The views of President Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass as it relates to the plight and condition of African people.
Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass are regarded as the most important strugglers for the rights of African-American population. But the only and the key distinction among them is that their views are composed trough the different prisms of life experience. It is necessary to mention, that they may be compared with the caught fish and the animal rights activist: both wish all the animals were free, but one of them has been already caught.
To struggle the matter of discrimination, Douglass got acquainted with lots of people who supported social justice, such as William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Brown. With the societal link of like-minded personalities, these abolitionists were able to fight coercion and claim for the equality of all people living in America.
In this connection, Douglass resisted the American Colonization Society that was seeking to send liberated slaves back to Africa. The key argument in his oppression was that lots of African-American slaves had lived in America long before their teasers, and moreover, most of them had been born there, and devoted their lives for the sake of the country. They were the born Americans and should be given the same rights and freedoms as other Americans. (Kaufman, 54).
Douglass was persuaded that education was helpful in improving the condition of the black population. He generally retorted to the communication tools of the time period to allocate his thoughts. He was an experienced orator and a skillful writer. He possessed a printing press and issued a monthly newsletter as well as several books: The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, and The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
Abraham Lincoln acted on the governmental level. Before the American Civil War and even on the war’s early times Lincoln stated that the Constitution excluded the possibility of abolishing slavery by the federal government in states where it already subsisted. His viewpoint and the viewpoint of the Republican Party in 1860 was that slavery should not be permitted to expand into any more states, and thus all future states disclosed to the Union would be free states. In this way, he hoped that slavery would be put on a path to ultimate extermination. (Kaufman, 250).
The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, written to form the lands of Kansas and Nebraska, entailed the position, elaborated by Frederick Douglas, which permitted the people living there to choose whether they would or would not admit slavery in their territory. Lincoln regarded this as a retraction of the 1820 Missouri Compromise which had prohibited slavery above the 36-30′ parallel.
The termination of slavery was key aim of the Lincoln administration. Nevertheless, the American public was sluggish to hold close the suggestion. In a astutely written letter to Horace Greeley, editor of The New York Tribune, Lincoln concealed his aim of ending slavery by making it submissive to the reason of preserving the union: I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.”
For some period, Lincoln went on realizing earlier plans to set up colonies for the newly liberated slaves. He remarked positively on colonization in the Emancipation Proclamation, but all the efforts at such a massive undertaking failed. As Frederick Douglass noted, Lincoln was, “The first great man that I talked with in the United States freely who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color.”
Civil War
The war was the apogee of the confrontation of the two systems: slavery, and the free hired labor. The struggle was aggravated by the rivalry for the authority in the country. The territorial expansion and the existence of the huge fund of the lands aggravated the slavery matter on the new territories, and the agricultural problem, closely linked with it. The extensive character of plantation households required the expansion of the new lands; on the other hand, thousands of Americans an the new waves of immigrants were pretending to have those lands, as they moved to America with the dream to obtain their own land. The coexistence of the two systems, which were inter complementing each other, was confirmed by the sequence of compromises and concessions to the South relating the matters of slavery. Compromise 1850, Bill Kansas-Nebraska 1854, the solution of the supreme court on the Dread Scott’s case 1857, which promoted the outbreak of the inevitable conflict. The proclamations by the black-slaves, agitation of the abolitionists, the actions like John Brown movement (October 1859) defined the growing non-acceptance of slavery, and the readiness to struggle against it. (Kaufman, 51).
The South was governed by a settled plantation system grounded on slavery, with speedy growth taking location in the Southwest, such as Texas, grounded on high birth rates and squat immigration from Europe. There were not too much cities or towns, and little manufacturing excluding in border regions. Slave holders regulated political and economic life. Two-thirds of the Southern whites had no slaves and often were employed in subsistence farming, but the claim for slavery came from all sections of southern community.
Generally, the Northern society was growing much more rapidly than the Southern populace, which made it gradually more complex for the South to go on controlling the national government. Southerners were anxious on the matter of the relative political refuse of their region as the North was growing much faster in the contexts of population and industrial productivity.
