Ever since the beginning of time, rulers and dictators have tried to control the so-called lesser beings into doing anything they want them to do and made them slaves for their own pleasure. These lords of leadership have cruelly made their peasants scrub the toilet full of putrid smelling feces, lay there crying while they rape them every night, and work a field with calloused, arthritic hands that will never put the bountiful harvest to their malnourished lips because slaves are not worthy. When the rulers say these people are not as worthy as themselves and are less than them, I believe they are truly wrong to say or even think they are better. No one human is better than the other. We are all equal human beings that should be treated fairly among everyone around us. No matter what race, culture, gender, or religion is practiced, we are all born with a human right which defines us as equal Homo sapiens that should be treated with respect from the day we are born to the day we die.
From the moment you start reading "Every Dictator's Nightmare," you are drawn by the powerful, captivating words of Wole Soyinka. He truly speaks words of wisdom and truth in vivid detail on the subject of human beings and their rights. His article is based on his belief that, "certain fundamental rights are inherent to all humanity." He first shows how the abusive leaders have gotten worse over the years through examples of the female slavery taking place in Afghanistan. And also, religious ...
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...wer-hungry, slave trading individuals filling the world with more sadness than we can fathom.
If everyone realized the idea that humans have rights they are born with, they would realize they could make a better place for everyone now and in the future by respecting those rights. They could make the world a happier and more comfortable place to live in for everyone, including themselves. Instead, people are still fighting oppression and shedding tears over it. They are many who are still being sold into slavery for the pleasure of someone else. For workers, there are many people who are not being paid fairly or at all for their labor. Sadly, this unjustice will continue if it is not realized and dealt with. When Wole Soyinka said, "an idea that still lacks full realization," those words were purer than gold in truth of what we have not yet accomplished.
David Walker describes the fact that slaves are humans just as much as their White American masters are. He states the pressing matter is that “You [colored people] have to prove to the Americans and the world, that we are MEN and not brutes, as we have been represented and by millions treated.” (Page 33) He asks the question “How can those enemies but say that we and our children are not of the HUMAN FAMILY, but were made by our Creator to be an inheritance?” Although nowadays many people agree that black people have the same anatomy as whites do, but back then many people did not view blacks as equals to themselves.
In American history, there are centuries upon centuries of black people being deemed less than or not worthy of. Never in were black people equal, even in the sense of humanity. White people declared black people as three-fifths of a human, so to the “superior race”, because one has darker skin that automatically takes away 40% of their humanity. Now, in white history they repeatedly dominant over other nonwhite groups and especially the women of those groups because they feel anything that isn’t white is inferior.
While slaves were protected and fed and sheltered because they were so valuable, there is still nothing excusing the enslaving a race because they are weaker than you. Slavery is nothing short of exploitation and when you have a whole economy based on slavery, eventually it will fall apart once the enslaved begin to rebel which not only causes problems locally, but also nationally if the whole country becomes dependent on it. If humans were so selfless as Fitzhugh states, they would not forcibly exploit and enslave an entire race of people and then claim it’s for their own
Oppression is not always brought on in a violent and oppositional way, it can take on a peaceful and silent form; however regardless of the way oppression is introduced, it maintains the same characteristics of “imposing belief systems, values, laws and ways of ...
“The right to have a slave implies the right in some one to make a slave; that right must be equal and mutual, and this would resolve society into a state of perpetual war.” Senator William Steward, an anti-slavery supporter, issued this claim in his “There is a Higher Law than the Constitution” speech. Steward, like all abolitionist, viewed all of man as equals. This equality came from the “higher law” that is the Bible. Since all men were created by God then all men were equals in God’s eyes. Abolitionist believed that whites had no more right to make a slave out of a African American than the African American had to make a slave out of a white man.
These examples display the inevitable fact that all over the world subtle but significant events are taking place that appear to signify a shifting toward a totalitarian government, much like the one present in 1984. This is extremely disturbing because most people will agree that the life lived by the characters in 1984, is not one of any value. Though they are “protected” from several of the problems that many of the free world citizens and officials face, they have no control over their thoughts or actions. This leads to unbearable uniformity. It is chilling to know that though George Orwell’s book was written as fiction, portions of it are becoming factual.
