African American Outline Essay Example for Free

African American Outline Essay It happens to be common knowledge that throughout history African Americans have been oppressed, segregated, and disregarded as civil human beings. In the dawn of history Africans were regarded as animals and as such they would do the job of animals, however this paper will look at their sacrifices and fights to be treated as equals. United States Congress. (1866, April 9). Civil Rights Act. Retrieved from http://www. digitalhistory. uh. edu/exhibits/reconstruction/section4/section4_civrightsact1. html Amendments to the Constitution of the United States (2007)| Infoplease. It happens to be common knowledge that throughout history African Americans have been oppressed, segregated, and disregarded as civil human beings. In the dawn of history Africans were regarded as animals and as such they would do the job of animals, however this paper will look at their sacrifices and fights to be treated as equals. United States Congress. (1866, April 9). Civil Rights Act. Retrieved from http://www. digitalhistory. uh. edu/exhibits/reconstruction/section4/section4_civrightsact1. html Amendments to the Constitution of the United States (2007)| Infoplease. See more: argument essay format com http://www. infoplease. com/ipa/A0749825. html#A0749838#ixzz2VD3iU0JEhttp://www. infoplease. com/ipa/A0749825. html#A0749838 Abolishment of slavery The abolishment of slavery brought on a war, not between two countries but a war that divided a country, one that is still spoken of today. The southern or â€Å"rebel† states rose against the President of the United States in retaliation of his and many others view that no man woman or child should be a slave. All people were created equal. Amendments to the Constitution of the United States (2007)| Infoplease. com http://www. infoplease. com/ipa/A0749825. html#A0749838#ixzz2VD3iU0JEhttp://www. infoplease. com/ipa/A0749825. html#A0749838 (13th, 14th, and 15th amendments) Africans in politics Although four million African American slaves were now free they had codes placed against them, the Black Codes restricted the lives and movement of these people. In order to override the codes the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were drafted and passed. Not only was slavery abolished but all slaves were now citizens and in such race could no longer be used to prevent the vote of a person. Africans now had a voice on who was elected and soon they had African Americans running for government offices. Corbould, C. (2009) Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919-1939 Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA, USA Harlem Renaissance African Americans soon were cast aside again, during the age of imperialism and leading into World War One Africans were struggling to make a life. Some fought in another war, this time not for their freedom but for the freedom from communism alongside their white counterparts. After the war ended blacks started to come together, the Harlem Renaissance was born. King, M. L. Jr. (2010) Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. Beacon Press. Boston, MA, USA Black power movement 1954 to 1963 America saw a strong struggle for the advancement of civil rights, equality and desegregation. From every day citizens expressing their belief in being equal to their white counterparts to lawyers fighting for the equality all had deserved. These times were pivitol in an unstable America. Not only were there these movements of civil equality and black power but also a war in a far land that many Americans were against at the time. Inventions and impact. From writers, inventors and powerful leaders throughout black history there are some that are household names and some that may be forgotten. I plan on taking a look back on those who through oppression continued to strive for better for themselves and for all. African Americans today Not long ago segregation was prominent, civil rights were abused, racism and hate were common. Today we have CEO’s, congressmen and senators, military leaders and the President of the United States who are all African Americans. No longer considered a minority in many’s eyes, African Americans have literally built themselves from slaves to leaders and teachers.

money or your life :: essays research papers

A thought popped in my head as I was half way through the readings for this assignment and I wanted to share it with you. This is my last class until I graduate. I was supposed to take this course last semester and I waited because I had a lot going on in my life the past few months. This class is so much more beneficial to me now because I am in the â€Å"real world† and have been in it for awhile now. If I was to take this class while I was still going to college I really wouldn’t have gotten as much out of it. I think things happen for a reason and I am glad I’m taking this class now. With that said; I will get on to the readings†¦ In chapter 4 of â€Å"Your Money or Your Life† the whole concept of how much is enough is very interesting to me. The idea is finding fulfillment. In order to find fulfillment you need to find what you are looking for out of life. What are your dreams, what is your purpose in life? I have always had many dreams throughout my life. I also know that there is a purpose for me to be here on earth. Yet I still don’t know what exactly I want to do career wise. I am still looking for that exact purpose for me to be here. I strongly feel that you find this with experience. You need to get out there and experiment, absorb all the knowledge you get from others and your experiences. On page 121 the author discusses purpose. I know that I have a purpose in living. The author says that one way to find your purpose is answering the question, â€Å"Why are you doing what you’re doing?† I may be a little confused to make my decisions but there is always a purpose if I dig deep enough. There is always a meaning for my actions. I have not found that specific career that is a passionate commitment to me yet. I am determined to discover this mission in life. The steps the book gave on finding your mission I found it to be motivating and very helpful. The first one, work with your passion my mother has taught me throughout life. Do what you love to do and you will lead the happiest life possible.

