Places AND Forms OF Power notion 3 PDF

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PLACES AND FORMS OF POWER

Hello, I’m going to talk about the notion « places and forms of power ». First of all, I would like to give a definition of power. A power is a right or an authority given or delegated to a person or taken by force for all sorts of reasons. In class, we studied the places and forms of power in South Africa which is explain how the Blacks and the Whites are living together despites their different culture and the immigration to the USA which explains the living conditions of the immigrants who are going to the USA for the first time because they can’t stay in their country. We are going to ask ourselves how people from different cultures can live together in harmony.

At first, we can say that in the USA coexistence between people from different cultures wasn’t a problem because it wasn’t possible at some periods. We studied a cartoon frame develops in three steps. We can see two men sitting on a bench painted from the colors of the American flag. In the first frame, there is a man on the right. He looks like an immigrant from Latin America and he is relaxing whereas the man on the left who seems to be a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) is at the same time reading a newspaper and glancing aggressively on the direction of the Latino. On the second frame, the man on the left suddenly shouts “get out” at the immigrant who obeys and stands up. In the third frame, we see that as a consequence of the Latino standing up, the bench loses its balance and the WASP falls on the ground. The bench symbolizes the American territory. The cartoon is a message against protectionism. Then, we watched an extract from the movie “Golden Door”. In this extract, there was a Sicilian family of poor peasants arrive in Ellis Island. There, they are submitted to humiliating medical examinations, psychological and intelligence tests because the New World refused disabled newcomers. In the end of the process, the widower and his elder son are admitted whereas his younger son and his mother are going to be deported because his son pretended he was mute and the grandmother who was stubborn was considered as feebleminded. Therefore, we can say that America wasn’t welcoming to everybody, so being someone from an other culture was difficult in America. Secondly, we can say that South Africa is an example of coexistence. From 1948 to 1991, there was apartheid in South Africa. Indeed, we studied a text in class, which is entitled “A History of South Africa”. The text explains the system during apartheid. We learned that at this time there were four ideas. First, there was four racial groups: Indians, Africans, colored and whites. Secondly, white people had the control of the country. Thirdly, the interests of white people dominate black people interests. And lastly, the white people formed a single nation and black people belonged to distinct nations. So, the white nation dominates all the country. We can say that during apartheid coexistence wasn’t possible because black people were segregated. But we will see that the arrival of Nelson Mandela in power was changing things. Effectively, we studied a document in class. In this photograph, we see two children with the same school uniform which means that the black boy and the white girl are in the same school, this would have been impossible during the Apartheid regime.

In conclusion, we can say that people from different cultures can live together in harmony. It was difficult sometimes, but we have an example of reconciliation in South Africa thanks to Nelson Mandela. However, Mandela died 6 years ago, and the situation has changed, there is still risks of racist acts. We may wonder if forgiveness and reconciliation will remain reality of become a myth....