The role of the Africans in the war was one of the most essential. They were the key benefiters after it terminated, and they led it for the sake of freedom and future. Enchained African Americans did not expect Lincoln’s exploit before escaping and searching for freedom behind Union rows. From early period of the war, hundreds of thousands of African Americans ran away to Union lines, particularly in occupied territories like Norfolk and the Hampton Roads region in 1862, Tennessee from 1862 on, the line of Sherman’s march, etc. So many African Americans filled the Union lines that leaders arranged camps and schools for them, where both adults and children studying to read and write. The American Missionary Association entered the war attempt by sending educators south to such contraband campsites, for example, establishing educates in Norfolk and on nearby farms. Moreover, nearly 200,000 African-American men served with difference as soldiers and sailors with Union armed forces. Most of those were escaped slaves. (Kaufman, 36).
Black capitalism
Origins of Black Capitalism can be observed in the lives of “Free Negroes” throughout periods of the American Enslavement. Lots of records are reporting the expansion of financial wealth by these “Free Negroes”.
Black Americans were an interior colony, offered that they created an “internal neo-colony.” This thesis states that America after the different Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s and affirmative action had been adapted from a colonial nation into a neocolonial one. Manning Marable points to corporate influential companies, such as the Ford Foundation, Clairol Company, and the National Urban Coalition’s, coalitions with the black middle class. Comparing black power with black capitalism, America’s commercial leaders since 1967 have supported endorsing and funding the proposals of the “civil rights class” in swap for control over black societies. Manning Marable declared that the black elite are the “implicit agents” of American neocolonialism and have maintained black radical plans such as the Black Power movement and educational nationalism in effort to co-opt and exploit these courses for capitalist and black middle class programs.
It is necessary to note that there was always an interior ideological division and nervousness within this black nationalist practice. There were always, from back to the mid-nineteenth century, traditional black separatists who are likely to highlight some particular kinds of political locations, such as strict cultural autonomy, a mistrust of dialogue or associations with progressive white arrangements. They underlined African cultural estimations and supported regularly private financial market instruments for group expansions. Thus, they supported a kind of black capitalism. These were the more conventional black nationalists. There was also a more essential black nationalist custom. The revolutionary black nationalists tended to be very critical of capitalism and said that capitalism, as and financial system coming out of Europe, a financial system becoming entrenched in the United States and its members through corporate America going all over the world, choked the probability of black deliverance and black expansion. They were inclined to be very unfavorable of capitalism. (Cateau, 25).
With the lack of cultural tradition and rejecting classification with the Negro masses on the one hand, and suffering from the disdain of the white world on the other, the black bourgeois has expanded a deep-seated inadequacy complex. In order to recompense for this feeling of inadequacy, the black bourgeois has elaborated in its separation what might be classified as a world of make-believe in which it efforts to getaway the contempt of whites and fulfill its desire for status in American life. One of the most striking suggestions of the futility of the social world which the black bourgeois generated is its faith in the significance of “Negro business,” i.e., the business ventures owned by Negroes and catering to Negro consumers. Blacks generally have a lower net worth than whites in America. This is particularly applicable in the formation of new commercial activity. One of the most common shapes of security for loans to open businesses is home impartiality. With the chronological and current distinctions in lending patterns toward blacks and whites, the option of using home evenhandedness to borrow against with the intention of opening a business is reduced. (Cateau, 38).
White Americans’ Denial to Anti-black Racism
Gordon argues that racism requires the denial of another human being’s humanity. As the other human is a human being, it happens that such a refusal is a challenge of actuality. A racist must, then, deny actuality, and since contact is probable between a racist and the people who are the object of racial disgust, then communal actuality is also what is rejected in racist allegations. A racist, then, tries to evade social actuality. Gordon also states that since people could only “emerge” if personified, then racism is also an assault on embodied actualities. It is an attempt to make embodied actualities bodies without viewpoints or make points of views without bodies. Racism is also a form of the strength of significance, by which Gordon means the conduct of charges as material characteristics of the world instead of phrases of human freedom and accountability. Racism assigns to so-called racially low-grade people inherent charges that originate from their fleshy tissue. An upshot of the spirit of significance is racist shrewdness. Here, Gordon, in accord with Frantz Fanon, states that racists are not illogical people but as alternative hyper-rational expressions of racist sagacity. He refuses, in other words, hypothesis that regard racial discrimination as a function of bad feelings. Such phenomena, he offers, emerge as a result of racist view, not its grounds. Affect materializes, in other words, to affect how one confers actuality. If one is not wishing to deal with time, an extremely poignant response clutch all time into a single moment, which heads to the excess of what one favors to believe over what one is frightened to challenge. (Asante, 24).
