues to put them into housing situations that will make it a lot harder for them to improve and get wealthier. After seeing this video, I understand why Bigger acted as he did, he felt that he had no purpose and less opportunities. Wright portrays Bigger hating his household, having him say he lives in a one bedroom apartment with four people, that things in the house don’t work, etc. The beginning of Native Son starts out with them catching a rat, and I now realize why this was added in the book, and it really showcases Bigger’s living situation due to things like redlining.
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I learned how racial segregation and discrimination plays a huge role when it comes to housing. This affects many families both small and big. This video was able to give us a better insight in how in the novel Native Son Bigger’s mom was struggling financially in her one bedroom apartment living with 3 of her children in it. I was able to see how people didn’t have an option in where they wanted to live they were assigned areas by racial group and financial status. I also learned that the housing affect school systems since the black community lived a poor area with houses that didn’t have more than 1 room it was very obvious that their education would be much less then those who have bigger house and living in different areas.
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It was quite an unfair time for people of color, just like in Native Son blacks had poor housing and this video has given some knowledge of what time period Native Son may have taken place in or at least an idea of when. I learned how the redlining system worked, what each color meant, People couldn’t just choose where they wanted to live, and ho education was effected by the finances.
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A multitude of information was grasped from this video. I learned that redlining, zoning, and housing segregation most likely affected why the neighborhood that Bigger lived in was poor. Redlining affected all of the things his family could do, from buying a larger house to even having appliances work. I also now know that schools are affected by redlining with neighborhoods that have more money having significantly better education.
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The video relates to Native Son because it discusses how white people have more opportunities than black people, we can see that by comparing the living conditions of Bigger’s family versus Mary’s family and their big gap in social class. The video can also be related to the poem “Ballad of the Landlord” because it discusses the terrible and improper housing blacks received and how that is a huge hardship for black people.
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This video relates Native Son because of what we’ve learned how Mr. Dalton and him not allowed black people to move into neighborhoods where there were a lot of whites. Another comparison would be the poem “Ballad of the Landlord,” which also talks about black people having housing that was not as good as white peoples living situations.
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This video relates to native son because in both the novel and the video mentioned how discrimination,segregation, and inequality affects the black community negatively we were able to see read it and hear it. The difference between both the video and novel would be the different time periods. The next difference would be the different types of opportunities schools would give you for example in the novel Bigger wanted to be a pilot but the type of education that was offered in his community was not enough to help him out in this career path
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Like Native Son segregation was in act, as the video explains how certain areas were separated, I contrast to the video and Native Son, the novel does not show many signs of redlining, it’s not the focus of the novel but a small reference to it would be nice.
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This video relates to Native Son in the fact that it shows how homes in Bigger’s neighborhood had limited room and a lot of the people who lived there had limited money and it was clear that proper housing wasn’t available.
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This video relates heavily to Native Son because it shows the mistreatment of the black people in their housing situation, and being stuck in certain places of the city. The Ballad of the Landlord is relatable to this video because it deals with the situation of housing difficulty.
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Also, another limitation is that they didn’t interview Baltimore Residents, instead of residents from other Martin Luther King Jr.Blvd’s.
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There could definitely be a potential bias from the speaker. I searched him up and he is an African American male. This could make the video biased because he might be talking from experience without us knowing. Although I don’t see any issues with relevance and credibility, some limitations are that he only interviewed people from Baltimore, and it was only a few people as well. As of 2018, Baltimore’s population is 602,495 people, that’s a lot of people, I think his representative sample doesn’t match the population. He did not interview other minorities that may be going through similar conditions in Baltimore as well.
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As viewers, we do not know right from watching this video where the speaker got their sources from. Though, a lot of the things talk about in this video such as bad neighborhood = bad schooling is very true and I have seen it first hand. A limitation lies within how many people were interviewed. We do not know the jobs of these people or education level to fully assess their living situations. The video is titled housing segregation and redlining in America, but only surveys a select few people from Baltimore which brings down the reliability of the information given.
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The source is pretty accurate. There was a few personal testimonies on how conditions in these areas affect their lives physically,mentally, and financially. What gives the speakers credibility is showing evidence such as images. [Edited]
A potential bias moment that was present was having all black speakers. If the person making this video would have used other people who weren’t black would make this video more credible and reliable. Some limitations that were present in the video is lacking on speakers there was about 2 speakers and I think there should’ve been more. Some questions weren’t answered in the video like why redlining has not stopped? Is it still happening?
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I’m not quite sure that this is a credible source, yes the presenter gives facts about the year, the acts put in place, the situation of that era in time, etc. However he only speaks from only the perspectives of the blacks in the community, this is a potential bias as he doesn’t go over what or what could’ve been the whites’ perspective in all this. He also left some questions unanswered or maybe just didn’t phrase it in a way that we knew he was answering them. It’s not quite credible but close, in my opinion that is.
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Some bias is extremely likely. The people who were interviewed were from Baltimore leading to a situation where their opinion may swing a certain way. People from other communities and cities could have also been interviewed on the topic to prevent this. A limitation is not knowing the background behind some of the interviewees and how many people were interviewed in the survey.
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A potential bias that could be present would be the speaker. There are reliable statistics that he is basing claims on, but it was only one Baltimore citizen being interviewed. There is not a big sample size.
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I was shocked at how policies such as the Fair Housing Act are rarely applied. The video helped me understand how the Acts and policies created 50 years ago still have an impact. Another reason that the video stunned me was because of the diseases and health issues that resulted due to a lack of proper housing.
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After seeing the video I was disappointed because inequality is still present today and will always be no matter how hard we try to fight it. It was sad to see that even today it is still harder for a black American to get a mortgage or loan than it is for a white American. Although I am not an African American, the Latino community also faces those same issues since it is also a minority. It’s just discouraging for me to see that just because of our race we have it harder in a country the preaches freedom and equality.
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I think that it’s unfair to be treated different because of your race,ethnicity, and other things. If this was me I would feel awful because that’s just crazy. When seeing the video I saw that a lot of blacks have low incomes and are separated into areas with the “low incomes” and housing too.
