Blog Response 2

Response to- Chapter 1 and 9 of a place called home

In these two chapters there were a lot of issues brought up concerning the hygiene of different races and how that was used as an excuse to deem them less than human. The strange thing about the accusations thrown at Mexican and Japanese people were that a lot of the causes were because of the lack of hygiene provided in the work place and/or they couldn’t afford it because of a new piece of legislation. It almost seemed like the people from the city of Los Angeles at the time were trying to make their perception of those people a fact. The more striking thing to me was the parallels that existed at the time in LA and the recent story concerning the old trailer park.

In the story about the trailer parks the city of San Diego imposed legislation that increased the amount of money people had to pay to live in the trailer park. In chapter 1 of a place called home the city of L.A charges more money to Japanese people who opened up Laundromats (those who were fortunate enough) as an attempt to drive them out of the area, similar to what San Diego did to the people living in the trailer park. The Mexicans that worked the rail road were labeled as dirty, but they lacked the proper facilities to clean themselves. But once they did get showers they took a shower every day. What astounded me the most about the comparison I made was how the groups in power in both of these stories will label unfortunate events as another group’s own fault when they were the ones that caused it.

Blog Response 1

All societies have laws and all of these laws are enforced through creating the threat of punishment, which is the primary reason people follow particularly oppressive forms of government. Through this threat fear is created which ends up being the supreme authority. Whoever controls this fear not only has the power has to keep people in control but also the potential to create actual loyalty. In Richard Wright’s “Living the Ethics of Jim Crow”, he nearly stares death and only survives by caving in to the system he is faced with. By doing this he is acknowledging to his oppressors that it’s okay to do these things because there is none of that threat of punishment for him to utilize.

An example of fear not just creating control but loyalty to an oppressive system is in Harrison Bergeron. The citizens living in that story had to be handicapped and their best abilities were held back. If they disobeyed they would face severe punishment, but there was only one instance of resistance in the story. In fact the system created a case of mass Stockholm syndrome, a physiological occurrence in which a hostage of sorts not only submits to a captor but empathizes and will vigorously defend their captor, and although this is a fictional story, the principle of loyalty through fear is very much possible.