African American Culture Essay Example for Free

African American Culture Essay African American culture in the United States includes the various cultural traditions of African ethnic groups. It is both part of and distinct from American culture. The U. S. Census Bureau defines African Americans as people having origins in any of the Black race groups of Africa. [1] African American culture is indigenous to the descendants in the U. S. of survivors of the Middle Passage. It is rooted in Africa and is an amalgam of chiefly sub-Saharan African and Sahelean cultures. Although slavery greatly restricted the ability of Africans in America to practice their cultural traditions, many practices, values and beliefs survived and over time have incorporated elements of European American culture. There are even certain facets of African American culture that were brought into being or made more prominent as a result of slavery; an example of this is how drumming became used as a means of communication and establishing a community identity during that time. The result is a dynamic, creative culture that has had and continues to have a profound impact on mainstream American culture and on world culture as well. After Emancipation, these uniquely African American traditions continued to grow. They developed into distinctive traditions in music, art, literature, religion, food, holidays, amongst others. While for some time sociologists, such as Gunnar Myrdal and Patrick Moynihan, believed that African Americans had lost most cultural ties with Africa, anthropological field research by Melville Hersovits and others demonstrated that there is a continuum of African traditions among Africans in the New World from the West Indies to the United States. The greatest influence of African cultural practices on European cultures is found below the Mason-Dixon in the southeastern United States, especially in the Carolinas among the Gullah people and in Louisiana. African American culture often developed separately from mainstream American culture because of African Americans desire to practice their own traditions, as well as the persistence of racial segregation in America. Consequently African American culture has become a significant part of American culture and yet, at the same time, remains a distinct culture apart from it. History From the earliest days of slavery, slave owners sought to exercise control over their slaves by attempting to strip them of their African culture. The physical isolation and societal marginalization of African slaves and, later, of their free progeny, however, actually facilitated the retention of significant elements of traditional culture among Africans in the New World generally, and in the U. S. in particular. Slave owners deliberately tried to repress political organization in order to deal with the many slave rebellions that took place in the southern United States, Brazil, Haiti, and the Dutch Guyanas. African cultures,slavery,slave rebellions,and the civil rights movements(circa 1800s-160s)have shaped African American religious, familial, political and economic behaviors. The imprint of Africa is evident in myriad ways, in politics, economics, language, music, hairstyles, fashion, dance, religion and worldview, and food preparation methods. In the United States, the very legislation that was designed to strip slaves of culture and deny them education served in many ways to strengthen it. In turn, African American culture has had a pervasive, transformative impact on myriad elements of mainstream American culture, among them language, music, dance, religion, cuisine, and agriculture. This process of mutual creative exchange is called creolization. Over time, the culture of African slaves and their descendants has been ubiquitous in its impact on not only the dominant American culture, but on world culture as well. Oral tradition Slaveholders limited or prohibited education of enslaved African Americans because they believed it might lead to revolts or escape plans. Hence, African-based oral traditions became the primary means of preserving history, morals, and other cultural information among the people. This was consistent with the griot practices of oral history in many African and other cultures that did not rely on the written word. Many of these cultural elements have been passed from generation to generation through storytelling. The folktales provided African Americans the opportunity to inspire and educate one another. Examples of African American folktales include trickster tales of Brer Rabbit and heroic tales such as that of John Henry. The Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris helped to bring African American folk tales into mainstream adoption. Harris did not appreciate the complexity of the stories nor their potential for a lasting impact on society. Characteristics of the African American oral tradition present themselves in a number of forms. African American preachers tend to perform rather than simply speak. The emotion of the subject is carried through the speakers tone, volume, and movement, which tend to mirror the rising action, climax, and descending action of the sermon. Often song, dance, verse and structured pauses are placed throughout the sermon. Techniques such as call-and-response are used to bring the audience into the presentation. In direct contrast to recent tradition in other American and Western cultures, it is an acceptable and common audience reaction to interrupt and affirm the speaker. Spoken word is another example of how the African American oral tradition influences modern American popular culture. Spoken word artists employ the same techniques as African American preachers including movement, rhythm, and audience participation. Rap music from the 1980s and beyond has been seen as an extension of oral culture. Harlem Renaissance [pic] Zora Neale Hurston was a prominent literary figure during the Harlem Renaissance. Main article: Harlem Renaissance The first major public recognition of African American culture occurred during the Harlem Renaissance. In the 1920s and 1930s, African American music, literature, and art gained wide notice. Authors such as Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen and poets such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen wrote works describing the African American experience. Jazz, swing, blues and other musical forms entered American popular music. African American artists such as William H. Johnson and Palmer Hayden created unique works of art featuring African Americans. The Harlem Renaissance was also a time of increased political involvement for African Americans. Among the notable African American political movements founded in the early 20th century are the United Negro Improvement Association and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Nation of Islam, a notable Islamic religious movement, also began in the early 1930s. African American cultural movement The Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s followed in the wake of the non-violent American Civil Rights Movement. The movement promoted racial pride and ethnic cohesion in contrast to the focus on integration of the Civil Rights Movement, and adopted a more militant posture in the face of racism. It also inspired a new renaissance in African American literary and artistic expression generally referred to as the African American or Black Arts Movement. The works of popular recording artists such as Nina Simone (Young, Gifted and Black) and The Impressions (Keep On Pushin), as well as the poetry, fine arts and literature of the time, shaped and reflected the growing racial and political consciousness. Among the most prominent writers of the African American Arts Movement were poet Nikki Giovanni; poet and publisher Don L. Lee, who later became known as Haki Madhubuti; poet and playwright Leroi Jones, later known as Amiri Baraka; and Sonia Sanchez. Other influential writers were Ed Bullins, Dudley Randall, Mari Evans, June Jordan, Larry Neal and Ahmos Zu-Bolton. Another major aspect of the African American Arts Movement was the infusion of the African aesthetic, a