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After watching the video, I plan to incorporate “wealth gap” and “housing discrimination” into my discussions, I think these phrases could be useful when discussing the hardships of colored people and lower class people.
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A term that I will be adding to my vocabulary is “subprime loans”, this is a category of loans with relatively high interest rates and fees that are offered to borrowers with less than ideal credit. People who get these don’t qualify for a conventional loan in other words one with better borrowing terms
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Some vocab terms that will be used in my discussions are “subprime loans”, “wealth gap”, and “inflation”. These terms stood out to me and I feel that they can be integrated into my conversations.
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One word that caught my attention and led me to look it up was “inauguration”. It means the beginning or introduction of a system policy, or period
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Some topics covered in the video were the wealth gap between white Americans and black Americans, and what has prevented this significant gap to fix itself. It also covers legislative actions from past presidents that have aided or hindered the gap.
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Some topics covered in the video include the differences in wealth within the white community and black community and the video gave background on how this came to be. The video uses statistics to show all the details and effects of the racial wealth gap, and also includes information on the New Deal that ties into the central idea of the video.
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Some topics covered in the video include: unemployment, subprime loans,slavery,housing,wealth gaps, and redlining
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Some of the topics covered in the video include redlining, which was the separation of property that was based on social class and race, the acts that were made the fix problems in America, but did little to make an impact, and the different parts of lifestyle that were affected by house segregation.
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This video covers topics like slavery, the Civil War and Redlining. Theses topics all connect to how many black americans are in poverty and bad housing.
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Topics covered in the video included the wealth gap between blacks and whites, housing segregation, and loans.
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The video briefly goes over some events that took place after WW2 was ending where William Sherman and Edwin Stanton gathered 20 groups of black leaders to discuss what the black community needed to build lives and freedom, hence where the suggestion for blacks to have land came from. So it starts off with that as it’s background and proceeds to go over how shortly after Lincoln died all Africans who owned land were evicted, and this is where housing discrimination took place. One other topic it went over, and the main focus of this video, is the wealth gap and how the less amount of pay the blacks get made whites think that if a black were to move into there community then it would bring down there ranking which is where redlining plays its part.
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did. It helped me understand that the system was set up for black people to pay more for low quality housing.
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This made me realize and understand why Bigger’s family lived a one bedroom apartment. Not everyone can afford a good house due to their financial stability but sometimes because they are discriminated by the way they looked. I was able to get a better understanding of his things were back then and his sure it was for a black family to get a good house.
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Information I learned that better helps me to understand Native Son include the acts and laws of that time period that would make a black man have resentment to white people, and a better image of the living conditions Bigger and other black families lived in.
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Learning that loans were not given to people in black neighborhoods made me realize why Bigger and his family, and even other families in his neighborhood are stuck in such an unfortunate situation. It helped me understand that the system is just not built for black people and it is forced to have them live in neighborhoods that are redlined. The wealth of an average black household is ~$17,600 and the wealth of an average white household ~$117,000.
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I learned how much of a disadvantage blacks were during this time period. This may be why Bigger’’s family was had poor in Native Son, I also learned that redlining also ties into all of this in a way and how much racism was involved
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I always knew there was a huge gap between the wealth of the white community compared to the wealth of the black community but I didn’t know it was so huge and drastic. It was really upsetting to see that the average median white household’s wealth is 117k compared to the one of a black household which is only $17,600. I also learned that the Federal Housing Administration wouldn’t insure mortgages in area they decided were too “risky.” Risk was determined by race. If there was many black families in a neighborhood, property values would decrease, and this was a bummer for white families. This helps me better understand Native Son because it helps me familiarize myself with the time period Bigger was living in. It helps me understand why it was so hard for blacks to better their way of living (for example Bigger’s family), it wasn’t by choice, but rather they were just living under conditions that were set up for them that placed a great limitation on their ability to grow their wealth. That’s also probably why Bigger’s mother pushed for him to get a job, they had no other way to even start gaining their own “wealth.”
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I’ve been aware that there was a huge wealth gap between blacks and whites, but watching this video really educated me further by giving me realistic numbers and percentages. I did not know that slaves were given land, then later were evicted after Lincoln died and the law was changed. Seeing that the median white households wealth was $117,000 compared the median black households wealth which $17,600 made me feel disappointed. There was a brief real like experience included in the video by an African American senate saying that his parents were denied houses in better looking, dominantly white neighborhood and were lied to that houses were “sold.” In reality, having black families in these neighborhoods was a threat to housing prices. In Native Son, Dalton would only sell poor houses to black people but claims he wants to uplift. This in turn kept black people down such as Bigger’s family, they were paid less, were unable to get proper education, and were seen as lesser in the media. I understand why Bigger hated his skin, because it caused him so many disadvantages which is unfair.
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This video relates to Native Son because it discusses how housing segregation was a huge thing, the video says that real estate agents didn’t want to sell houses to black families. If they did the homes of white families would greatly decrease in value and this was bad for their wealth. In the book Max mentions how Mr. Dalton refuses to rent homes for black families outside of what he called the “black belt.” It was probably for that same reason, so that whites didn’t get affected by having black families living in their neighborhoods. A difference I could find was that this video touches mainly on the wealth gap between the two races, while Native Son focuses more on the oppressions and prejudice the black community faces, big part of it being in the judiciary process.
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Bigger’s family was struggling with making money to properly function as a family. Their living situation was a one bedroom apartment and Bigger’s mother constantly begged Bigger to get a job to help provide. This had to do with the wealth gap, in which black families significantly earned less money based on how the system was set up. Though in Native Son, there was no mention of the mom ever trying for a loan, but after watching this video I see why. Subprime loans were more likely to be given to black families because as time went on, the interest would increase, causing black families to go more and more in to debt, messing up their credit score and keeping them in the low class category.
