To Kill A Mockingbird Essays - To Kill A Mockingbird, Calpurnia

To Kill A Mockingbird Prejudice has caused the pain and suffering of others for many centuries. Some examples of this include the Holocaust and slavery in the United States. In to Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee racism was the cause of much agony to the blacks of a segregated South. Along with blacks, other groups of people are judged unfairly just because of their difference from others. The prejudice and bigotry of society causes the victimization of people with differences. Some who are discriminated against are those who are born differently than the majority. One person that is treated unfairly is Calpurnia, as you can see when Aunt Alexandra tried to get Atticus to fire Calpurnia, because in her eyes, Calpurnia wasn't a good enough female role model (p.136). This is a prejudice action, because Calpurnia is as good as a role model as Aunt Alexandra, if not better. Aunt Alexandra is a bigot and doesn't see the character of Calpurnia, just the color of her skin. Another person who is treated like an inferior is Scout by her teacher, because she knew how to read. "She discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. (p.17)." Scout is treated like it is her fault that she knows more than the average child did. She learned earlier than others so she gets punished unjustly. Tom Robinson is also one who is discriminated by a biased community. Tom is found guilty by the jury in his case against the Ewells (p.211). The guilty verdict is a direct result of a racist community. Tom was never given a fair chance in the trial, even though that the evidence was proving him innocent. People that are born differently often get mistreated and are discriminated against. Another group that is treated poorly in the society based on bigotry, are the people who have chosen to be different. One who chose to be different is Dolphus Raymond. He pretended to be drunk so no one gave him any trouble on the way that he lived his life (p.200). The way a person lives should be there own personal business. He has the right to live differently than others if he feels that is the way he wants to live. Another person that lives differently is Boo Radley. Boo stayed inside his house for a number of years without ever coming out to interact with others. He didn't want attention that would come from the rumors that were said about him. Stories were made up about him and he felt it was best for him to stay inside. The people who chose to be different took a risk of being made outcasts of the majority of the society. The final group that was made to feel different was the group that defended and protected the minorities and the wrongfully treated people. Atticus was a good example of one who defended the different by defending Tom Robinson in his case. Atticus had integrity that gave him the strength to endure the ridicule that arose from his decision to defend a black man in a segregated area. Atticus was threatened and his children were treated poorly by their peers, because he had the courage to stand up for the oppressed. Sheriff Tate defends the different when he says, "I never heard tell that it's against the law for a citizen t do his utmost to prevent a crime from being committed, which is exactly what he did, but maybe you'll say it's my duty to tell the town all about it and not hush it up. (p.276)." Sheriff Tate is trying to protect Boo from the attention that could frighten him. The sheriff is doing the right thing by hiding the truth from the community. By defending the different, people take a chance of being known as strange or inferiors to the rest of the people that they are around. Throughout the story, people that are unlike the majority, get hurt. They are given obstacles that they have to overcome in order to survive. Some people in the world can survive these obstacles, and there are some that just give up. By fighting for your rights, people start to realize that character is the important attribute to a person. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee showed me that the people with differences are not always doing things the wrong way. It is the majority that may be going at it all wrong. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chinese Architecture essays

Chinese Architecture essays Architecture, by definition, is the art or science of planning and building structures. Those are the words used to describe architecture in a dictionary but architecture is so much more than a study of how a building is built. Architecture is a product of human activities, and it is also a mirror of human life. Buildings reflect many things life environment, both political and cultural, as well as habitual and geographical environments. This paper is about Chinese architecture; its history, the basic structural elements that make up a Chinese building and the spiritual side of all the grand Chinese buildings. Firstly, if one is to understand Chinese architecture then one must know something of Chinas history because the creation and development of a national architecture has its roots in the cultural background of the nation. The nation of China has been around for around 5000 years, which perhaps the longest history that any nation or culture can lay claim to. Chinas architecture was influenced by religion and myth, philosophy and politics, science and superstition, humanity and ritual. All of these elements were constantly confronting and complementing each other. Also, the arts of feng shui, cosmology, and geomancy played a great part in the structural aspects of many Chinese buildings. Chinas architecture is vastly different from most of the other types of architecture in the world. This is because China is very isolated from the western world. For many years, Chinas only contact with the western world came from its infamous Silk Road on which Chinese merchants carried their goods to be sold to the western world. Very rarely did the westerners come to China to sell their own goods either because of the distance or simply for the fact that the western world was not advance enough to get to China to sell their goods. So Chinese culture and architecture developed without western influenced and it became...

