Blog #7 Anna Julia Cooper

Our class discussion about Anna Julia Cooper caught my attention this week. She talked about the struggles of power in society, and questions the inequality of it all. In Cooper's discussions, she never really thought the individual was to blame for inequality. To her, society was at fault, and the way the system all works. She didn't think it was fair to blame, for instance, a racist individual who was brought up in a racist society. They were born and brought up in such a way that it became their nature. They may not be an evil individual, they're just living in a society that raised them with certain values and norms.

It seems that throughout history, diversity has been handled in many ways. We learned about 4 different ways that our country itself has dealt with diversity. The first is pluralism, which is when the walls of minorities and majorities are broken down. All cultures are accepted, and all the different cultures still stay distinct. We talked about this as more of a "stew" where all the different cultures and values are put into one pot (or country) but the different parts can still be separated out. The second method of diversity we talked about is assimilation. This is where the minority groups are expected to conform to the majority group. This is more of a "melting pot" because you couldn't distinguish between all the cultures since they are all becoming one. Then there is segregation, which is the separation between groups. You can formally do this, such as separating bathrooms, or informally such as choosing to live in certain areas. Lastly, we learned about genocide. This is where people systematically eliminate an entire group.

All 4 of these methods have been used in our country to "deal with" diversity. I think the obvious way that is most accepting and effective is the method of pluralism. This is ideal because it allows different groups of people to stay true to themselves and have the option of keeping all the norms of their own culture. It makes our world interesting and diverse and doesn't hurt minority groups. I don't think anyone should have the power to tell people exactly how to live and conform to be a certain way, because who is to say which culture or lifestyle is the best way to live? We were not successful or peaceful during times of segregation, genocide, or assimilation, making pluralism the best way for our society to live.

Below is a short youtube clip of the Native Americans history of being treated unfairly, being one of the biggest genocides known to mankind, and example of our poor and unfair  handling of diversity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-TyHB8fUrQ


Below is what assimilation looks like. You take many different diverse cultures and melt them into one; American.