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This video relates to both native son and “Ballad of the Landlord” because in native son we were able to see how the black community tend to live in poor areas as real state agents wouldn’t even focus on selling homes to the blacks because they might not afford them. In the “ Ballad of the Landlord” we were able to see how no changes were made to the living conditions of blacks it also provided the idea that the black community live in poor and destroyed environment. The difference would be how in the poem the character went to jail but the video only focus on the wealth gap between both races.
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Both this video and text we’ve read such as Native Son have some sort of racial segregation. Additionally, when looking back into Native Son, their is a good chance to Native son and the video both consist of redlining between the rich whites and the average/poor whites and blacks. Despite this. the video focuses more on the segregation and redlining as its topic, while Native Son does not focus on it, but uses it to make the feelings Bigger has against the whites and to progress the story further.
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This video relates to other texts because it talks about the wealth inequality, which is a major theme for Native Son.
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The poem “Ballad of the Landlord”, which I feel is the text more similar to the video, Just like the video there is poor housing and neglecting from the whites to provide the blacks with better homes all because of racism. In contrast between Native son and this video the novel focuses more on a person and racism rather than an economical situation.
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I don’t think there were any potential biases in the video, the video was heavily packed with facts and statistics that supported the multiple points that were being presented. The speakers in the video are educated experts, Booker a previous attorney now US Senator, there was also a sociologist, and a foreclosure specialist. These people are trust worthy and credible because they have degrees and have studied the information in the video, it might’ve been less credible if it was random individual speaking on the topic, but it wasn’t.
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I did not see a lot of bias in this video. The video had not only statistic and factual evidence, but the speakers in the video were not only black. The video shows evident analyzing and evaluation in the information that was and included real interviews, articles, news clips, etc to talk about racial wealth gap and how it was and currently is affecting the black community.
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Some potential biases could be the people interviewed. Another potential bias is that the video was produced by Vox. The speakers have credibility because they work and have first-hand accounts with the racial wealth gap. A question that wasn’t answered is what can be done by the black community to close the racial wealth gap.
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The source I would say is reliable and it’s credible. It didn’t just focus on the whites but also the blacks. It have us the causes and effects of both races. The speakers were experts making this more
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Potential bias of the source could be that all of the information given is only in the view of a black person and does not add the perspective of a white person to see the situation from a different perspective. The only information we know about the speaker is that they are male, anything else said would be a guess. The speaker never specifies exactly where he got his information from, saying he got research but never specifying where it is from, so while the information he gives sounds accurate, doing further research into the topic can help. He does not say how much land was for the blacks and poor whites when redlining occurred, along with the different opinions of some whites on the topic of redlining.
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I did not see too much bias in the video, because it seemed like the speakers were experts in what they were talking about. If someone is educated and sees all sides of the argument, then I would trust their opinion very well.
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Unlike the previous video there were no potential biases, in my opinion. There was nosed type of background music to gain sympathy and because the main focus was the difference in wealth for two different races, the video had the green light to talk about the blacks perspective but they also told what the whites’ perspectives were, and more importantly the information was supported with data. So I think that this is credible sources indeed.
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After watching this video, I feel angered by how the black community is treated. Black people as a whole have already went through 250 years of slavery, then onto 90 years of segregation, and still we are being discriminated against. Black people were stripped of so many opportunities after practically building this country, making it what it is. Watching videos like these make me reflect on how this country was built by minorities, only to be taken over by whites and the white supremacy agenda continues to show.
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After watching the video it made me shocked and angry. I’ve always known there was a wealth gap between the two races but I never knew it was so drastic! It’s so huge I was shocked. It seems like we’re (African Americans & other minorities) fighting so hard to close the gap but no work is being done there’s just not enough cooperation society as a whole. It’s disappointing to see that even after so many years of slavery and segregation the black community is still being let down by this country that they helped build. The worst part is that we probably won’t live to see this gap close up.
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Topics covered is mostly discrimination specifically in housing. Neighborhoods property value went down drastically if a black family moved into only 1 house in the whole entire neighborhood. The neighborhoods with black people were redlined, and real estate agents only showed black people houses in the redlined neighborhoods. When they asked for loans they were given subprime loans despite their credit being excellent. Another topic was education. The study shows that if black people and white people had the same amount of educational achievement the racial wealth gap would only lower slightly.
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When finishing this video I felt sad and angry because of the wealth gap it’s not fair for someone to be earning so much money for almost the same amount of time and work and dedication one puts. Sometimes blacks worked more than whites and still didn’t get enough pay. This wealth gap is still happening now not just with blacks but with Hispanics and women.
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I felt upset after watching this video. The wealth gap increased from the time of Africans getting homes to present-day is outrageous. Seeing the real estate agent deny Senator Cory Booker’s parents from purchasing a home in a white community was disheartening. All of the years since slavery has ended has not led to equality in race.
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After reading Richard Wright’s biography some terms I could use in my discussion are “Jim Crow” because of Jim Crow laws and how these laws greatly affected the black community in a very negative way by basically depriving them of basic human rights. I could also use “racial violence” to address the violence that comes from different races or violence within the same race.
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What I want to keep in mind is Richard Wright’s homeland Roxie,Mississippi. This is where everything happened where most of his writing experiences came to be. He has a huge past in this place. He was able to get a first hand experience of all the inequalities and then turned them into great pieces of writing
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I will be sure to keep the Communist party in mind for sure in future discussions. The communist party was a political party that wanted to realize the social and economic goals in communism
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Some topics covered in Richard Wright’s biography where how he came from poverty, how he was raised by a single parent, how he joined the communist party, and mainly how he focused on perusing his dreams.
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This biography goes over the achievements of Richard Wright in his journal throughout literature. It mentions the hardships he went through to become what he was, such as having to use white friends library card because black people were not allowed to use the public library in Memphis. He was able to come from poverty in a best selling author.
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The topics covered in the video are racism, injustice, and power.