Mr. Burns as Scrooge of Springfield

In the history of modern popular culture, there have been few American satires as influential and successful as the animated television show, The Simpsons.   With Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and baby Maggie living in the everytown of Springfield, U.S.A., they find themselves in many situations common to most Americans, including being under the rule of ruthless corporate raiders like Charles Montgomery Burns.As owner of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, Mr. Burns displays all the characteristics of a classic egoist, though his satirical portrayal takes many of the attributes and accentuates them to the point of ridiculousness.   Mr. Burns shows absolutely no charitable tendencies, is concerned solely with money and power, and cares little for anyone other than himself, which makes him anything but a relativist or utilitarian, but seems to make him more of an ethical egoist.Mr. Burns is a corporate raider, characterized on the show as being over a century old, putting him amongst the original robber barons.   The character himself is actually based on an amalgam of media magnate William Randolph Hearst and his fictional counterpart Charles Foster Kane, both characters that focused solely on their power and how to use and enhance it.   In The Simpsons, almost every story concerning Mr. Burns includes his blatant disregard for anyone else other than himself and his own interests.One of the most obvious depictions of Burns’ ethics comes in the two-part episode called â€Å"Who Shot Mr. Burns?†Ã‚   In the episode, oil is discovered beneath Springfield Elementary School, and the school seems poised to get a windfall of money from the discovery.   This will allow the terribly dilapidated and underfunded school to make many improvements in every aspect of the curriculum.   However, Mr. Burns discovers the oil and creates a slant drilling company that will draw the oil up from an angle, in the process destroying the Springfield Retirement Home and making the popular Moe’s Tavern uninhabitable for humans.   In addition to alienating the school, destroying the retirement home, and putting Moe’s out of business, Mr. Burns also fails to remember the name of his decade-long employee, Homer Simpson.His selfishness and self-absorption have managed to anger just about everyone in town, though he is only concerned with making more money and becoming even more powerful.   He finally reveals his grand scheme to his loyal assistant Waylon Smithers, which is to build a giant device that will block out the sun in Springfield and require all the citizens in town to use electricity from his plant twenty-four hours a day.   He even feels so good that he wants to steal candy from a baby.When his loyal assistant objects, Burns quickly fires him, never realizing that Smithers’ life desire was merely to work for Mr. Burns.   Burns is blind to everything and everyone, and he finally succeeds at blocking out the su n, incurring the anger of everyone in town.   It is when he celebrates his victory he is shot by an unknown assailant, who after a cliffhanger, is revealed to be baby Maggie Simpson as he attempts to steal her candy and subsequently shot by his own gun (â€Å"Who Shot Mr. Burns?†).While the over three-hundred episodes of The Simpsons have many instances of Mr. Burns making ethically questionable decisions in the name of money and power, this episode remains one of the most famous and obvious examples of his selfishness.   To Burns, nothing is as important as his business success, and this is the single factor dictating his ethics and his actions.   Burns’ morality bleeds into every aspect of his life outside of business, though to him there are no other concerns than business.Morality and ethics are important to every aspect of human life, including in business, and many ethical theorists have sought to understand the extent of morality and the duty that individu als and organizations have to other individuals and organizations.   Though no laws of morality or ethics have been established, there are four core concepts presented by ethical theorists: ethical relativism, which espouses that ethics is a question of individual choice and preference; impartiality, which suggests that humans should treat each other as equals where none count more than others; sympathy, which is the imaginative ability to put oneself in another’s shoes; and moral sufficiency, which seeks to answer just how much moral decency is reasonably possible (Gibson 62-63).In business matters, these issues and the questions they pose are even greater, as businesses have the potential to create great benefit for others, or do them great harm, all the while trying to maximize profit and retain success.   Mr. Burns is far from an ethical relativist, for he shows no concern for the benefit of others.   In fact, he takes joy out of creating misery for others, as long as their misery is profitable to him.   He assumes responsibility for his actions without shame, and feels no remorse if anyone is hurt.   After all, one of his greatest desires was to take candy from a baby, for no other reason than he could.In the essay, â€Å"Thinking Ethically,† the authors attempt to apply various ethical approaches to moral issues in business, which could apply to Mr. Burns’ actions.   One of the first and most widely known approaches is the utilitarian approach, which seeks to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of individuals.   The way to analyze the utilitarian approach is to identify the various course of action available, ask who will be affected by each action and what benefits and harms will come from them, and choose the action that will produce the greatest benefits and least harm (Velasquez 64).Mr. Burns, if anything, purposefully contradicts this mode of action, as he derives pleasure in the misery of those he va nquishes in the name of greater profit and power, even if these people are innocent.   Another ethical approach is the Rights Approach, which espouses that an action is moral as long as it falls within the moral rights of an individual, while the Fairness or Justice Approach which states that favoritism and discrimination are wrong.The Common Good Approach focuses on ensuring that social policies, social systems, institutions, and environments on which we depend are beneficial to all; the Virtue Approach assumes that there are certain ideals towards which humans should strive, which provide for the full development of humanity (66).   By approaching situations of ethical ambiguity with these theories, one has a better chance of choosing the correct mode of action.   For Burns, all of these ethical approaches are not applicable, for he fails to ever consider how his actions may affect anyone else negatively.Or, when he does think about it, he gets pleasure in being able to impo se his power to the point where he can bring misery to others through his actions, as in his celebration after blotting out the sun despite the protests of everyone in the entire town, including his closest supporter Smithers.In Donelson Forsyth’s article, â€Å"Judging the Morality of Business Practices: The Influence of Personal Moral Philosophies,† he examines the ways business leaders approach ethical relativism and how it does not need to necessarily defeat the moral enterprise.   