The Roots of Colorism, or Skin Tone Discrimination

The Roots of Colorism, or Skin Tone Discrimination How does  colorism  play out in America? An old children’s rhyme captures the definition of colorism and its inner workings: â€Å"If you’re black, stay back;If you’re brown, stick around;If you’re yellow, you’re mellow;If you’re white, you’re all right.† Colorism refers to discrimination based on skin color. Colorism disadvantages dark-skinned people  while privileging those with lighter skin. Research has linked colorism to smaller incomes, lower marriage rates, longer prison terms, and fewer job prospects for darker-skinned people. Colorism has existed for centuries, in and out of black America. Its a persistent form of discrimination that should be fought with the same urgency as racism. Origins In the United States, colorism has roots in slavery, because slave owners typically gave preferential treatment to slaves with fairer complexions. While dark-skinned slaves toiled outdoors in the fields, their light-skinned counterparts usually worked indoors at far less  grueling domestic tasks.   Slave owners were partial to light-skinned slaves because they often were family members. Slave owners frequently forced slave women into sexual intercourse, and light-skinned offspring were the telltale signs of these sexual assaults. While slave owners didnt officially recognize their mixed-race children, they gave them privileges that dark-skinned slaves didnt enjoy. Accordingly, light skin came to be viewed as an asset in the slave community. Outside the United States, colorism may be more related to class than to white supremacy. Although  European colonialism has undoubtedly left its mark worldwide, colorism is said to predate contact with Europeans in Asian countries. There, the idea that white skin is superior to dark skin may derive from ruling classes typically having lighter complexions than peasant classes. While peasants became tanned as they labored outdoors, the privileged had lighter complexions because they didn’t. Thus, dark skin became associated with  lower classes and light skin with the elite. Today, the premium on light skin in Asia is likely tangled up with this history, along with cultural influences of the Western world. Enduring Legacy Colorism didn’t disappear after slavery ended in the U.S.  In black America, those with light skin received employment opportunities off-limits to darker-skinned blacks. This is why upper-class families in black society were largely light-skinned. Soon, light skin and privilege were linked in the black community. Upper-crust blacks routinely administered the brown paper bag test to determine if fellow blacks were light enough to include in social circles. â€Å"The paper bag would be held against your skin. And if you were darker than the paper bag, you weren’t admitted,† explained Marita Golden, author of Don’t Play in the Sun: One Woman’s Journey Through the Color Complex. Colorism didn’t just involve blacks discriminating against other blacks. Job advertisements from the mid-20th century reveal that African-Americans with light skin clearly believed their coloring would make them better job candidates. Writer Brent Staples discovered this while searching newspaper archives  near the Pennsylvania town where he grew up.  In the 1940s, he noticed, black job seekers often identified themselves as light-skinned: â€Å"Cooks, chauffeurs, and waitresses sometimes listed light colored as the primary qualification- ahead of experience, references, and the other important data. They did it to improve their chances and to reassure white employers who†¦found dark skin unpleasant or believed that their customers would.† Why Colorism Matters Colorism yields real-world advantages for individuals with light skin. For example, light-skinned Latinos make $5,000 more on average than dark-skinned Latinos, according to Shankar Vedantam, author of The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives.  A  Villanova University study of more than 12,000 African-American women imprisoned in North Carolina found that lighter-skinned black women received shorter sentences than their darker-skinned counterparts. Research by Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt found that darker-skinned black defendants were twice as likely as lighter-skinned black defendants to get the death penalty for crimes involving white victims. Colorism also plays out in the romantic realm. Because fair skin is associated with beauty and status, light-skinned black women are more likely to be married than darker-skinned black women. â€Å"We find that the light-skin shade as measured by survey interviewers is associated with about a 15 percent greater probability of marriage for young black women,† said researchers who conducted a study called â€Å"Shedding ‘Light’ on Marriage.† Light skin is so coveted that whitening creams continue to be best-sellers in the U.S., Asia, and other nations. Mexican-American women in Arizona, California, and Texas have reportedly suffered mercury poisoning after using whitening creams to bleach their skin. In India, popular skin-bleaching lines target both women and men with dark skin. That skin-bleaching cosmetics persist after decades signals the enduring legacy of colorism. Sources Golden, Marita. Don’t Play in the Sun: One Woman’s Journey Through the Color Complex. Anchor, 2005.Staples, Brent. As Racism Wanes, Colorism Persists. The New York Times.Vedantam, Shankar. Shades of Prejudice. The New York Times.

Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 11

Report - Essay Example Various alternate services are available in the new market in terms of usability and value. For example an individual wants to watch an episode of a missed serial via Internet on the computer. This may decrease the use of mobile TV. The era of a dynamic environment also brings challenges for vendors to make considerations regarding consumer preferences. The new market continues to be robust and evolving media, Internet services, mobile communications and consumer electronic products. The mobile TV global ecosystem consists of content providers, aggregators, retailers, service providers, networks, device software solution providers, and device OEMs. It concludes that the mobile TV ecosystem cooperatively provides an end-to-end information services and entertainment that is widespread from permanent and broadband networks above broadband wireless networks for the consumers of mobile devices in the 3rd generation or 4th generation mobile networks. Advanced mobile data networks consist of IPTV and mobile TV services provided by mobile operators in the western countries. A comprehensive definition of IPTV is available on www.iptvdictionary.com which says â€Å"Internet protocol television (IPTV) is a process of providing television (video and/or audio) services through the use Internet protocol (IP) networks. These IP networks initiate, process, and receive voice or multimedia communications using Internet protocol. These IP systems may be public IP systems (e.g. th e Internet), private data systems (e.g. LAN based), or a hybrid of public and private systems†.Mobile TV is considered as a superb application by stakeholders in the context of falling ARPU and profits of mobile operators. Organizations are involved in content provision and they have learned the technological improvements and advancements along with service availability. These factors lead to adoption globally with high revenue streams. Although the predictions related to the mobile

Comparing the original Sherlock Holmes to the BBCs adaptation Essay

Comparing the original Sherlock Holmes to the BBCs adaptation - Essay Example Literary works produced in earlier years often tend to be adapted and reproduced to fit current lifestyles, especially if such works stirred great interest in their original formats. As such, books, novels, short stories among others can be reproduced in a different genre, for example in a film. The process of adapting and reproducing a literary work is often challenging and can lead to some degree of distortion of the original work. The distortion occurs when the producers, for example, try to fit a character to modern times and the probable scenarios that the character would play. Sherlock, the BBC’s adaptation of â€Å"The Complete Sherlock Holmes† continues to portray Dr. Watson and Sherlock as two males having a close non-sexual relationship just like the original piece. However, the BBC’s version is more daring towards creating doubt on the gender markers of Dr. Watson, by making it appear as if the latter is attracted to Sherlock. The frequent allusions by people that the two could be gay serve to create anxiety in the viewer concerning whether subsequent scenes will reveal that in deed Dr. Watson and Sherlock are romantically involved. However, this scenario does not happen and viewers are kept in anxiety over whether the series will end that way. Keeping the viewers in suspense over the sexual orientation of particularly Dr. Watson is good for interest retention, but the producers concentrate too much on making gay jokes that it almost becomes offensive for gay people and other GSM. A good percentage of the society has come to accep t the GSM and as such, it is not appropriate to keep on joking about such a sensitive matter.