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Some topics covered include: Poverty, education, The Great Depression, Wealth, inequality,communism,and discrimination
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Topics covered in the passage involve who the writer was, his life prior to being a writer, poverty, and where he was raised. It also tells about how he had joined the communist party, which kind of caught me a bit off guard.
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I learned that Richard Wright had a very struggled childhood. I learned that his father left him when he was only 5 years old which would explain why his mom forced him to take on the role of basically having to be “the man of the house” and stepping up to help his mother and siblings. I learned his mother was a sharecropper, and from what I know sharecroppers barley made enough to provide for their families since most of their crops were given off to the owner of the land. I also learned that Wright joined the communist party, which is probably why he decided to add that into the novel Native Son, perhaps that’s why he made Max and Jan belong to the communist party of the US because it represents a part of him.
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After reading Wright’s biography, I see that he most likely incorporated a lot of his own traits into Native Son as Bigger Thomas. I also see why he chose to write a book like this that talks about the hardships of black people during these times because it’s what he personally experienced.
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From Richard Wright’s biography, I learned about his upbringing and life. From learning about his life I can see how the things in his life influenced his writing. Him being in the Communist Party is reflected in his novel Native Son.
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The information I learned that helps me understand the novel native son and some other of his writings is that everything he writes about when it comes to segregation,discrimination,inequality and all of those topics he had the first hand experience he didn’t not just write it from another person perspective but his own and we can see how he manipulates the characters to probably show his feelings on things.
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I learned that some of the characters in Native Son are parts of Wright’s personal life. Bigger was a reflection of Wright’s troubled childhood while Jan was a manifestation of Wright’s interest in Communism.
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It gave me some insight to Richard Wright’s past life and the struggle he went through going up. It also made me realize that he may have incorporated some his life experiences into Native Son and where he’s coming from.
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The biography is similar to Native Son in some aspects but there are also some differences. In a sense Bigger represents Wright, both of them were raised by a single parent and both of them were given a huge role that came with a lot of responsibility, and that was stepping up for their families. A main difference was that unlike Bigger, Wright believed in himself and chased his dreams despite the era he lived in that consisted of a lack of opportunities for blacks because of social class and race. The biography can also be related to both of the videos because Wright lived under conditions of poverty like the ones mentioned in the videos, where the quality of life was just terrible.
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This biography makes me think of Bigger. I feel like Wright may have tried to portray himself in Native Son as Bigger through aspects like their living situation, not having a father in his life, and possibly some personality traits. It was up to Wright to turn his life around which he successfully did and Bigger had the same responsibility but was not able to do it.
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Richard Wright’s biography relates greatly to his autobiography Black Boy and novel Native Son. Black Boy is about Wright’s experiences with racism and poverty in the south during his childhood. In Native Son, Bigger and Wright both grew up in poverty without a father.
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Both his novel and “Black Boy” demonstrate racial discrimination and segregation and the effects of it. I believe that most of his writings are inspired by his own experiences that’s why he allow the audience to connect like that was them.
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I feel that in a way Bigger represents Wright, some attributes of Bigger’s life are coincidentallly the same, they Both had a lot of responsibilities on them, both raised only by the mother; there was no father, and both had to be the one to find a way to help the family. Now then the only contrast here is that Wright was successful in his work and career whereas Bigger made lots of trouble for himself and ended up in the worst position possible
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There are no potential biases, the biography comes from biography.com, which gives the most important events of a person’s life but makes no judgements on them. The only limitation of this biography is that the author is unknown.
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I don’t think there are any biases in the biography. They simply state his achievements and there are no statements that may controversial where a reader would feel the need to do their own personal research. Though, I wish the biography went more in depth about Wright such as the “odd jobs” he worked.
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A potential bias could be the author of Wright’s biography. A limitation with the article is that the author isn’t specifically mentioned.
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The source is accurate and realizable because this is his words and all. We get an insight of the person himself. Also we have no information about the author so it could be bias as well.
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Not many bias to be reported, or any that I can spot. I think this is a credible source given that it’s only giving certain aspects of his life prior to being an author.
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After reading the biography it seems like Richard Wright made Bigger in his image. I feel for the people that have been through similar things since their childhood like Wright. It makes me think that I really take my life for granted, and that I’m so lucky to have this life and exist in this time period. I also enjoyed the fact that Wright chased his dreams despite it being really difficult to do so at the time, it gave me a sense of motivation to peruse my own dreams.
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Richard Wright’s biography gave me a great insight on him. The things I learned such as his upbringing and participation in the Communist Party help me better understand his novel Native Son.
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I am very surprised that someone who only went up to 9th grade could learn on his own from reading how to articulate himself well and write 5 stories. I am also shocked that in order to borrow books from the public library, he had to forge notes to use his white coworkers card to get books. Something as simple as borrowing a library book was prohibited for black people which is extremely startling.
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After I read the biography, I feel as if I understand him a lot more as a person, and I understand the texts that he wrote more. I see more insight on him, and how he grew up as a child. He chased his dreams no matter.
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Honestly I was a little bothered after reading this criticism excerpt, but also a bit shocked because I just automatically thought everyone would sympathize with Bigger and the black community as a whole from Native Son. I was annoyed though because she judged very harshly, without even experiencing the things Wright did that made him write his Novel like that.
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Words that are new to me are excoriated, caricatures, slew, and fare. I will start using them in discussions because James Baldwin used them to describe his feelings extremely well. When Baldwin used his words to describe his feelings of disgust, I felt it.
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I was kind of mad after I read the criticism, because I think that it was unjust criticism. Bigger and the people around him have not done much wrong, considering the situation they are in. Richard Wright is portraying real problems, however I feel as if the criticism is not justified.
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I was kind of upset while reading and see how no was on Bigger’s side at all because he did nothing wrong and it was all an accident. Situations such as this one happen in real life and many unfair events and trials take place as a result. Richard Wright essentially wrote about real things that happen.
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Some new terms that were unfamiliar to me were “grotesque,” and “caricature,” but I searched up the definition and I will start using them in my discussions because they may help me describe what I mean in a more efficient way. The word “berserk” also came up and I think instead of incorrectly using words such as insane I could use the word berserk instead in a discussion.
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Excoriated and grotesque are words I plan to incorporate in my discussions now. Also, a phrase I want to incorporate now is “white racial imagination”.
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Two vocabulary terms I plan to use is “slew” and “tenant”. Tenant means a person who occupies land or property rented from a landlord. This word I saw in “ Ballad of the Landlord” but I wasn’t really sure what it meant till I searched it up. Another word is slew it means to turn or slide violently or uncontrollably in a particular direction.
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Some topics covered were the grotesque portrait Wright presented of black people in his novel, as well as the “ungenerous depiction” of a black person’s life. Mathis also discusses how Wright exaggerated his black characters to get white sympathizers.
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Ayana Mathis talks about the target audience of the novel and how Bigger was used to gain sympathy from white readers. She also critiqued how Bigger was made a murderer and rapist which was already what people thought of most black men which she believed was degrading for a character and referred to Bigger as a “miserable and incompletely realized creature.”
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Many topics were covered in the article. Violence, trauma, racism, and segregation were all topics mentioned in the article.
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Exaggerating,Native Son, and different time periods
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I learned that there are people like Mathis who completely disagree with the way Wright presented the life of a black person in his novel. This is a probably a result of Mathis having different experiences than Wright and not facing the same hardships as him that have lead him to come to such conclusions about black people. Mathis thinks he did not correctly present the black lifestyle the way it should be, according to her black people were presented in a grotesque way. This helps me better understand Native Son because although Bigger thought so badly about himself, not every black person during that time period and in present day have those same beliefs.
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The way that Wright used Bigger as the main character but made him into a vulgar, undesirable person was not liked by some reviewers of the book. Anaya Mathis doesn’t think Wright should have used a murderer and rapist as his leader, especially to a dominantly white audience because it’ll make them think this is what black life is and this is who black people are.
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The information I learned was that the characters in Native Son were exaggerated. This helped me notice that Wright exaggerated the characters to “shock into racial awareness”. This article also helps me show how black people during the 1930s lived.
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Some things I learned was that living back then was more harsh and scary then now a days because a lot of things have changed throughout time. Richard went through a harder time than Ayana times back then were different there was more racial oppression and discrimination then now but it’s still here but it isn’t as bad as back then.
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This relates to Native So because perhaps Max and Jan had a perspectives like this, they didn’t believe in what society made black people look like, just like Mathis doesn’t believe in what Wright is making black people to be. However, they’re also very different because this is a recent article, which means Mathis is not living in a time period where segregation is forced upon us, she did not live during the time period Wright lived in, she didn’t experience the same things he did, so their perception of black lives and how they live/act are significantly different.
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This relates to Native Son because a few side characters like Mary and Jan did not like that black people were treated like this. Jan wanted to see change even though he didn’t fully come to an understanding and show true character development until Bigger was caught for killing Mary. Mathis also doesn’t think that black people should be represented in books like these as “ugly and debased.”
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This texts is similar to Native Son, and Ballad of the Landlord because they discuss the racism blacks experienced.
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This related to Bigger’s personality as a character, his decisions, and his actions. The way things on the article where worded different then in the book. Here the author is trying to portray Bigger and the black community as evil,wrong, and monster kind. Richard was trying to prove how oppression, racial discrimination, and other factors contribute to Bigger and the black community’s state of mind
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This relates to Native Son because Jan was treated horribly when he supported Bigger. Max was also on Bigger’s side. James Baldwin is wrong in this situation in my opninon.
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This is not a credible source, since it is a criticism excerpt, it is completely opinion based, not fact based. This is someone’s own perspective and interpretation of a novel. We could possibly use it when comparing people’s different views on Native Son yes, but when it comes to building an argument of our own, not the best choice since there are no facts or evidence to pick up from. It is completely biased, she speaks from her head and discusses her own thoughts on the novel and the topics discussed in the novel.
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This article is completely bias. The whole point of the article was for Mathis to give her feedback and opinion on Native Son, which she did. This would not be credible source because it is an opinion based article which is influenced by her beliefs and preferences which may be very different from others reading the book.
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The source is bias. The source is about Ayana Mathis’ opinion. The speaker sourced is Ayana Mathis. There are no issues with relevance or reliability. There are no limitations or questions not answered.
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As I was reading this I figured that this source isn’t credible at all because it’s mostly the author’s opinion. Most was opinion and not facts but some of it talked about his life but overall it’s not credible in my opinion of course.
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The source is incredibly bias, because it is just their opinion. The speaker is just using their own opinion to talk.
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One topic covered was health issues. Children in poverty have an increase in stress, damage in brain development, high blood pressure, diabetes, and depression. Another topic covered was parental influence. Research says that children follow their parents paths and if their parents didn’t finish their education, they have a high chance of also not finishing their education. Another topic is black children statistically having a higher rate of poverty. Research in the video shows that for white children 1 in three are poor for at least a year during childhood. Whereas 3 in 4 black children are poor at least a year during childhood.
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This video relates to the racial wealth gap video. In this video, the statistics of minorities based on wealth is mentioned just like in the racial wealth gap video, talking about the disadvantages of minority families versus white families. This video also relates to Native Son because Bigger and his siblings were born into a poor family and will most likely also birth their children into the same lifestyle since opportunities to earn more money are not as available to them.
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ts relevance to Native son is almost clear. The family isn’t in the best financial position so perhaps while Bigger’s logic was being changed while growing up around all the racism, his mentality of living a successful life may have changed maybe.
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There does not seem to be too much bias in this video. The video talks about minorities in general, using numbers and percentages to prove their point and discuss the topic of child poverty. The limitations of this video is that we do not know who the speaker and is and where she got her exact sources unless extra research is done. Another limitation or hole in the video is that the video should have talked more about individual states in America and their poverty rates with children.