However, to someone like Mr. Burns, ethics are nothing more than an afterthought, while the bottom line is the only thing that matters.While studies have suggested the impact of relativism and idealism on moral judgment and behavior depends on the nature of the social institution, individual differences in personal moral philosophy suggests that humans will most likely never reach the ideal of complete agreement, but can aim for a fuller understanding of one’s own and othersâ₠¬â„¢ reactions to various types of business practices (Forsyth 75).   In the case of Burns, he only agrees and appreciates with those that share his views on profiteering and power, even though he remains skeptical and suspicious of every threat; and he considers virtually everybody a threat to his wealth and power.This is why, despite having more money than anyone in town and never being able to spend it all, all the instances when Mr. Burns is asked to contribute even a little of his money to help someone else, he vehemently rejects the request.   This has been seen many times in the show, from Homer asking for help with a sick dog to a girl scout trying to sell Mr. Burns cookies only to have him â€Å"release the hounds† on her.Mr. Burns greed and complete lack of charity display his true nature as an ethical egoist.   In Peter Singer’s article, â€Å"The Singer Solution to World Poverty,† the author proposes that if people in affluent countries like th e United States donated a small portion of their money that would normally be spent on luxury items, then the money can be used to help out poverty stricken peoples around the world.He uses examples of how this can be done, by citing the costs incurred by someone who buys a new television merely to upgrade from an older one.   He claims that if this money was donated to such charities as Unicef or Oxfam America that it would do a greater deal of good for the most possible people, thereby having the greatest utility value.   By choosing to buy the television and not donate the money, Singer feels that a person is making a questionable moral decision, even though few in the situation actually feel this way.Singer uses a more provocative hypothetical example of a man named Bob, who has an uninsurable classic car that he will sell to insure that he has money for his retirement.   In the situation, Bob is forced to make a decision as a train bears down on his car and a little boy; Bob has a choice whether to save the boy or the car, but not both, and Bob chooses the car and lets the boy die.   While this dramatic example seems to highlight the undesirable attributes of self-interest, Singer claims that the â€Å"difference between Bob and those who can afford to donate to overseas aid organizations but don't is that only Bob can save the child on the tracks, whereas there are hundreds of millions of people who can give $200 to overseas aid organization† (Singer).By Singer’s logic, those that are not donating to these organizations are committing an act similar to the one performed by Bob.   Mr. Burns would not only laugh at such a concept, but would relish the fact that anyone asking for help would be suffering.   If in the same situation, he would most certainly save the car, and most likely praise Bob for saving his car, before figuring out a way to get the car from Bob for himself.Mr. Burns utilizes his power to inflict his will upon ot hers, and only respects those who do the same.   As, all humans are born with free will, the decision to be charitable or uncharitable rests within that freedom.   The German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant contributed much to the Western discussion of ethics and free will, and his conception of freedom and virtue are reasoned by â€Å"the critical distinction of the two modes of representation (the sensible and the intellectual) and the consequent limitation of the conceptions of the pure understanding and of the principles which flow from them† (Kant).Kant attempts to distinguish between the empirical and rational conceptions of free will and how it influences virtue, questioning whether freedom is the independent choices of free will or merely the practical reaction to circumstance and causality.   To this end, Kantianism is highly dependent upon reason to figure out the proper decision concerning virtue, and his ethics rely on obligation to reason more than emotions or goals.   Thus, the Kantian approach to donation and charity would be the duty of those that have the means to donate.   Burns would patently disagree.   Most certainly, Mr. Burns is an ethical egoist.Ethical egoism is a philosophical practice that encourages individuals to pursue their own self-interests.   While it is idealistic to think of helping unknown masses with one’s own hard earned money, it is also naà ¯ve to think that people should feel obligated to do so.   A person who works hard to make money to buy fine things is entitled to those things.   Just because a person is successful and can afford luxury items does not mean that they are obligated to help strangers because it serves some sort of utilitarian purpose.   If anything, much of this altruism merely perpetuates a cycle in which those who are poor become accustomed to the aid of those who are not.   If they pursued their own self-interests, they would be better able to rise above their own struggles and create a successful world for themselves.Ethical egoism is not entirely without the concept of helping others, however it focuses not on people that an individual will never meet, but the people in his or her life and those that the person loves and touches personally.   If one’s family is in trouble and one possesses the ability to give assistance, this is in the individual’s best interest, as it will lead to happiness.   However, for an extreme example like Mr. Burns, there is no one that he wishes to help, save for the occasional cute pet or his old stuffed teddy bear.   Mr. Burns is a classic example of an ethical egoist, and no one should expect him to do anything for anyone other than himself.   And, in the twenty years that The Simpsons have been on television, he has done nothing but loyally follow his ethical egoist values.Works Cited:Forsyth, Donelson R.. â€Å"Judging the Morality of Business Practices: The Influence of Pers onalMoral Philosophies.† Business Ethics: People, Profits, and the Planet. Ed. Kevin Gibson. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities, 2005. 67-76.Gibson, Kevin. â€Å"The Theoretical Backdrop of Business Ethics.† Business Ethics: People, Profits,and the Planet. Ed. Kevin Gibson. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities, 2005. 61-63.Kant, Immanuel. The Critique Of Pure Reason. Ed. J. M. D. Meiklejohn. 1781. eserver.org. 4Apr 2008. ;http://philosophy.eserver.org/kant/critique-of-pure-reason.txt;.Velasquez, Manuel, ; Claire Andre, Tomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer. â€Å"ThinkingEthically: A Framework for Moral Decision Making.† Business Ethics: People, Profits, and the Planet. Ed. Kevin Gibson. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities, 2005. 64-67.Singer, Peter. â€Å"The Singer Solution to World Poverty.† The New York Times Magazine. 5 Sep1999; pp. 60-63. Utilitarian Philosophers. 4 Apr 2008. ;http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/19990905.htm;â€Å"Who Shot Mr. Burns?â₠¬  The Simpsons. Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein. 20th Century Fox. 21May 1995.