“We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” If the confusion has not yet set in, then give it a moment. This nation, the United States of America, prides itself on being far superior to all other nations because here in America we are free men. We set ourselves on a pedestal above Great Britain because the Declaration of Independence clearly states that everyone inside the parameters of our country will be treated as equal as the same individuals neighbor. Yet for nearly three centuries, our nation was full of individuals, including our forefathers, who “owned” people that were regarded as less than themselves simply due to the fact that the pigments in their skin did not allow them to fall within the Caucasian race. The very legal document that had the word “Independence” written within it’s name and blatantly stated that it is obvious that no human is greater than any other because we were all made by the same god for the same reason, is the foundation of a nation that used innocent lives as fuel for slavery. It wasn’t until some educated individuals finally stood up and realized how incredibly wrong these two concepts are when put together. It is said that when the former slave Frederick Douglass
Slavery is the idea and practice that one person is inferior to another. What made the institution of slavery in America significantly different from previous institutions was that “slavery developed as an institution based upon race.” Slavery based upon race is what made slavery an issue within the United States, in fact, it was a race issue. In addition, “to know whether certain men possessed natural rights one had only to inquire whether they were human beings.” Slaves were not even viewed as human beings; instead, they were dehumanized and were viewed as property or animals. During this era of slavery in the New World, many African slaves would prefer to die than live a life of forced servitude to the white man. Moreover, the problem of slavery was that an African born in the United States never knew what freedom was. According to Winthrop D. Jordan, “the concept of Negro slavery there was neither borrowed from foreigners, nor extracted from books, nor invented out of whole cloth, nor extrapolated from servitude, nor generated by English reaction to Negroes as such, nor necessitated by the exigencies of the New World. Not any one of these made the Negro a slave, but all.” American colonists fought a long and bloody war for independence that both white men and black men fought together, but it only seemed to serve the white man’s independence to continue their complete dominance over the African slave. The white man must carry a heavy
Living in a totalitarian regime means oppression, for the most part, one even becomes unable to enjoy the smallest and the most delightful things in life. For instance, being loved and loving in return, having a normal family life and knowing what friendship stands for suddenly become things one no longer aspires to have since all is hopeless. Consequently, in “1984” by George Orwell one gets to see to see the changes undergone by society and by the relationships that tie individuals to each other.
Novels like “Fahrenheit 451”, “animal farm” and “1984” are banned for showing extreme political views. The reason most governments, especially countries that have strict laws or are under the influence of dictatorship, are worried, maybe even scared, over the influence some of these books may have on the population. The worries come from the novels content shows a different, but true, side of politics. The fear these dictators and presidents hae are about revolt and
Every day, people are denied basic necessary human rights. One well known event that striped millions of these rights was the Holocaust, recounted in Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night. As a result of the atrocities that occur all around the world, organizations have published declarations such as the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights. It is vital that the entitlement to all rights and freedoms without distinction of any kind, freedom of thought and religion, and the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being of themselves be guaranteed to everyone, as these three rights are crucial to the survival of all people and their identity.
The main topic in the book is life in a dictatorship government, are still a crude reality around the globe. Dictators take control and are thrown out too. When this book was published, some people thought it was promoting totalitarian governments; but the truth is that this original novel
In order to justify keeping an entire race of people enslaved, slaveholders claimed that blacks were inferior to whites, placing them on the same level as livestock and other animals. “There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination” (73). The fact is, whites are not naturally superior over blacks. Therefore, slaveholders used a variety of contrived strategies to make their case that blacks were inherently inferior to whites. To...
No one, no matter what they are, who they are, and how their behavior is should be stripped of their basic rights and opportunities. Although in the book Sold by Patricia McCormick it displayed the opposite. The book’s main character, Lakshmi, was a 12 year old girl who came from a financially unstable family. She got tricked into becoming a sexual slave, and the moment she was sold she was not looked at as human anymore, which means her rights and privileges were sold as well. John Rawls, from Source B, defines social justice as “assuring the protection of equal access to liberties, rights, and opportunities.” Lakshmi did not gain her protection of her rights as a human being and as a woman. They were gone though because she didn’t have the opportunity to. Now this brings up the other part of the meaning of social justice, receiving the rights and opportunities everyone deserves. Clearly something is wrong with our world systems if we cannot even ensure opportunity and rights for a twelve year old. A reason why she didn’t attain those two things were because of her background. Source C entails an idea of an “equal opportunity principle” which says inequalities in status are acceptable are okay if everyone had a reasonable chance of attaining those positions. Obviously people earn those positions, but many people also didn’t have the equal chance to attain. This allows the higher class to think
Some people believe the worse in some people based on a prejudice stereotypes, however, most agree that everyone has the right to basic rights, such as the right to an education, own property, to vote, etc. There has been plenty of progress over the centuries, for example women now have access to all of the above, and can now even have a job, and chose whether to have children or not. Of course, there are still plenty of inequalities left, according to CNN “Women who work full-time earn 78 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts….with black women making 64 cents and Latinas making 56 cents for every dollar earned by a white man”. This shows how there are still gender and race prejudices that need to be improved