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This video makes me realize the reality of poverty in America. Children who are born into poor families are very unlikely to build themselves out of these situations and opportunities are not equal for all. I feel disheartened because children should not have to go through things like this at such a young age, or have to worry about where their next meal will come from, whether or not they’ll be able to afford college so they don’t go, etc which cause the poverty cycle to repeat itself.
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Has a realistic tone to it and really makes on think hard about the reality of poverty. Children born into poverty usually have it way harder as they have this huge level of stress that takes a toll on their mentality and are more likely to become unsuccessful, it saddens me to here this, especially with the music in the background.
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In Native Son Bigger has negative emotions such as anger because he isn’t happy with his life and because he is hiding his feelings. A maladaptive coping mechanism is risk-taking behavior. When Bigger agreed to rob the white man’s store, that was a risk taking behavior all because he wanted to hide his fear. When people use maladaptive coping mechanisms they hide positive feelings and instead show negative feelings such as anger. When Bigger burst into anger when Gus was weary of robbing the white man, he was hiding his fear and showed anger to cope with his fear.
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Bigger is one of the ones who did not use coping mechanisms that were positive for him. Due to his situation, he hung out with bad company which I’m pretty sure was a gang, he had no efforts to want to work and after he killed Mary he became even worse. He was even more cold hearted and had enough to kill Bessie and repeatedly hitting her in the head with a brick which is ruthless and psychopathic. He took his anger at his life out in horrific ways. Another person in Native Son who relied on maladaptive coping mechanisms was Bessie. It is revealed in the chapter “Fate” how she met Bigger, and how she gets drunk often to relieve her stress which is unhealthy and as the video said, only makes you weaker when faced with negative circumstances.
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In Native Son Bigger also tries to justify his actions and develops the idea that eventually he’ll be accepted for what he did. The difference is that the anxiety got to him and he continued to do risky deeds and they got him nowhere but into bad situations.
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This video does not appear to have any biases. It is an informative video with information that I definitely agree with. The video has positive feedback and gives useful tips and analyzation of the causes and effects of maladaptive coping mechanisms. I think the video answered common questions that would have been asked by someone who is uneducated about this topic.
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Some of the maladaptive coping mechanism listed such as eating disorders, substance abuse, risk taking behavior, are things that I have had to discourage my friends of doing so learning about all the causes and effects of these mechanisms are personal to me.
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I have once had an eating disorder so I to find this a little personal to me. I think that it is a good method to cope and can help those who deal with anxiety, depression, or anger.
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This relates to Native Son and other videos, especially the Wealth Gap video. It relates to Native Son because we learn more about the circumstances that minorities such as black people and Hispanic people face. So we better understand why the protagonist Bigger didn’t care much for his education if the school system in the US is set up in a way that puts the black and Hispanic minority down. Because of their race they have a lesser chance of going to college and getting higher/better education, and this can contribute to a loss of motivation to fight their education. It also relates to the Wealth Gap video because both show different drastic gaps between the black and white community, from wealth, to social class and education.
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This relates to the first video I saw it talked about how housings affect school fundings the more money the houses cost the more fundings school receives. This is similar to Bigger’s issue because mentioned that the education between whites and blacks was way different they didn’t have a lot of opportunities like whites
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My emotions and feelings were a bit over the place. School funding shouldn’t be granted based on the neighborhoods because a lot of homes are old and aren’t worth as much as new and improved homes. I think that their is so much school funding inequality schools should receive the same amount of fundings in order to receive the same education.
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I learned that a person childhood experiences affect a person’s behavior for life. This is really important when reading Native Son because, to understand a character’s behavior like Bigger, you have to understand the childhood and upbringing of Bigger and his mentality.
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This relates to Bigger because he was impacted mentally and emotionally. People called him so many names and looked down on him. The way he saw whites created a big anger issue and a big hate towards white people. Maybe everything can relate back to the passing of his father. Also the way they viewed the black boys as rapists and killers because of other incidents.
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I loved how they talked about this topic. This topic isn’t always mentioned and many individuals don’t pay attention to this topic. It’s important to know what’s happening with a person and why they behave and make decisions they take. People usually don’t know the background stories of the decisions an individual takes it’s important to understand what led to this.
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I like that this topic is covered. Not many, in my opinion, consider stress that people of youth go through and that they actually did their research in toxic stress and good stress. This can be applied to how Bigger grew up
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Topics covered are racism and police brutality. Bryan Stevenson is an educated man who went to Harvard Law School. He is a victim of police brutality. He was just stopped and the police just pointed a gun at him with no explanation or justification. This was because he is a black man.
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This video reminds of the poem “Incident” by Countee Cullen. Stevenson says even though he has his degree in law from a reputable university, as a black man, automatic assumptions are made because black people are “presumed as dangerous and guilty.” In the poem, a little boy is already being labelled based on his skin color and was called a derogatory slur. There is differences in this video and Native Son. The main character, Bigger, was labelled as a monster, but with reasoning as he chopped off Mary’s head, burned her body in the furnace, and also bashed Bessie’s head with a brick until she died. Stevenson, however, made efforts to change his life and what he’d be viewed as.
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The video takes m back to Native Son where Bigger talked about how he grew up as a child. I grew up around all this racism and it put him in a constant fight or flight mood throughout his life, leading him to try to take actions into his own hands out of fear and stress and burned Mary’s remains.
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I do not think there is bias in this video. Stevenson is speaking from personal experience and does not use this platform to bash another race, but simply uplift his own and create positive outlooks on life. He learns from his experiences and thinks of the positive outcomes of everything he’s been through as a black man in America. I do think this is credible if you’re trying to gain knowledge on the treatment of black people in the U.S. I question that was unanswered for me at least is how did the situation with the officer who pointed a gun at him turn out?
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This video made me feel empowered. The message that Stevenson brought forth in the video was enlightening and gives hope to people including me. I feel this way because I witness the challenges he’s listed, and have family members who have experiences of racial discrimination, so to see all of the bad and challenges and things to overcome and still push through is a good message.