The Case Of Leslie Wilfred - 1743 Words

The Case of Leslie Wilfred (Grush, 2013) In 2007, Leslie married her husband Chris Wilfred, whom he had met in High School. Leslie was 37-years-old and Chris was 39-years-old. Together they took care of five children, four from Leslie’s previous marriage and one son of Chris’. It was known that Chris’s son was treated differently than Leslie’s four children. Chris’s son was reported by his parents to be violent, dangerous, and was not seen to be out of the house by community members. The community heard from the parents of how troublesome Leslie’s stepson was, but never saw him act out the way that her and Chris had explained to be. Leslie mentioned that she dealt with two more illnesses with her children. Leslie’s 13-year-old son had his Gallbladder removed at a younger age due to what Leslie explained as frequent vomiting. The reason for the procedure was unclear to the rest of the family, yet Chris was ready to donate part of his li ver to save Leslie’s son’s life. Later on, Leslie proceeded to tell others that her 9-year-old daughter was suffering from Leukemia. She would take her daughter to chemotherapy, and would tell Chris that she would take care of the medical bills. In addition, the couple asked the community for donations to pay for medical bills. Leslie then brought up her other child who was supposedly raped by a former co-worker when she was 11-years-old. Leslie stated how her children suffered from psychological disorders, yet the children were so wellShow MoreRelatedPrinciples of Management (Case Study)2006 Words   |  9 PagesHelp Desk at AMPA Case Student: Student Number: Tutor: Workshop Time: Due Date: Contents Contents 2 1.0 Analysis Using Motivation Theories 1 1.1 Equity Theory 1 1.2 Expectancy Theory 2 2.0 Criticisms of the Management Functions 3 3.0 Main Problems Defined 4 4.0 References 5 5.0 Appendices 7 5.1 Appendix 1: SWOT Analysis 7 1.0 Analysis Using Motivation Theories 1.1 Equity Theory The Equity Theory states that people assess how fairly they have been treatedRead MorePrinciples of Management (Case Study)2016 Words   |  9 PagesHelp Desk at AMPA Case Student: Student Number: Tutor: Workshop Time: Due Date: Contents Contents 2 1.0 Analysis Using Motivation Theories 1 1.1 Equity Theory 1 1.2 Expectancy Theory 2 2.0 Criticisms of the Management Functions 3 3.0 Main Problems Defined 4 4.0 References 5 5.0 Appendices 7 5.1 Appendix 1: SWOT Analysis 7 1.0 Analysis Using Motivation Theories 1.1 Equity Theory The Equity Theory states that people assess how fairly they have been treated according to two key factors: