Seeing Past the Slave to study the Person by Patricia Cohen

This article mostly talks about Ms. Gordon as a writer and how she came to write this book. As she puts it herself she wanted to tell the story of this family in a way which was never done before. She believes that when it comes to blacks in America social history becomes so dominant that no one merely pays any attention to the biography and personality of individuals. Therefore, she tries to examine the lives of these slaves as real people and tries to go beyond cliché generalizations made about them throughout history.
She believes that these people all had strange lives, which would not be so understandable for us nowadays. Their relationships were so complicated that it would be a wild guess to say what an individual must have been feeling or thinking when committing an act like mixing with whites. To provide some examples for this intermingled and sophisticated web she gives the example of James Hemings who was actually a half brother to Martha, Jefferson’s wife. James’s father was John Wayles a slave owner and Jefferson’s father in law, therefore it would be really hard to understand how he felt when he realized that only if he were white he could have inherited Wayles’s fortune and not be ruled over by his half sister and Jefferson who was actually his brother in law!
One would also think of Sally as being desperately in love with Jefferson or simply a naïve person after she followed him from Paris where she was legally free to Virginia where she would be a slave again. Ms. Gordon tries to depict how a pregnant black teenager would feel staying behind in a place where she had no relatives and no protection, that’s why she agrees to return under the circumstance that her children would be freed. That “treaty” was actually realized and four of her seven children were freed and the other three passed as white.
Ms. Gordon was interested in Jefferson since childhood. She remembers reading a biography of him to her class but she says in that version the black slave was not as smart as Jefferson was. She continued her studies on Jefferson until she became a famous writer just as she had wished for with her revealing book.
There are some parts about her personal life in this article, which persuade one about why she tries so hard to prove some facts like Sally’s free will in having a relation with Jefferson. She went to a white school before schools were legally integrated. And as says herself she did face some problems but finally she was able to stand up and be what she had dreamed to be; that’s maybe why she’s throwing light on some dark parts of black slave life.
I don’t know why but in these last two posts I finally come to the conclusion that what we see on the surface is not what really happens in the depth of America. Are there any more instances of Sally still belittled and put in a dark shadow?!
Hajar Amidian

Race in Presidential Campaigns

Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio are great obstacles standing in the way of Senator Obama who is a Democrat candidate which has been the choice of these people since 1964. This region is home to strong labor unions and Democratic political machines. Throughout America there are still people who say that Obama’s race and uncommon background make them uneasy but in these regions even the Democrats think the same.

To overcome this problem Obama supporters found no other way than directly talking to these people about the issue of race.

On the other hand there are some people like the president of the coal miners union who try to persuade voter on the fact that Obama might be black but he’s a friend to them and McCain who’s white is an enemy.

This problem has changed the presidential campaign in most southwestern parts of Virginia to race discussions.

There are lots of doubters in this region who cannot let go of their old skepticism and somehow come to terms with themselves not to vote at all not even for a Democrat who they voted for, for many years.

Some others challenge the notion that a believing Christian could base his voting decision on ethnicity issues, like religion or race. Obama is even accused of being a Muslim which his supporters try very hard to disapprove.

A newspaper columnist tries to bold his black origins by saying that he would color the white house black or even change the stars on the U.S. flag to star and a crescent which resemble Islamic symbols. So it seems as though he believes that the color of one’s skin can determine his inner color and be a sign of his evilness, since one has to be very un-American to change the white house which the representative of America to black , or in other words to color their whole history and all his precedents black.

The McCain campaign refuses to explicitly tackle with racial issues on behalf of the Republican party but they try to convince miners that Obama’s policies would do them no good.

So one comes to think that the American dream has still a long way to go to reach that desired utopia. After about 150 years after the first talks on black emancipation, the system is so rigid that many people simply claim that the only problem with Obama is that “he just doesn’t seem that he’s from America”!

Hajar Amidian

OUR FUTURE???

Washington post ‘s head topic in its Business section was about the seven rich nations of the world gathering to coordinate a rescue plan on the financial crises, a crises which has spread from Wall Street to Hong Kong. They agreed on a five-point plan, issued after finance ministers met at the Treasury Department and all countries broadly endorsed the idea of taking ownership positions in banks which was a strategy Britain took first but was found effective and is now taken up by many others. But the nations were vague on how or when that will happen.
Even as I write this post stock market might face another major decline just as it did collapse for three straight days in the last hour of trading. On Friday, it merely swooned.
Donyaye Eghtesad reports, as for Iran many analysts during the first months of the year anticipated that the increase in the oil price is not genuine and is not the true demand of the market and there surely is something wrong down there. Among their reasons one could see the decrease of Dollar compared to Euro. The months ahead and the changes in the oil price and its collapse to 80 dollars confirmed their stand. Even now they believe we have to enter other variables into the oil problem including the economic crises which will push the oil prices down a very down going slope.
For the first time supply has overrode demand and this could be a nightmare for oil exporting countries like Iran. Therefore it wouldn’t be far to see ourselves sitting and thinking for a solution, that is if we believe there exists any such thing as an ECOMIC CRISES!
Hajar Amidian

from NO to YES

Bailout Plan Wins Approval; Democrats Vow Tighter Rules

Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

After the House vote, President Bush was greeted by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. outside the Treasury Department.

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Published: October 3, 2008

WASHINGTON — After the House reversed course and gave final approval to the $700 billion economic bailout package, President Bush quickly signed it into law on Friday, authorizing the Treasury to undertake what could become the most expensive government intervention in history.

But even as Mr. Bush declared that the measure would “help prevent the crisis on Wall Street from becoming a crisis in communities across our country,” Congressional Democrats said that it was only a first step and pledged to carry out a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s financial regulatory system.


I would like to attract your attention to what an ordinary citizen of the United States thinks of this bill:

This is the economic version of that bill that Congress authorized to let Bush/Cheney to invade Iraq with dire consequences, This bill will have worse consequences for the ordinary citizens (middle class and poor) and US in the long-run. This Bill shares another similarity with that Bill: rushing through the congress using the fear-mongering and lies. This Bill is ill-conceived without any comprehensive analysis of the economic situation, without inputs from most experts, and certainly without inputs from the majority of taxpayers who are against it. This Bill mocks the democracy of US.

— tao, piscataway, nj

As I surfed through the web and tried to understand the reply of overall citizens to the voters of this bill I came to the conclusion that this comment could represent the idea of a large number of people.
This bill seems very unconstitutional to me; furthermore a quick review of the American history would illuminate the fact it also seems very "Unamerican"!

But let's think about the reason which made 58 representatives-33 Democrats and 25 Republicans- change their votes from a no to a yes over a week.

Mr. McCain said that lawmakers had acted “in the best interests of the nation,” while Mr. Obama warned that “a long and difficult road to recovery” might still lie ahead.

According to Mr.McCain and Mr.Obama's reaction to the Bailout if Mr.McCain should be elected as president, then the people of the United States should wait for more similar bills to pass!!!