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After watching this video, it makes me think of the thoughts that go on in some white peoples heads when they pass by a black person. I’m sure a good amount don’t care, but as a black American myself, the thought of being considered dangerous just because of the color of my skin is actually a scary thought.
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The man in the video inspired me, he sounded like ehe was speaking in truth and what he said was very enlightened me on how some continue to triumph over so many different trials with hope.
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Some topics covered were the messages in the movie, The Birth of a Nation. The video goes in detail how blacks people were portrayed as monsters, perverts and trannys. This videos also talks about how the movie portray whites as victims of black people.
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Both Native Son and the film Birth of a Nation are fictional pieces that have incorporated the lives of black Americans and tried to depict them in a certain way, a way that some people strongly disagree with for example, Ayana Mathis. Therefore the video could also be related to her criticism excerpt, because the Narrator of the video describes how the blacks were made to be the villain’s, and how they were made to act animalistic and from some perspectives like those of Mathis that is what Wright did in his novel. There is also another small similarity between Native Son and the video, Bigger knows the KKK is a horrendous group, and from the way the narrator is speaking he probably thinks the same since he acknowledges the fact that the film was deeply racist despite others believing its not.
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This video relates to Native Son. After people found out Bigger had killed Mary, the papers depicted him as a monster as the video is also showing. The silent film shows black people being portrayed as “monstrous villains” and Ku Klux Klan as the heroes as the rode in and shot at the “black americans”, which is already racist in itself, in the film. Even before Bigger commits murder, in Book 1 he talked about there’s no use in him changing because white people aren’t ever going to see him as anything good.
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This is similar to how in Native Son, because Bigger killed Mary, a white woman, he was viewed as a dangerous man and a rapist even though he really didn’t do anything wrong, it was an accident and even so he was treated like a criminal.
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This video is an informative video where the speaker analyzes messages in the film. The bias of this video is that these are speakers thoughts, and as said in the video, the filmmaker, Griffith, does not think this film was racially controversial. The speaker believes that the film The Birth of a Nation was “socially and culturally filmmaking at its absolute worst.” The speaker does not limit the video to only his POV though, he interprets the writer of the film, and peoples opinions at the time the film was produced. Limitations are we do not know much about Griffith, and in order to draw a conclusion about why he made this film and why he claims it’s not racist, it’d be nice to know his views and how he was a person (if this type of information can even be found).
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The first thing I noticed of this film was that it was silent. Knowing this, it means the actors would have to show a lot of expression in order to get the videos message across. My feelings about this film was there it was very controversial, insensitive, and racist. The film incorporates black face and has the KKK starring as the good guys which I’m not fond of. I feel this way because black people were always put into bad light and labelled as guilty and dangerous when in reality the dangerous people were the white people.
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When I watched the video, the first thing that came to mind was how racist and biased the film was, to the extent of making the KKK of everything seem like heroes. It also makes me wonder more about the history of the person who made the film, and if he had something else against the blacks to make a film like this, or if he was just an extreme racist.
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This relates to Native Son in the sense that whites always wanted to dominated everything, but there are also some differences, some of the people being targeted where black veterans from the war who didn’t do anything that was affecting white people. However they mistreated Bigger because they believed he was a murder and rapist, very different motives for targeting them. The riots were out of pure hatred for the black community since they were doing well on this “black wall street.” Like the wealth gap video explains a little, whites didn’t want blacks bettering themselves which is what made the gap so big, and that’s probably why these riots took place, to take away and destroy what the black community had built.
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This relates to Native Son because it captures racial violence. In Native Son the police were harassing black people all over the city of Chicago. They were interrogating and beating black men. In the video it provided a real life example of racial violence with the burning of black wall street.
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The video made me feel upset. It made upset because I saw the black people’s hard work up in flames. They worked hard to get their stuff and it was sad to see it all up in flames.
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While watching the video, something that caught my attention was when the women commented that the black people became too “economically powerful,” which probably is what lead to the riots since white people would not want black people to have any sort of power. It makes me wonder if she is just saying that they became too economically powerful because of the riots that happened as well, or if she really just believes so.
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I learned that violence against black people in Northern cities like Chicago were just as common racial violence in Southern cities. This helps me understand the fear that Bigger had of white people because he knew that white people could hurt or kill him with little to no consequence.
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This video relates to Native Son because although Native Son was a fictional book the events in it could have been real. The Race Riots that actually did happen in Chicago are proof of that. After Mary’s murder many African Americans lost their jobs, many were arrested for looking like Bigger, and many of their homes were destroyed. Similarly during these Chicago race riots mobs of young white men terrorized African American neighborhoods, by looting and burning their homes. Both show how big the consequences and how violent it can get when one race attacks the other.
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The video goes into how African Americans were moving around the country to other states for opportunities which was kind of a forced integration that caused tension in industries. This fact relates to Richard Wright’s biography. He moved from the south to Chicago in search of jobs. Due to the depression, many people went poor including Wright. The video also relates to the summer assignment articles about lynching. Though Eugene wasn’t lynched, he was in fact tortured and stoned to his death by white people for crossing over into the white side of the beach.
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The similarity between the poem “If We Must Die” and the video is they both tell us how black lives weren’t valued and that blacks were killed. The contrast is that the poem doesn’t tell whether someone actually died, from what I remember.
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I don’t think there is bias in this video. The video documented what happened during the riots with primary sources like newspapers and pictures taken during that time which gives the video credibility and reliability. The speaker appears to be white and does not input his own personal beliefs when talking about the Chicago Race Riots.
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This video honestly made me feel disheartened and empathetic. Eugene was stoned to his death for a simple mistake and when people went to the police about it, since he was black and his life didn’t matter to police, they did nothing about the situation. The riots cause dozens of death both between blacks and whites, and black neighborhoods were destroyed and they were left homeless as if they didn’t already have it hard. I feel this way because looking at the world now, all of the activists, and protests we participate in trying have a voice for black people are for reasons like these in the video, no justice.
