Life notes week 3

“ The hands are required to be in the cotton field as soon as it is light in the morning, and , with the exception of ten or fifteen minutes, which is given to them at noon to swallow their allowance of cold bacon, they are not permitted to be a moment idle until it is dark to see.” (Takaki 1993) This quote really helps to illustrate how hard the day to day life of a slave was. From what I can see the life of a slave was a lot of work and no reward. I really hold a lot of empathy for slaves. I work landscaping in the summer and it is very hard work. Everyday I would come home and blow mulch dust out of my nose as well as from my eyes. Labor like that is no joke and unlike the slaves at this time I got paid by the hour, a one hour lunch break and probably worked only half the hours that were demanded from them. On top of all of that, I am sure my employer treated me much better than their plantation owners. If I messed up a task, I was corrected. On the other hand, if a slave did not perform a task correctly, he or she would be punished and whipped.

“Irish laborers, an immigrant complained, were “thought nothing of more than dogs… despised and kicked out.” (Takaki 1993.) there seems to be a pattern of harsh conditions and treatment pf minorities that immigrated to the United States. It started with white indentured servants, african American slaves, and continued with other immigrant groups such as the Irish. The Irish laborers were treated like pieces of meat. Many of these men earned their petty wages building railroads and even died doing so under extremely dangerous conditions. Evidently, workers compenstation had not yet been implementd in America. My own relatives immigrated to the United States in the mid 1800’s. I am definitely thankful that I grew up in the 1990’s rather than the 1850’s after reading this. I realize that if I grew up at this time in America, I would have probably worked on the railroads my entire life with terrible arthritis, or died by some kind of freak accident wile laboring. I feel both empathy for these people and fortunate for my life.
“The Irish were imaged as ape like and "a race of savages,” at the same level of intelligence as blacks.” (Takaki 1993) I personally found this quote very interesting because I had never realized the parallels in the treatment of irish immigrants and African Americans at this juncture in time. The stereotypes, and prejudice that many of these groups faced is unimaginable. If people today could just take the time to put aside their racial and cultural differences, I feel we would find each other very relatable as human beings. Although I am glad that as an irish American I have never really had to deal with stereotypes from the excerpt above, I find it disturbing that some of these negative stereotypes are still given to african Americans by some racist rednecks in today’s world.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkcZMMgDc_w





Will there ever come a day when people are looked at as human beings rather than a label in another category?