return to a collective cultural sensibility and ethnic pride that was much in evidence during the Harlem Renaissance and in the celebration of Negritude among the artistic and literary circles in the U. S. , Caribbean and the African continent nearly four decades earlier: the idea that black is beautiful. During this time, there was a resurgence of interest in, and an embrace of, elements of African culture within African American culture that had been suppressed or devalued to conform to Eurocentric America. Natural hairstyles, such as the afro, and African clothing, such as the dashiki, gained popularity. More importantly, the African American aesthetic encouraged personal pride and political awareness among African Americans. Music [pic] Men playing the djembe, a traditional West African drum adopted into African American and American culture. The bags and the clothing of the man on the right are printed with traditional kente cloth patterns. African American music is rooted in the typically polyrhythmic music of the ethnic groups of Africa, specifically those in the Western, Sahelean, and Sub-Saharan regions. African oral traditions, nurtured in slavery, encouraged the use of music to pass on history, teach lessons, ease suffering, and relay messages. The African pedigree of African American music is evident in some common elements: call and response, syncopation, percussion, improvisation, swung notes, blue notes, the use of falsetto, melisma, and complex multi-part harmony. During slavery, Africans in America blended traditional European hymns with African elements to create spirituals. Many African Americans sing Lift Evry Voice and Sing in addition to the American national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, or in lieu of it. Written by James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson in 1900 to be performed for the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the song was, and continues to be, a popular way for African Americans to recall past struggles and express ethnic solidarity, faith and hope for the future. The song was adopted as the Negro National Anthem by the NAACP in 1919. African American children are taught the song at school, church or by their families. Lift Evry Voice and Sing traditionally is sung immediately following, or instead of, The Star-Spangled Banner at events hosted by African American churches, schools, and other organizations. In the 1800s, as the result of the blackface minstrel show, African American music entered mainstream American society. By the early twentieth century, several musical forms with origins in the African American community had transformed American popular music. Aided by the technological innovations of radio and phonograph records, ragtime, jazz, blues, and swing also became popular overseas, and the 1920s became known as the Jazz Age. The early 20th century also saw the creation of the first African American Broadway shows, films such as King Vidors Hallelujah!, and operas such as George Gershwins Porgy and Bess. Rock and roll, doo wop, soul, and RB developed in the mid 20th century. These genres became very popular in white audiences and were influences for other genres such as surf. The dozens, an urban African American tradition of using rhyming slang to put down your enemies (or friends) developed through the smart-ass street jive of the early Seventies into a new form of music. In the South Bronx, the half speaking, half singing rhythmic street talk of rapping grew into the hugely successful cultural force known as Hip Hop. Hip Hop would become a multicultural movement. However, it is still important to many African Americans. The African American Cultural Movement of the 1960s and 1970s also fueled the growth of funk and later hip-hop forms such as rap, hip house, new jack swing and go go. African American music has experienced far more widespread acceptance in American popular music in the 21st century than ever before. In addition to continuing to develop newer musical forms, modern artists have also started a rebirth of older genres in the form of genres such as neo soul and modern funk-inspired groups. Dance [pic]. The Cakewalk was the first African American dance to gain widespread popularity in the United States. [pic] African American dance, like other aspects of African American culture, finds its earliest roots in the dances of the hundreds of African ethnic groups that made up African slaves in the Americas as well as influences from European sources in the United States. Dance in the African tradition, and thus in the tradition of slaves, was a part of both every day life and special occasions. Many of these traditions such as get down, ring shouts, and other elements of African body language survive as elements of modern dance. In the 1800s, African American dance began to appear in minstrel shows. These shows often presented African Americans as caricatures for ridicule to large audiences. The first African American dance to become popular with White dancers was the cakewalk in 1891. Later dances to follow in this tradition include the Charleston, the Lindy Hop, and the Jitterbug. During the Harlem Renaissance, all African American Broadway shows such as Shuffle Along helped to establish and legitimize African American dancers. African American dance forms such as tap, a combination of African and European influences, gained widespread popularity thanks to dancers such as Bill Robinson and were used by leading White choreographers who often hired African American dancers. Contemporary African American dance is descended from these earlier forms and also draws influence from African and Caribbean dance forms. Groups such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater have continued to contribute to the growth of this form. Modern popular dance in America is also greatly influenced by African American dance. American popular dance has also drawn many influences from African American dance most notably in the hip hop genre. Art [pic] Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City by Henry Ossawa Tanner 1859-1937 From its early origins in slave communities, through the end of the twentieth century, African-American art has made a vital contribution to the art of the United States. During the period between the 1600s and the early 1800s, art took the form of small drums, quilts, wrought-iron figures and ceramic vessels in the southern United States. These artifacts have similarities with comparable crafts in West and Central Africa. In contrast, African American artisans like the New England–based engraver Scipio Moorhead and the Baltimore portrait painter Joshua Johnson created art that was conceived in a thoroughly western European fashion. During the 1800s, Harriet Powers made quilts in rural Georgia, United States that are now considered among the finest examples of nineteenth-century Southern quilting. Later in the 20th century, the women of Gee’s Bend developed a distinctive, bold, and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional African American quilts with a geometric simplicity that developed separately but was like that of Amish quilts and modern art. After the American Civil War, museums and galleries began more frequently to display the work of African American artists. Cultural expression in mainstream venues was still limited by the dominant European aesthetic and by racial prejudice. To increase the visibility of their work, many African American artists traveled to Europe where they had greater freedom. It was not until the Harlem Renaissance that more whites began to pay attention to African American art in America. [pic] Kara Walker, Cut, Cut paper and adhesive on wall, Brent Sikkema NYC. During the 1920s, artists such as Raymond Barthe, Aaron Douglas, Augusta Savage, and photographer James Van Der Zee became well known for their work. During the Great Depression, new opportunities arose for these and other African American artists under the WPA. In later years, other programs and institutions, such as the New York City-based Harmon Foundation, helped to foster African American artistic talent. Augusta Savage, Elizabeth Catlett, Lois Mailou Jones, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence and others exhibited in museums and juried art shows, and built reputations and followings for themselves. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were very few widely accepted African American artists. Despite this, The Highwaymen, a loose association of 27 African American artists from Ft. Pierce, Florida, created idyllic, quickly realized images of the Florida landscape and peddled some 50,000 of them from the trunks of their cars. They sold their art directly to the public rather than through galleries and art agents, thus receiving the name The Highwaymen. Rediscovered in the mid-1990s, today they are recognized as an important part of American folk history. Their artwork is widely collected by enthusiasts and original pieces can easily fetch thousands of dollars in auctions and sales. The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s was another period of resurgent interest in African American art. During this period, several African-American artists gained national prominence, among them Lou Stovall, Ed Love, Charles White, and Jeff Donaldson. Donaldson and a group of African-American artists formed the Afrocentric collective AFRICOBRA, which remains in existence today. The sculptor Martin Puryear, whose work has been acclaimed for years, is being honored with a 30-year retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York starting November 2007. Notable contemporary African American artists include David Hammons, Eugene J. Martin, Charles Tolliver, and Kara Walker. Literature [pic] Langston Hughes, a notable African American poet of the Harlem Renaissance. African American literature has its roots in the oral traditions of African slaves in America. The slaves used stories and fables in much the same way as they used music. These stories influenced the earliest African American writers and poets in the 18thcentury such as Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano. These authors reached early high points by telling slave narratives. During the early 20th century Harlem Renaissance, numerous authors and poets, such as Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Dubois, and Booker T. Washington, grappled with how to respond to discrimination in America. Authors during the Civil Rights era, such as Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about issues of racial segregation, oppression and other aspects of African American life. This tradition continues today with authors who have been accepted as an integral part of American literature, with works such as Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and Beloved by Nobel Prize-winning Toni Morrison, and series by Octavia Butler and Walter Mosley that have achieved both best-selling and/or award-winning status. Museums The African American Museum Movement emerged during the 1950s and 1960s to preserve the heritage of the African American experience and to ensure its proper interpretation in American history. Museums devoted to African American history are found in many African American neighborhoods. Institutions such as the African American Museum and Library at Oakland and The African American Museum in Cleveland were created by African Americans to teach and investigate cultural history that, until recent decades was primarily preserved trough oral traditions. Language Generations of hardships imposed on the African American community created distinctive language patterns. Slave owners often intentionally mixed people who spoke different African languages to discourage communication in any language other than English. This, combined with prohibitions against education, led to the development of pidgins, simplified mixtures of two or more languages that speakers of different languages could use to communicate. Examples of pidgins that became fully developed languages include Creole, common to Haiti,and Gullah, common to the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. African American Vernacular English is a type variety (dialect, ethnolect and sociolect) of the American English language closely associated with the speech of but not exclusive to African Americans. While AAVE is academically considered a legitimate dialect because of its logical structure, some of both Caucasians and African Americans consider it slang or the result of a poor command of Standard American English. Inner city African American children who are isolated by speaking only AAVE have more difficulty with standardized testing and, after school, moving to the mainstream world for work. It is common for many speakers of AAVE to code switch between AAVE and Standard American English depending on the setting. Fashion and aesthetics [pic]. A man weaving kente cloth in Ghana. Attire The cultural explosion of the 1960s saw the incorporation of surviving cultural dress with elements from modern fashion and West African traditional clothing to create a uniquely African American traditional style. Kente cloth is the best known African textile. These festive woven patterns, which exist in numerous varieties, were originally made by the Ashanti and Ewe peoples of Ghana and Togo. Kente fabric also appears in a number of Western style fashions ranging from casual t-shirts to formal bow ties and cummerbunds. Kente strips are often sewn into liturgical and academic robes or worn as stoles. Since the Black Arts Movement, traditional African clothing has been popular amongst African Americans for both formal and informal occasions. Another common aspect of fashion in African American culture involves the appropriate dress for worship in the Black church. It is expected in most churches that an individual should present their best appearance for worship. African American women in particular are known for wearing vibrant dresses and suits. An interpretation of a passage from the Christian Bible, every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head , has led to the tradition of wearing elaborate Sunday hats, sometimes known as crowns. Hair Hair styling in African American culture is greatly varied. African American hair is typically composed of tightly coiled curls. The predominant styles for women involve the straightening of the hair through the application of heat or chemical processes. These treatments form the base for the most commonly socially acceptable hairstyles in the United States. Alternatively, the predominant and most socially acceptable practice for men is to leave ones hair natural. Often, as men age and begin to lose their hair, the hair is either closely cropped, or the head is shaved completely free of hair. However, since the 1960s, natural hairstyles, such as the afro, braids, and dreadlocks, have been growing in popularity. Although the association with radical political movements and their vast difference from mainstream Western hairstyles, the styles have not yet attained widespread social acceptance. Maintaining facial hair is more prevalent among African American men than in other male populations in the U. S. In fact, the soul patch is so named because African American men, particularly jazz musicians, popularized the style. The preference for facial hair among African American men is due partly to personal taste, but because they are more prone than other ethnic groups to develop a condition known as pseudofolliculitis barbae, commonly referred to as razor bumps, many prefer not to shave. Body image The European aesthetic and attendant mainstream concepts of beauty are often at odds with the African body form. Because of this, African American women often find themselves under pressure to conform to European standards of beauty. Still, there are individuals and groups who are working towards raising the standing of the African aesthetic among African Americans and internationally as well. This includes efforts toward promoting as models those with clearly defined African features; the mainstreaming of natural hairstyles; and, in women, fuller, more voluptuous body types. Religion While African Americans practice a number of religions, Protestant Christianity is by far the most popular. Additionally, 14% of Muslims in the United States and Canada are African American. Christianity [pic] A river baptism in New Bern, North Carolina near the turn of the 20th century. The religious institutions of African American Christians commonly are referred tocollectively as the black church. During slavery, many slaves were stripped of their African belief systems and typically denied free religious practice. Slaves managed, however, to hang on to some practices by integrating them into Christian worship in secret meetings. These practices, including dance, shouts, African rhythms, and enthusiastic singing, remain a large part of worship in the African American church. African American churches taught that all people were equal in Gods eyes and viewed the doctrine of obedience to ones master taught in white churches as hypocritical. Instead the African American church focused on the message of equality and hopes for a better future. Before and after emancipation, racial segregation in America prompted the development of organized African American denominations. The first of these was the AME Church founded by Richard Allen in 1787. An African American church is not necessarily a separate denomination. Several predominantly African American churches exist as members of predominantly white denominations. African American churches have served to provide African American people with leadership positions and opportunities to organize that were denied in mainstream American society. Because of this, African American pastors became the bridge between the African American and European American communities and thus played a crucial role in the American Civil Rights Movement. Like many Christians, African American Christians sometimes participate in or attend a Christmas play. Black Nativity by Langston Hughes is a re-telling of the classic Nativity story with gospel music. Productions can be found a African American theaters and churches all over the country. Islam [pic] A member of the Nation of Islam selling merchandise on a city street corner. Despite the popular assumption that the Nation represents all or most African American Muslims, less than 2% are members. Generations before the advent of the Atlantic slave trade, Islam was a thriving religion in West Africa due to its peaceful introduction via the lucrative trans-Saharan trade between prominent tribes in the southern Sahara and the Berbers to the North. In his attesting to this fact the West African scholar Cheikh Anta Diop explained: The primary reason for the success of Islam in Black Africaconsequently stems from the fact that it was propagated peacefully at first by solitary Arabo-Berber travelers to certain Black kings and notables, who then spread it about them to those under their jurisdiction Many first-generation slaves were often able to retain their Muslim identity, their descendants were not. Slaves were either forcibly converted to Christianity as was the case in the Catholic lands or were besieged with gross inconviences to their religious practice such as in the case of the Protestant American mainland. In the decades after slavery and particularly during the depression era, Islam reemerged in the form of highly visible and sometimes controversial heterodox movements in the African American community. The first of these of note was the Moorish Science Temple of America, founded by Noble Drew Ali. Ali had a profound influence on Wallace Fard, who later founded the Black nationalist Nation of Islam in 1930. Elijah Muhammad became head of the organization in 1934. Much like Malcolm X, who left the Nation of Islam in 1964, many African American Muslims now follow traditional Islam. A survey by the Council on American-Islamic Relations shows that 30% of Sunni Mosque attendees are African Americans. African American orthodox Muslims are often the victims of stereotypes, most notably the assumption that an African American Muslim is a member of the Nation of Islam. They are often viewed by the uneducated African-American community in general as less authentic than Muslims from the Middle East or South Asia while credibility is less of an issue with immigrant Muslims and Muslim world in general. Other religions. Aside from Christianity and Islam, there are also African Americans who follow Judaism, Buddhism, and a number of other religions. The Black Hebrew Israelites are a collection of African American Jewish religious organizations. Among their varied teachings, they often include that African Americans are descended from the Biblical Hebrews (sometimes with the paradoxical claim that the Jewish people are not). There is a small but growing number of African Americans who participate in African traditional religions, such as Vodou and Santeria or Ifa and diasporic traditions like Rastafarianism. Many of them are immigrants or descendants of immigrants from the Caribbean and South America, where these are practiced. Because of religious practices, such as animal sacrifice, which are no longer common among American religions and are often legally prohibited, these groups may be viewed negatively and are sometimes the victims of harassment. Life events For most African Americans, the observance of life events follows the pattern of mainstream American culture. There are some traditions which are unique to African Americans. Some African Americans have created new rites of passage that are linked to African traditions. Pre-teen and teenage boys and girls take classes to prepare them for adulthood. They are typically taught spirituality, responsibility, and leadership. Most of these programs are modeled after traditional African ceremonies, with the focus largely on embracing African ideologies rather than specific rituals. To this day, some African American couples choose to jump the broom as a part of their wedding ceremony. Although the practice, which can be traced back to Ghana, fell out of favor in the African American community after the end of slavery, it has experienced a slight resurgence in recent years as some couples seek to reaffirm their African heritage. Funeral traditions tend to vary based on a number of factors, including religion and location, but there are a number of commonalities. Probably the most important part of death and dying in the African American culture is the gathering of family and friends. Either in the last days before death or shortly after death, typically any friends and family members that can be reached are notified. This gathering helps to provide spiritual and emotional support, as well as assistance in making decisions and accomplishing everyday tasks. The spirituality of death is very important in African American culture. A member of the clergy or members of the religious community, or both, are typically present with the family through the entire process. Death is often viewed as transitory rather than final. Many services are called homegoings, instead of funerals, based on the belief that the person is going home to the afterlife. The entire end of life process is generally treated as a celebration of life rather than a mourning of loss. This is most notably demonstrated in the New Orleans Jazz Funeral tradition where upbeat music, dancing, and food encourage those gathered to be happy and celebrate the homegoing of a beloved friend. Cuisine [pic] A traditional soul food dinner consisting of fried chicken, candied yams, collard greens, cornbread, and macaroni and cheese. The cultivation and use of many agricultural products in the United States, such as yams, peanuts, rice, okra, sorghum, grits, watermelon, indigo dyes, and cotton, can be traced to African influences. African American foods reflect creative responses to racial and economic oppression and poverty. Under slavery, African Americans were not allowed to eat better cuts of meat, and after emancipation many often were too poor to afford them. Soul food, a hearty cuisine commonly associated with African Americans in the South (but also common to African Americans nationwide), makes creative use of inexpensive products procured through farming and subsistence hunting and fishing.

