Reader Response 4

­            Maryann Cusimano Love author of “Race in America: ‘We would Like to Believe we Are Over The Problem’” proves a point in her essay that even though decades have passed since the time of slavery and civil rights movement happened race is still very much a factor in today’s society. I liked that she brought up Virginia state legislator Delegate Frank D. Hargrove’s famous quote about  how, “blacks need to get over” slavery. Not only was what he said highly insensitive, but it also shows his ignorance. Slavery, much like the holocaust, is not something you can just forget about, pretend never existed, many people died for no reason, and it was just inhumane.

            Sure, in a perfect world, racism would have been abolished by now and there would be neither traces nor remains of it, unfortunately that is not the case since racism, although died down, is still going strong in our country. Going back to some of the statistics that Love showed in her essay we see a clear picture of not necessarily racism, but definitely a racial divide in life span, socioeconomic status, and infant mortality rate between white and black people. “To ‘get over’ racial problems in America today, we need to understand them and their roots.” One of the most interesting statistics that I felt she presented was that more than 19% of the 14,000 college students surveyed thought that Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was about slavery. College kids, the ones whom we expect to be most educated, would be so wrong about such an important speech.

            In the end I really agreed with her arguments and believe that racism is still alive and well in this country. Even though we now have a black president, it does not change peoples minds.

Reader Response #3

Mark Buchanan author of “How People Turn Monstrous” is an article about a study conducted at Stanford in the 1970s to show how, under certain conditions, it is human nature to turn monstrous, give in to primal and devilish urges to torture, and dehumanize others. The point of the study was essentially to see what would occur if they were to successfully take away the students individuality. As Buchanan says, “What happened was truly disconcerting,” because within a day and a half the guards, which were really students, hired to play guards, abused of the prisoners and became more and more violent with them. What seems to be the case is that given the power, more often than not people will abuse of the power to the point where it eventually turns them into monsters.

I feel like Buchanan makes a good argument, although the study was done decades ago humans are still the same and the way we act has not changed very much. To prove his point and back up the study he uses evidence from a newer case, the one of the American soldiers and staff sergeant who were found guilty of assault, conspiracy, dereliction of duty, and maltreatment of detainees. This is a perfect example because the soldiers, although trained to kill, are not bad people, but the situation they are put in allows them to transform into something that they may not be.

            Overall, I felt like Buchanan proved valid points about humans becoming “moral monsters” given the right circumstances, and he did well at using that to defend Sgt. Fredrick and the other American soldiers. As Buchanan says, “none of us know that we’d have acted differently.”