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I had actually read a book a while back on the Chicago race riots, however I can’t seem to recall what I had read but one part where a young black child was killed by a white man who threw a rock at his head and killed the child. Many were killed, both whites and blacks, during this era in time and it was very chaotic. It’s a very sad video to watch. Black lives weren’t valued by the whites.
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Between this video about The Harlem Renaissance and Native Son there aren’t much similarities except for the fact that both time periods/events are important not only to African American history but also American history in general. There are more differences however, according to the video and prior knowledge the Harlem Renaissance was a positive turning point for African Americans, it was the “flowering of creativity” that was absent all those years after and during slavery. Unlike in Native Son, where it was a time period of a lack of opportunities for blacks to better themselves in their careers like many blacks did during the renaissance. This time period had a way more negative impact on the black community, not like in the 1920s at all.
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This video isn’t similar to Native Son. The video talked about the Harlem Renaissance and how music influenced black people. Also, the video didn’t discuss racism. Native Son, and poems such as Ballad of the Landlord mainly discussed racism.
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I felt intrigued by what I saw. This is because it was interesting to see the way black people used music as a positive outlet. Even with all the negative things black people had to deal with, it was interesting to see how they used music as a positive outlet.
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After watching the video, it makes me inspired by the people who were involved in the Harlem Renaissance by them being able to find genuine enjoyment in their lives despite the tough times they were still living in.
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The sources used are the works of many black writers from the Harlem Renaissance. The writer’s works are credible because they came from the Harlem Renaissance and became popular from it.
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Every time I hear about the Harlem Renaissance, I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be living in that time. Additionally, I’ve always enjoyed the Harlem Renaissance in history, as it was a time period that allowed Black African Americans to express who they really were and their culture.
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This relates to Native Son by showing that Native Son is Realism. Native Son is realism because it portrays a realistic life of a black man which isn’t the regular happy and loving plot. Also throughout the book there is focus on Bigger and his character instead of the plot and other characters. This shows that Native Son is realism.
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After watching the video, I find it interesting that people wanted realistic stories to relate to. It also makes me wonder how many realism books were made during the realism era, and the rate those books are made today compared to the realism era.
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This video is related to the Lynching in America articles that I annotated and read over the summer. Black people were lynched to show white hierarchy and to build fear in black peoples minds. The video talked about the same thing the articles did, that children we even in attendance at these lynching, and people sold souvenirs of the dead bodies for money which is inhumane.
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This relates to the different articles I read during the summer . Racial terror. Bigger used to be scared to walk near whites and he feared the white community. He used to feel unsafe and unsure about himself. He felt uncomfortable when he used to sit in between Mary and Jan he felt like he was doing something wrong because of the different views people had. He would also panic when he was in the white neighborhood he thought whites would call the cops because he was in a white neighborhood and people probably thought he was going to rape,kill, or break into a house.
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The texts relates to Native Son, and the articles on lynching from the summer. All three texts talk about the racial violence that blacks experienced in America from white people.
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This video is is just like the summer article Lynching, it’s similar to how the video described how lynching worked and why some people were lynched. The difference is that the article failed to mention that they would Lynch blacks for just about anything like how they lynched a man for only bumping into a white women.
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I do not see any bias in this video. We are unaware of what the speaker looks like, but the speaker takes direct parts out of America’s lynching history and elaborates on the stories. There is no doubt that lynching actually happened, and happened how they did, as a celebration. Limitations of this video are that the lynchings that happened because of murder or rape accusations were not talked about.
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After finishing this video I just thought of myself as a black Person. It made me wonder how things would be if I wasn’t Hispanic would I be able to get opportunities like I am now or as whites. I felt so bad for the guy who got lynched by accidentally bumping into a white female. The world is cruel to blacks. I feel like people back then just wanted to murder all the blacks and wanted whites to rule and have more power.
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I’m disgusted at what I just saw. I knew about terror lynching’s, but not to the extent that the video showed. Also, the “carnival like” feeling left me feeling disgusted at what I saw. I feel this was because of how many people and law enforcement participated in these events. Another thing was how soil from the lynching was collected and sold. I couldn’t believe that people could do such cruel things.
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I like the visuals applied to the video, they help me understand better. However I was bothered me very much that they had lynched Cedar Bluff for something so small as bumping into a white woman, and lynching a black taxi driver literally for no reason. He was just going about his life and just because they could not get a hold of the black prisoners they out of no where decide to Lynch him right there. It’s shamefull how far ones pride in their race from back then can take them. The thought of lynching disgusts me, the video made me feel very bad for the blacks of the past.
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These speakers are people who were impacted by the release of Native Son, and people who were there during the release and they are sharing their experiences. This is reliable because these are primary sources and they were physically there during the time of the release and impact of the book. Also these people experienced the impacts first hand because they are black americans.
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Watching the video really made me consider how much of an effect Native Son must have had on Black Americans that read the book when it was initially think, and it makes me want to share that feeling they add in order to connect myself to the Black Americans of that time period.
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One topic covered was the education system. Wright was daydreaming during class because the class was slow paced for him and he needed a challenge. This shows that the education doesn’t benefit all students because some children aren’t even learning. Another topic covered was racism and discrimination. Wright had multiple jobs and was fired from them due to the white employer feeling threatened and being racist. His coworkers also harassed him because he didn’t act inferior to them and submit to them.
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This video discussed Wright’s childhood and adulthood.
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This video relates to Native Son. The video goes into more detail about Wright’s life than the written biography. The video helps me better understand the events in Wright’s life. Me better understanding Wright’s life helps me see the connections between his life and the characters and events that occurred in Native Son.
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The video made me feel hurt. It made me feel hurt to know how hard life was for black people. It makes me feel thankful for everything I have knowing how bad my ancestors and the people before me were treated.
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This relates to Native Son. In the video, James Baldwin discusses white people having judgements and stereotypes against blacks. Similar to what Bigger dealt with in Native Son.
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This video made me feel shocked. I feel shocked because the things discussed in the video such as stereotyping still occurring today. Today there are still instances of black people being profiled.
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