The form of good faith that recognizes that humans must endure some vagueness, for there are the things people are not capable to realize. Good faith necessitates that people stay open to confirmation that will point new ways of sympathetic as we learn more. Genuine good faith carries with it always the torment of knowing that confidence is beyond the grasp. The ultimate matters must be hesitantly replied. Would it be better to inflict the community’s sensitivity on all lawbreakers? Or must people stay open to hearing that anywhere sometime the lawbreaker may offer new realizing about our world and about the relations within that world?
Gordon regards the white discernment of the black as a bad faith refutation of racism. He regards racism as a denial of any options being made in how people treat each other. This is a dreadful over-generalization of Gordon’s well though out and very exact clarifications of anti-black discrimination. It is suspected, that one could apply the standards with other colors, but probably it is really a more thoughtful denial in the case of blacks. The significance of the denial of anti-black racism by white population is the sign that the world becomes more civilized, and people realize, that everyone is equal on this planet.
Unraveling the notion of racial features as possessions, the hidden arrangement of U.S. racism is exposed and the presumption of autonomy is unreservedly created into the white color of the skin, while the “presumption of slavery” and the denial of prerogative are intrinsically created into the black color of the skin. In the United States of America and Canada, body-based racism is communally articulated in unenthusiastic stereotyping, unenviable separation, social disenfranchisement, political prejudice, white discrimination in employment, limitation of access to jobs, reserves and prerogatives for blacks, and covert and overt confrontation to racial parity.
Black theology and Black power
Black theology appeared as a formal discipline. Starting with the “black power” movement in 1966, black clergy in many major quantities began to reassess the relations of the Christian church to the black society. Black developed in the Catholic, Presbyterian, and Episcopal churches. “The key drive of these new groups was to redefine the meaning and role of the church and faith in the lives of black people. Out of this reconsideration has come what some have called a ‘Black Theology.'”
For the first time in the narration of black sacred thought, black clergy and black theologians began to distinguish the requirement for a totally new “starting point” in theology. They persisted that this starting point must be described by people at the bottom and not the top of the socioeconomic ladder. So, black theologians began to re-read the Bible through the eyes of their slave grandparents and started speaking of God’s solidarity with the demoralized of the earth. (Breitman, 69).
The most productive and complicated writer of this new theological association has been James Cone. No one has matched him either in terms of sheer amount of writing, or in terms of the confront pretense by his novels.
Black Theology and Black Power, grounded on the supremacy of “black experience,” Cone describes theology as “a balanced study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential condition of an subjugated society, relating the powers of liberation to the spirit of the gospel, which is Jesus Christ.” Cone’s theology requires (and seeks to answer) the question, “What does the Christian gospel have to say to powerless black men whose existence is intimidated daily by the sinister members of white power.
In replying this pivotal question, Cone highlights that there are very close relations between black theology and what has been expressed as “black power.” Cone notes that black power is an expression that symbolizes both black freedom and black self-willpower “wherein black populace no longer view themselves as without human distinction but as men, human beings with the capability to construct their own fate.
Cone says black theology is the spiritual complement of black power. “Black Theology is the theological arm of Black Power, and Black Power is the political arm of Black Theology.” And, “while Black Power concentrates on the political, communal, and economic stipulation of black people, Black Theology puts black uniqueness in a theological background. (Cone, 58).
In the second sense, “black” and “white” narrate not to skin pigmentation but to “one’s outlook and action toward the liberation of the oppressed black people from white discrimination.” Blackness is thus “an ontological symbol for all people who contribute in the freedom of man from domination.” Seen in this light, “blackness” can be featured to people who do not have black skin but who do work for freedom.
By difference, “whiteness” in Cone’s thought represents the ethnocentric movement of “madmen sick with their own self-concept” and thus sightless to that which suffers them and coerces others. Whiteness symbolizes disease and domination. White religion is consequently regarded as a theological conservatory of that sickness and oppression.
Having stated that the black knowledge is the governing standard in Cone’s explanation of Scripture, it is significant to appreciate how this governing standard has affected his visions of precise doctrines.
The Challenges Facing Black Family
Since most of the agency’s clients are black and Hispanic, that didn’t seem very effective. He replaced the old posters with bilingual ones showing black families. Invisibility in the black mainstream is just one of the special challenges facing black families. Those issues were front and center last weekend at Miami Beach Bruthaz, a four-day, South Beach retreat for blacks. Attendees from all over the nation will talk about blacks in the military, and relations among other topics. A complete understanding of challenges to Extension diversity from the African-American perspective requires recognition of the very different and difficult communal, political, and educational history that features the attendance of people of African polite in this country. The paper offers an historical regard of social and biased components that restrict the incorporation of African Americans into the typical American life, temporarily describes traditional reply behaviors of African-Americans given this chronological background, and classifies current barriers to Extension variety attempts resulting from the aspects. If extension is to become really multicultural, it is necessary to address some current actualities of the system that present challenges to the surrounding which is sought to develop. Extension is people-focused and we face challenges from both within and outside the system. But, our diversity efforts are internal, addressing our responses to each other and to our programming efforts. Not that we don’t need to combat negativism from within the system, but we must also recognize that challenges to diversity exist from outside sources, including traditional audiences and Extension stakeholders. For African-American employees, it is often the external climate that increases the frustrations and hostilities that surface or fester on the job.
One of the major challenges for African American students is the campus environment. Human development models offers that humans expand best in surroundings where they are estimated, feel safe and necessary, and have social networks. Currently, the national program fails to provide black students with surroundings that value them on a reliable basis. Employment of black students to some PWIs is a purely cosmetic endeavor. Some African American students suggest they are getting a journey boat with all the fixings because government implie they have many black scholars or extensive services for students of color. Nevertheless, when black students step foot on principally white campuses, they get a tiny tugboat, like black student services being placed in an obscure place and very few black undergraduates in attendance. Because government posses the capability to authorize personalities through education, the people they employ must distinguish they have the authority to ease or frustrate student success. With that in mind, government needs to consciously reconsider the campus environment in which students learn and grow. For government to realistically provide education and service to the entire. (McLoyd, 73).
In summary, African-American sensitivities are shaped by the mix of human environments and life situations that is America. But there is hope! I believe that as an Extension System we must support a posture of social liberation for African-Americans. For those millions of African-Americans who are unreached and untouched by the Extension System, a system supported and maintained by public funds, we must develop effective outreach.
The Challenges Facing Black Women
African American women stand for the significant and growing source of talent, they presently represent only 1.1% of business officers in Fortune 500 companies, according to Catalyst, a nonprofit research and advisory firm with workplaces in New York City and San Jose, California. Experiencing a double interloper status – unlike white women or African American men – African American women account elimination from informal complexes and conflicted contacts with white women among the confronts they face.
Keys to success cited by examination respondents comprise greater than performance anticipations, communicating efficiently, connecting with advisers, and building optimistic relations with directors and coworkers. The survey’s findings were grounded on quantitative findings or a group of African American women at Fortune 1000 companies qualitative findings from focus groups of entry-and mid-level African American women, more than 50% of whom hold a graduate degree. (McLoyd, 136).
On the whole, they do not seek proper counseling services to contract with life’s matters. When they do seek help, they do so only when they are “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” and have bushed their own individual resources such as family, close friends, or church societies. When trying to understand African American women’s utilization of assistance services, one must take into account their long educational legacy of juggling multiple accountabilities and stressors in life. Living life as a Superwoman, that is, trying to accomplish many tasks without sufficient physical or mental relief can have injurious effects on one’s life. It can also prevent lots of African American women from seeking the help they may need when feeling overburdened. Social stigma, distrust of the counseling procedure, and financial unsteadiness also impact the way African American women apply to counseling services.
Many of the challenges that emerging African American leaders confront arise from the ignorance and/or insensitivity—rather than the blatant racism—of white people. Yet, there is no denying that racism remains an important issue. When the moderator rhetorically asked whether race is still an issue in America, the simple answer from the panelists was: “It is.”