Racism And Prejudice Cultural Studies Essay

Racism And Prejudice Cultural Studies Essay In a world with different skin, hair, noses, and just appearance in general, Racism is a big part of it. People in every ethnic background make racist statements about each other, such as blacks to white and Hispanics to blacks, so on and so forth. Racism is not even a word; Human kind has invented this even though all these ethnic groups are from the same species-Homo sapiens. This is a reasonable statement which the majority of the world has not even stopped to consider. The word Racism started to make its first manifestation in the early twentieth century but the idea that a certain group of people are superiors than other has been around in the word for an extensive time. For example in 15 century and 16 century the African populations were considered to be lower than any race and the Europeans use them as slaves. [1] Even before that when the Egyptians use the Jewish population as slaves to help them build their famous pyramids with their hard unpaid manual labor. In the late twentieth century when the United States start to segregate other nations around the world still had the same crisis. One of the worst racist events against any ethnic group situated in Europe to be accurate in Germany beneath the command of Hitler; slaughtering millions of Jews, Gypsies,  and  Catholics.[1] Effects of racism against ethnic groups can cause many social and political conflicts. In some cases this actions have even brought the ethnic groups to be paid lower than others of different societies because of their religion, appearance or nationalities. Theyre even put to do higher risk jobs because no one else would. [3] In example like the Immigrants that pass through a journey to get to the United States to get a healthier life, they have to work with being paid small quantities of money for a high risk or Unpleasant job that the citizen of the country are unwilling to do. Racism brings harms to others physically or emotionally in many ways: Self hate can be causes of racism were the person might dislike for his/her qualities. Suicides also are affected by racism, if their constantly mocked this can lead to depressions, suicidal thoughts and then death. Racial problems may also cause ethnic groups attack against someone or another certain ethnic group they consider worthless o r bellow themselves. Some even develop eating disorder because of verbal abuse that has affected him/her. Others take the anger and frustration becoming bullies and racist themselves. These thing help develop Ethnic hatred between each other and discrimination arise from these events. Racism has multiple concepts; Many types of racism. Racism has a cause and effect. Discrimination, oppression, violence, intimidation are some of them.[2] While racism between races are able to happened because of their difference in cultural, heritage, language, ideas and historical factors. Individual racism is an intentional n the part of the perpetrator to injure or harm another because of perceived racial difference. [8] The lynching of blacks by KKK is an example of individual racism.[2] Institutional racism evolves when racial oppression and inequality are at the norm in a society those attitudes subsequently permeate the various legal, educational, and economic institution, creating a system that directly or indirectly excludes or discriminates against, members of one or another racial or ethnic community. [2] Nativism occurs rather a lot in the United States, as thousands of people migrate every single year hoping for better standards of living for them and their families. As more and more they come and fill up the American cities with their religion, language, and ideas, Citizens complain on how their presence is taking jobs away that belong to them, they start becoming xenophobic and start to hate the immigrants. [5] This starts to cause ethnic tensions and hate groups develop against these foreigners. Moving on to a specific event in history, the most dreadful for  the United  States is the initiation of the organization Ku Klux Klan (KKK). KKK is a white ethnic group against the Immigrant population in the United States. Black African Americans arent the only ones affected by the KKK like some may think but also Catholics, Jewish and other religions that arent protestant. [6] The clan is made up of White supremacists. In the1890s African Americans where described as belonging to a diseased, degenerate race that its not likely to survive more than a generation.   This so called disease is known as Nigra [6]. The Mississippi  Senator James K. Vardaman foreshadowed that Nigra would be over by the 1920s. [6] The African American populations slowly increase as beatings and killing slowly came to a decrease. When they realized that the senator of Mississippi had an incorrect hypothesis the Ku Klux Klan decided to take action. They started atrocious acts such as murders against black political leaders, church leaders and community groups. They even also drove black farmers of their land with their assaults and hatred acts of violence. They publicized the death of each African American weekly. The KKK also in an act to intimidate started burning the Christian cross. In 1924 the organizations reached a peak of four million members but slowly decrease to the hundred thousand in 1930s and faded away in the 1940s. [6] When the North union army won the Civil war, the United States ratified the thirteenth amendment and slavery became dissolved. Southern states worked quickly to establish Black codes. Black code is design to prevent blacks from obtaining full rights; they could only marry, own property, negotiate contracts, and have limited participation in court proceedings against other blacks. [7] As African Americans lost tolerance with segregation during the World War II. A black Labor leader Philip Randolph went to Washington D.C. to object the prohibiting from employment in the industries to blacks. His protest was victorious; they established the Fair Employment Practices Committee. During the war years blacks generally saw an enhancement in their standard of living and laid the groundwork for the civil rights movement of the 1950s. After Blacks in the military were approved, the Black African population in the United States still had a bumpy moment particularly in the military when World War II began. Several riots started in the army as a situation that happened when execution of a black soldier at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1941.[10] Another riot started in Cap Stewart, Georgia where the military police clashed with black soldiers protesting segregation in facilities and racial prejudice in close by towns.[10] After the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed an executive ordering Japanese Americans living in California, Oregon, and Washington to reassign to custody camps for the enduring of the war for their wellbeing. The detestation acts compel them to go incognito which affect the United States in the loss of 2/3 of their Vegetable crops which the Japanese Americans cultivate in the west coast. [8] Within days of the Pearl Harbor attack Japanese were fired from Civil Service jobs, their medical license and law were revoked, their business were Boycotted and their insurance policies were disregarded. [8] Japanese American got treated like prisoners in their own country just because of their background. Families were housed in the horse stalls before being shift into camps in inaccessible areas in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. [8] Their farms, homes, business, and back accounts were confiscated. Some children often exploded in fury , some refusing to sign a loyalty oath and renounce to their American citizenship, others volunteered to serve in the U.S army but were segregated. Military riot were nothing compared to riot in cities, such as one that occurred Detroit in summer of 1943. [9] Young Black and white kids got involved in a small fight at a jam-packed beach in Detroit. In hours about five thousand people rioting. The rebellion got out of control for three days over huge parts of Detroit. The president had to announce state of emergency and called in about five to six thousand National Guard troops for aid. About thirty blacks were murdered and ten white people also murdered; about eight hundred people wounded. [9] In some countries there are some laws that prohibit discrimination based on race or appearance. [4] Most apply to federal government base industries. Hate crimes Racism are considered criminal act in many countries. Definitely standing up for the Anti-Racism is the best thing that anyone can do. Even though we all come from different cultures, we are Homo sapiens that live all together in this world. In a world with no racial tension and ethnic hatred we be a near to perfect world.

Theories of Patient Satisfaction

Theories of Patient Satisfaction Patients satisfaction Formulation of Patient satisfaction Pascoe (1983) defined patient satisfaction as â€Å"†¦the health care recipient’s  reaction to salient aspects of the context, process, and result of their service  experiences†¦ (pp. 189)†. It consists of a â€Å"†¦cognitively based evaluation or  grading of directly-received services including structure, process, and outcome  of services†¦ and an affectively based response to the structure, process, and  outcome of services†¦(pp. 189)†. In terms of the formulation of patient  satisfaction, Pascoe described the Discrepancy Theory and Fulfillment Theory. The two theories were originated from job satisfaction research, the Fulfillment  Theory assumed the magnitude of the outcomes received under particular  circumstance determine satisfaction and neglected any psychological evaluation  of the outcomes. Discrepancy Theory has taken psychological evaluation of  outcomes into consideration in satisfaction formulation and claimed that  dissatisfaction results if the actual outcomes were deviated from the subject’s  initial expectation. It was understood that the Discrepancy approaches that view  patients prior expectations as determinants of satisfaction have be frequently  applied in many patient satisfaction researches, but what determines patient  expectations at the first place? Fox and Storms (1981) present two sets of intervening variables in satisfaction  formulation, including Orientations Towards Care and Conditions of Care,  mediated by patients’ social and cultural characteristics. Orientations Towards  Care refer to patients’ difference in their wants and expectation in a medical  encounter, as people would have different beliefs in the causes of illness and in  the socially-patterned responses to illness. Conditions of Care refer to the  different Theoretical approaches to care, Situation of care and Outcomes of care  delivered by the care providers. Patient satisfaction results if the Orientations  Towards Care was congruent with the Conditions of Care. If the individual’s  Orientations Towards Care, including the perception and interpretation of care,  can be affected by their broader social and cultural contexts, peoples with shared  characteristics may presented a socially-patterned responses in their s atisfaction  formulation accordingly. Suchman Edward Allen proposed that â€Å"†¦ certain  socio-cultural background factors will predispose the individual toward  accepting or rejecting the approach of professional medicine and, hence,  increase or decrease the possibility of conflict between patient and  physician†¦(pp.558) [19]†which basically correlated patient’s socio-demographic  factors with satisfaction. Patient satisfaction and Social identity theory Linder-Pelz (1982) assumed a value-expectancy model in satisfaction  formulation and defined â€Å"patient satisfaction as a positive attitude†¦ a positive  evaluations of distinct dimension of health care, such as a single clinical visit,  the whole treatment process, particular health care setting or plan or the health  care system in general (pp.578)†. Attitude was defined by Fishbein and Azjen  (1975) as the â€Å"general evaluation or feeling of favorableness toward the object  in question†. Built on the view of the Social identity theory that â€Å"attitudes are  moderated by environmental, individual, physical, psychological or sociological  variables (pp. 72)†, Jessie L. Tucker (2000) claimed that patient satisfaction shall  be â€Å"moderated by socio-demographic attributes such as environmental,  individual, physical, psychological and sociological characteristics (pp. 72)†. In  her later study, Jessie L .Tucker (2002) provided empirical support to patient  satisfaction and social identity theory. Patient satisfaction theory considered  patient satisfaction as an attitude, and her results confirmed that patient’s  evaluation of access, communication, outcomes and quality were significant  predictors of satisfaction. Social identity theory argued that attitudes were altered  and affected by demographic, situational, environmental, and psychological  factors, and her research findings indicated that patient’s specific characteristics  significantly explain their satisfaction. Haslam et al. (1993) study of in-group favoritism and social identity models of  stereotype formation suggested that â€Å"manifestations of favoritism are sensitive to  comparative and normative features of social context (pp. 97)†. The result  revealed that a person’s judgments will be impinged by his/her boarder  macro-social context and background knowledge, and the stereotype formulation  were not automatics but instead accustomed by the social context where meaning  and attitudes towards different aspects were constructed. Social identity theory was outlined by Sociologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner  (1979) and was defined as â€Å"the individual’s knowledge that he/she belongs to  certain social groups together with some emotional and value significance to  him/her of the group membership (pp.2) [17]†. The theory believed that  individual’s process a repertoire of self identities with individuating  characteristic at the personal extreme and social categorical characteristics at the  social extreme. Depending on the social context, the personal identity may  prominent and individuals would perceive themselves as members of a social  group and adopt shared attitudes towards a particular aspect, and possibly  satisfaction towards care, or vice versa. To construct a social identity, the theory  proposed that individuals will â€Å"firstly categorize and define themselves as  members of a social category or assign themselves a social identity; second, they  form or learn the stereotypic norms of they category; and third, they assign these  norms to themselves and thus their behavior becomes more normative as their  category membership (pp.15) [42]†. The categories under which individuals  assign themselves at the first place will depends on a person’s social contexts  such as life experience, backgrounds, culture and situation etc. Social identity theory was closely related to the â€Å"Self-categorization theory†,  which was defined by Hogg and McGarty as the theoretical concept of Social  Identify itself and â€Å"concerns the ways collection of individuals comes to define  and feel themselves to be a social group and how does shared group membership  influence their behavior†. Lorenzi-Cioldi and Doise claimed that  Self-categorization theory led to accentuation of between-group differences and  within-group similarities by the fact that â€Å"different levels of categorization are  simultaneously used by group members to encode information pertaining to their  own group and to the other group (pp. 74) [20]†, and the role constraints of  members of inter-group give rise to a consistent mode of responding. Based on  the theoretical framework, it was assumed that patients with shared  socio-demographic characteristics would categorize information they perceived  (inc luding experiences from a medical encounter) for subsequent satisfaction  rating in a particular level and therefore presented a more or less homogenous  rating with the care received.

Scotland at the time of Robert Burns :: essays research papers

Burns was born just before George III came to the throne in 1760. America declared her independence when Burns was 17 and the Paris mob sacked the Bastille to start the French Revolution in 1789, when the poet was 30. Revolutionary ideas were in the air during the life of Burns and he was affected by this trend. Scotland and England had only finally joined through the Union of the Parliaments in1707 and there was still a resentment against the loss of independence which has continued to the present day. The years after the Union had not been quiet ones and rebellions had taken place in 1715 and 1745 ending in the disaster at the Battle of Culloden in 1746 which effectively destroyed the Jacobites and the clan system is in the Highlands, But by the second half of the eighteenth century things had begun slowly to change for the better in Scotland. Agriculture, industry and trade began to expand in the first stages of the Industrial Revolution which was to transform Scotland over the next hundred years. Around the time of Burns birth the average Scot lived in the country and worked the land. This average person would travel no more than 20 miles from their own birthplace in the course of their lifetime. When Burns wrote about the land described experiences that were real for the vast majority of the Scottish People who still struggled to make a living from it. At the time, from around 1740 onwards, Edinburgh became famous throughout Europe as a centre for philosophy, medicine, science and publishing during what came to be known as the "Scottish Enlightenment". Burns may have been born into a humble family but he wasn’t uneducated. He was well read in literature and politics, knew something of foreign languages and the classics and had a keen ear for music.

Essay --

The acceleration of string pattern matching problems in hardware has started as early as 1980 [1] with the special purpose VLSI chip used by Foster and Kung to compute an algorithm for the string pattern matching problem using systolic array architecture. The term systolic array was coined by Kung and Leiserson in 1978 at the Carnegie-Mellon University [2]. This one-dimensional array enables the acceleration of Dynamic Programming (DP) algorithms by means of computing the recursive equation in anti-diagonal flow instead of sequential flow as in a standard microprocessor. Another early study which implemented the DP algorithm on special-purpose VLSI chip was reported by Lipton and Lopresti in 1985. The sequence edit distance algorithm was implemented in the processing element and a total of 30 systolic processors were used for the acceleration of the pattern matching problem. Following that, the Princeton Nucleic Acid Comparator (P-NAC) was reported by Lopresti in 1987 [3]. This VLSI core performed DNA sequence comparisons and achieved speeds 125 times faster than a minicomputer (DEC VAX 11/785). In the early 1990s, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) were used to accelerate the algorithm using a linear systolic array. SPLASH was among the first off-the-shelf FPGA-based sequence edit distance accelerators, and was reported by Hoang and Lopresti [4]. It comprised of 24 PEs where each implemented the sequence edit distance algorithm. However, at that time FPGAs were not as competitive as they are today. Thus, other parallel architectures were developed, including the single instruction multiple data (SIMD) architectures such as micro grain array processor (MGAP) [4] in 1994, Kestrel [5] in 1996 and Fuzion [6] in 2002. These parall... ...poses a new processor array architecture for the Smith-Waterman with affine gap penalty alignment algorithm that are more efficient in speed and area than the processor array architecture of [23] specially for short query sequences. This is achieved by applying a nonlinear mapping methodology to the Smith-Waterman with affine gap penalty alignment algorithm after expressing it as Regular Iterative Algorithm (RIA). This methodology uses a data scheduling and node projection techniques to explore the systolic array architecture of the algorithm. Also, we present the hardware implementation of the processing element (PE) of the proposed systolic array structure and apply a scheduling strategy to the PE architecture in order to re-use the systolic array for the multiple pass processing of such biological sequences without requiring additional time for PE configuration.

Galaxy and Dense Gas Passes

Comparing a yellow star, a blue star, and a red star, we could determine Just from color that the hottest star was the 10. One. BLUE Rotation curves of spiral galaxies show that stars' orbital speeds don't drop off with distance from the galactic center as expected, and thus imply the existence of . The main sequence includes the following kinds of stars: B) Hot, blue, large, massive ones and cool, red, small, low-mass ones 12. Which of the following was not an era In the history of the universe?The phases of the moon are caused by D) The alignment of the Earth/moon/sun system making a different portion of the Spectra help us determine the composition of astronomical objects because A) Each element, compound, or ion has a different set of spectral lines. 15. Dark energy is the most important factor in the of the universe. A) Accelerating 16. Universe scenario for the fate The outer planets are more massive than the inner planets because C) Both of the above 17. The three basic types of galaxies are B) Spiral, elliptical, and irregular. 8. A planet orbiting a star feels a force due to the star's gravity that C) Increases with the star's mass and decreases with the square of the distance. 19. Massive main sequence stars A) Have hot cores, use their hydrogen rapidly, and go supernova after a short life. 0. Hubbub's law gives us an indirect way to measure a galaxy's D) Distance. 21. We can determine an object's temperature from its thermal (or â€Å"blackbody') spectrum by finding the wavelength at which it emits the most electromagnetic radiation.Galileo findings from his telescopic observations were revolutionary because he showed that the heavens were not perfect. B) FALSE 28. If the sun had begun fusion later, so it did not clear the solar nebula of its remaining gas so soon, Uranus and Neptune might have become as large as Jupiter and Saturn are now. A) TRUE 29. If the sun somehow instantaneously became a 1 solar mass black hole, the Earth According to Hubbub 's law, the reediest of a distant galaxy is directly related to its temperature. B) False

Do Child’s Shoe Size Increase with Age

Do Children’s shoe size increase in age? IntroductionI teased apart from my evidence relevant data collected three important bits of information being, age, shoe size and gender I then gathered the data and evaluated the information after converting it into tables, graphs and charts. I gathered data from various ages, with various shoe size. Using evidence to understand and conclude which hypothesis is the most accurate. I understood the frame work of my report and from prior knowledge I already had a thesis of my own. Using mind mapping I created Ideas for obtaining relevant data. AimThe aim of my investigation is to have obtained enough relevant data to confirm the most accurate hypothesis and reinforce my argument. The evidence needs to be clear and precise and specific points summarised. Hypothesis and Null HypothesisHypothesis- Do children’s shoe size increase with age? Null hypothesis- As children get older their shoe size do not get bigger. MethodI devised a simple short questionnaire to obtain three important parts of information, gender, shoe size and age. All participants were sixteen or under I received consent from themselves or their parents and explained the reasons for my research. I then transferred the data into a tally chart and calculated how many participants have what size shoe. I then displayed the data into a barchart, pie chart and a scatter graph. I used various ways of working out the averages. Participants ages ranged from ten years of age to sixteen years of age, their shoe size ranged from a children’s size thirteen to a size seven. MethodTo obtain my evidence I devised a questionnaire and explained to participants if I could ask them three short questions to complete my report. The selected questions I chose I felt would be enough to put a report together, to observe a trend and to confirm statistics. Participants I asked thirty participants ranging from ten years of age to sixteen years of age, male and female with shoe sizes verying from a childs size thirteen to a size seven. I asked equal amount of female participants to male participants. MaterialsEach participants where asked if they were happy for myself to ask three simple questions reference to their age, gender and shoe size. Younger participants guardians were also asked if they were happy for me to ask their childrens questions from my short questionnaire. All participants I knew personally, they were either friends, relatives or work collegues. Each questionnaire displayed ‘Thank you for completing this short questionnaire’?Do children’s shoe size increase with ag eI disected the data into sections to understand, firstly the average shoe size overall, having relevant information allowed me to devise charts, graphs and tables to evaluate whether shoe size increase with age. DiscussionI feel the range of age could be better as I had no knowledge of the children’s age before the questionnaire was completed by them which altered my results. The results clearly supported the Hypothesis. Some results I would not have predicted for instance a thirteen year old boy with size seven shoe. Certain factors such as gender may have affected my results, some of the participants were teenagers and were probably experiencing growth spurts especially male participants as some results were quite surprising as mentione previously. I asked thirty participants which I felt was enough children to have enough date to devise a report maybe the range of the participants ages may have given me an interested twist to the Hypothesis. If I was to complete my studies again I would probably have a larger range of the participants age, I feel that the equal amount of male and female participants provided a fair report. ConclusionAnalyzing my findings I can see that the overal participants shoe size did increase with age, the Hypothesis seems to be correct. I feel I obtained enough data to understand if the Hypothesis was true or false. I can also analyze the most reliable average is mode. The average shoe size with in the participants age range of ten years to sixteen years is a size three.