J.B.Priestley’s play, An Inspector Calls :: English Literature

Inspector Calls –Coursework â€Å"An inspector calls† is considered a mystery play and is intended to force the audience to think about themselves and the society in which they live. However, it is written in an entertaining way. The play is set in 1912. This is two years before the First World War. The play was written in 1945 at the end of the Second World War. Priestly wanted society to learn from its mistakes. In 1912 there had been rigid class divisions, women were considered inferior and working conditions for the poor were often unbearable. At the end of the First World War, life did not improve much. Priestly was concerned that people should learn from the mistakes of the First World War. He felt that people should learn to look after one another. After the Second World War there were signs of change-Priestly felt that people should make the most of these changes and build a more caring society and welfare state. Mr Birling is a central character because he is the type of person Priestly wanted to teach a lesson. He is too concerned about his social standing, business interests and is totally selfish. He believes a man has to â€Å"look after number one† and â€Å"make his own way†. Mr Birling’s physical appearance is he is â€Å"heavy looking†; he is a man in his 50’s with good manners but rather narrow minded in his speech. He believes he is always right and every action him and his business do are the best that could have been done. He also believes that he works for the good of his family. He is heavy looking because he would stand out in a crowd with a big grey beard and I can imagine Mr Birling being overweight. Mr Birling likes to be in control. He likes to think he is the dominant force of the family. Maybe sometimes he is a bit too controlling. Sometimes he can be very bossy: â€Å"Give us the port Edna†. Often he acts like a snob. He thinks that men are superior to women and thinks he and his family are upper class. He treats women like he cannot trust them. Respect is something that he lacks to lower class people. The characters behave to him differently. His wife and children respect him and do not stand up to him: â€Å"just let me finish Eric!† The inspector does not treat him the same at all. Just because he is upper class the inspector speaks to him a normal person. This gives me the impression that the inspector feels that everyone should be treated

Ethical Issues with Termination

At-will employment means that the employee or employer has the right â€Å"to end the employment relationship at any time with or without notice or cause. † (FedEx Office: AllBusiness, 1999-2009) Involuntary termination is a touchy subject for employers and it can happen for numerous reasons: specific cause, such as stealing, poor performance, and layoffs due to lack of work. Even though most companies have an â€Å"at-will† relationship with their employees, it is still arguably illegal to terminate an employee for no reason.When it comes to termination, managers are faced with current moral and ethical issues. In a lot of companies, in addition to professional relationships, managers develop personal relationships with their employees. In most cases, employees spend a majority of their week (40+ hours) with their â€Å"work family. † Co-workers learn about each other's families, extra-curricular activities, and personal problems. Even if managers try to separat e themselves from their employees on a personal level, it is difficult to ignore new school pictures being displayed on their desks or avoid a discussion about a recent weekend vacation.When legitimate problems arise in a company which requires involuntary termination, the manager faces a dilemma. They must fire an employee because it is best for the company and ignore the thoughts of how it will affect their family and personal life. Often times, employees take the involuntary termination harder because they feel betrayed by someone they considered their â€Å"friend†. When an employee is terminated, in more cases than not, they feel blind-sided; most of them â€Å"never saw it coming†.It is essential that employers set and follow standard documentation procedures that will provide a timeline of disciplinary action and performance reviews that will serve as proof of legitimate termination if necessary. A disgruntled employee may question the validity of their terminat ion and in some cases seek legal counsel to help them determine if there was just cause. The current social issues in the United States may make it more difficult for a manager to terminate an employee while at the same time it is more than necessary.The financial state of the country is  causing businesses to struggle which results in less profits; less profits mean that a company's productions will be lowered so they cannot afford and do not need the same number of employees. In this case, an employee may not have given any cause for termination but managers must choose which employee they are willing to lose. They may choose the last hired, the highest paid, or the employee that is least valuable.Knowing that the rate of unemployment is at an all time high and the possibility of finding other employment may take longer than usual, the manager faces a tough a decision when thinking of how their decision will negatively each person they must terminate. Severance packages may be o ffered in exchange for â€Å"a full release of all claims† that may be filed against the company for wrongful termination. Tough economical times may cause disgruntled employees to take whatever measures necessary to generate income for their family. I have been a victim of wrongful termination.In 2002,  I started working as an assistant to the Office Manager  of a small financial company. There were only two other people above the Office Manager and that was a person in sales position and then the President of the company. I quickly caught on and was given more responsibilities as well as a pretty healthy increase in pay. Working in a small office allows for unconventional relationships between managers and employees; we shared the same interests, shared a similar sense of humor which resulted in a workplace friendship between all of us.Lunch trips and shopping breaks turned into personal Christmas party invitations and summer beach house vacations. We were all very clos e and business was increasing so more employees were hired to work under me. My supervisor and I became almost interchangeable. If she was not there, I took over and performed her duties, although she could not perform mine. I sensed animosity building and tension rising, but overall I knew I was there as her assistant and was careful to never overstep my boundaries.Business slowed and our sales structure changed, so cuts were being made. The sales person was let go and I think she felt that one of us would be next; even though she had been there longer I know she felt threatened that I could perform her job as well as mine. She started targeting me; purposefully changing my changing after my school schedule had been approved, moving my desk unnecessarily, and creating an overall hostile work environment by addressing everyone in a room except for me.I knew what she was doing; being a part of the â€Å"inside upper management†, I had witnessed her do it to others before. Her strategy was to make employees quit in order to avoid the expense of paying unemployment wages. One week, she called me into an office to discuss my work performance and stated that she was giving me a warning. I knew that she was now trying to create a paper trail of disciplinary problems, even though nothing had changed in my performance.The following week she requested another meeting and said that she was writing me up for personal internet usage. Previously, it was acceptable for us to check our personal email, and she and I would collectively read news and gossip and exchange stories across the room. I refused to sign the disciplinary notice because I had not been informed of any policy changes, so that was then considered insubordination. I was asked to leave; I immediately went to the Department of Labor to file for unemployment due to wrongful termination.I explained to them that my termination was not legitimate. I waited for them to contact my employer and of course they provided a copy of the form that I refused to sign. The Department of Labor declined my request for unemployment compensation, so I appealed their decision and wrote a very long letter explaining everything I knew about how my supervisor â€Å"set up† previous employees to keep them from receiving unemployment. I also requested a phone interview in which both I and my supervisor would be present with a Department of Labor representative.My supervisor declined the request; I assume because she knew she was wrong and did not want to be faced with questions regarding what I wrote. Nine months later, I was contacted by the President of the company stating that they had tried to hire several people to take my place and he realized that he should have never allowed her to terminate me. He offered me a large salary increase and a promise that my employment status will never be in her hands. She still works with me, and we are â€Å"friends† again, but I have definitely learne d to keep office friendships to a minimum.Today we are able to laugh at the situation; deep down I think she respects me for standing up for myself and she knows that I am a great asset to the company. Termination is not something that anyone ever looks forward to, be it the employee or the employer. Unfortunately it has to be done, and employers must take steps to protect themselves from lawsuits and disgruntled employees. Employees must learn that although there may be a â€Å"relationship† with their manager, the manager must first look out for the business's best interest and it may ot always include them as an employee.References Butler, B. (2009). Right-to-Work and At-Will Employee. Today’s Workplace: A Workplace Fairness Blog. Retrieved on December 7, 2009. Farr, . (2000,  November). Terminations Require Careful Study, Planning. Small Business, (), 15. FedEx Office: AllBusiness. (1999-2009). Decreasing the Legal Risks of Employee Termination.