Strategy to improve education
Call to Action 9.1 of the National Strategy calls for the Treasury Department to host a sequence of seminars to raise alertness of the significant education topics relevant to specific communities.
Throughout the nation, minority advertises serve as an essential area of enlargement for the American economy. As minority marketplaces befall a larger and more commanding segment of the U.S. financial system, it is significant that minority inhabitants take full advantage of the economic services and occasions available to them. Whether it is because they are not participating in financial markets, doubt the possibility of sustainable homeownership, or face other hurdles, minority populations face specific challenges with regard to accessing needed financial services. Despite these challenges, steps can be taken to improve understanding and utilization of financial services and encourage homeownership. (McLoyd, 52).
The Financial Literacy and Education Commission (Commission) was established under Title V of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions (FACT) Act of 2003 to improve financial literacy and education of persons in the United States. The Commission is chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury and composed of 19 other Federal agencies.
The principal duties of the Commission include encouraging government and private sector efforts to promote financial literacy; coordinating financial education efforts of the Federal government; identification and promotion of best practices; development of a national strategy to promote financial literacy; establishment of a website to serve as a clearinghouse and provide information about financial education programs and grants; and establishment of a toll-free hotline available to provide information about issues of financial literacy and education.
The purpose of the Provisions for the National Education Strategy is to provide the framework for implementation of the vision of education, and to provide the citizens of Lithuania, their interest groups and state institutions with the possibility to continue public discussions and to agree on the methods of implementation of this vision. The Strategic Provisions supplement the long-term development strategy of the State and define the goals for development of education, the means for achieving these goals, as well as establishes the key quantitative and qualitative outcomes to be used as the basis for development of the education and evaluation thereof in 2003–2012.
Development of education should take into account the new challenges and new opportunities for the Lithuanian society, such as development of democracy and market economy, the process of globalization, the vast amounts of information, rapid changes and fragmentation of the society. Education should help an individual and the society at large to respond to the challenges and to take advantage of the new opportunities. This necessitates essential reforms in the educational system of Lithuania in order to increase its efficiency, improve accessibility to education, create conditions enabling continuing education and life-long learning, ensure the quality of education that conforms to the European standards and meets the needs of the contemporary African American community.
In response to these and other unique challenges faced by African American students in the far north, in May 2005 our Government released Education Discussion Paper. Its aim was to generate new ideas and stimulate discussion about ways to improve the educational achievement of these children.
Helping education systems deliver
Improve the governance of education systems:
- Improve policy capacity
- Strengthen government systems
- Help partners to develop sustainable information systems
- Support social accountability measures
- Support anti-corruption measures in education programs and introduce codes of conduct
Strengthen service delivery:
- Enhance the availability and quality of resources such as teachers, classrooms and learning materials
- Trial innovative ways to encourage children to complete their education
- Support health initiatives within schools
- Support the re-establishment of schooling following emergencies and build domestic response capacity
Meeting specific regional needs:
- Improve vocational and technical training
- Assist partners to reform their vocational and technical education systems
- Establish the new Australia-Pacific Technical College
Combat corruption:
- Integrate anti-corruption measures in education programs
Enhance regional engagement and strengthen partnerships:
- Increase policy dialogue with partner governments
- Enhance harmonization with other bilateral donors, UN agencies and international development banks
- Strengthen whole-of-government approaches
Works Cited
Asante, Molefi, Afrocentricity. Buffalo: Amulefi Publishing Co., 1980.
Breitman, George (ed.), Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements. New York: Pathfinder, 1989.
Cateau, Heather, and S. H. H. Carrington, eds. Capitalism and Slavery Fifty Years Later: Eric Eustace Williams – A Reassessment of the Man and His Work. New York: Peter Lang, 2000.
Cone, James, Black Theology and Black Power. New York: Seabury Press, 1969.
Kaufman, Will. The Civil War in American Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
McLoyd, Vonnie C., Nancy E. Hill, and Kenneth A. Dodge, eds. African American Family Life: Ecological and Cultural Diversity. New York: Guilford Press, 2005.