Four C's Of The Black Experience example essay topic

Perspective understand perspective as being your own understanding as well as your own interpretation of anything you read or witness. It is also your own insight and beliefs on the hidden nature of things. Perspective is the way you and only you analyze a situation. It can be shared with other's who share your same perspective, as well as being shared with other's who have their own insight which will be a total opposite of yours. In 1965 Malcolm X had made a statement "you have to be careful, very careful, introducing the truth to the Black man who has never previously heard the truth about himself, his own kind, and the white man... The Black brother is so brainwashed that he may even be repelled when he first hears the truth".

Reading Malcolm X's statement as well as absorbing many of the material I've accumulated in class I strongly believe having a perspective is important, but having your own perspective is even more important. When having your own beliefs you won't be so gullible, as well as easily fooled on what's being done to you or around you, You " ll have a clear insight and won't be taken advantage of. Having your own outlook, you could make changes that are more helpful to you and others, rather than harming you and what's around you. In the past, when the Negroes were uneducated and didn't know any better they had no perspective and were easily fooled thinking everything was the way it was supposed to be. For instance the white man took the Africans and had them believing in the Christianity religion. This was brainwashing the Africans to believe god has made them inferior to the white man.

By having no perspective of there own they believed this perspective and remained a slave, thinking they was doing the right thing. Now having a clear thought, we don't let harmful things get passed us without attempting to make correction for the better. For example when the racism was a huge issue, and we were severely mistreated by many whites as well as the Police Department in the late 60's and 70's, an organization by the name of the Black Panther Party was formed. They had fought for our rights as well as our right to be treated equal to others.

Having a perspective we are now able to serve and make beneficial changes for others as well as ourselves. There are four C's of the black experience, they are color, class, culture and consciousness. Class is the level of life you live in. There are three classes, high class, middle class, and lower class. The lower class will always be ranked on the bottom for everything, and the upper class will always remain on the top no matter what, and the middle class remains in the between both levels. Classes play an important role because in our society everyone is treated differently based on their class.

The lower class is treated very unfairly considering they remain on the bottom. The upper class receives everything and is treated as if they are kings and queens. The middle class gets a little of both worlds. Color is the race, culture is the value of the way you live your life, and consciousness is also the way color, class, and culture get into one's mind. There are also four C's for everyone else's experience, which are biology, political economy, society, and consciousness.

Biology deals with age and health. Political economy deals with occupations, income, and educational attainment. Society deals with common space / place. The last C is consciousness, which plays the same role that the black experience plays.

The difference between the four C's in the black experience, and everyone else's is that the four C's in the black experience only concerns them and is harsher. The other experience deals with everyone else and isn't as difficult to them. 10,000 "BE", which stands for before the present era, was very important, it was the very seldom way to pick up black history. Historians tried to come up with chunks of time in the period we missed information on.

What we " ve came up with was that Africa was disrupted by the slave trade, the slave trade was disrupted by emancipation, emancipation was disrupted by the rural life, the rural life was disrupted by migration, migration was disrupted by the urban life, and the urban life was disrupted by? To me this says that we came to America by the slave boats and came to become a slave for the white man. Shortly after that period of time we were set free. The next period we were living in the country life, dealing with agriculture. From that period we went to moving from one place to another to harvest seasonal crops.

The next period shortly after this in which is the one we live in today, the city life. After the city life we are unaware what will become the next period of history. My theory of the four C's and the historical period is that they are both "body parts". If you were to take an entire body, but have missing parts to it, you wouldn't be able to have a general look on what the body was. This to me is what the four C's and the historical period is, it is missing pieces to the full body of history.

The historical periods as well as the four C's are ways of finding bites of information. Also putting them together like a puzzle, to learn the history of our black people, such as the slave trade, and other things, which remain unclear. By doing so we are able to make history less complex and abstract and have a better understanding of what went on in the past, as well as understanding why things are the way they are today. We will also have a better understanding of what it takes to live this society today. There are two other aspects in, which are important to African American Studies. The two are science, and ideology.

Science deals with what is, and ideology deals with what ought to be. I take science in my own understanding, as saying what everything down to history is right now as we speak. Our president of the United States is Bill Clinton. Racism still exists in today's society. Here are a couple of facts to symbolize what science is. For an example how the blacks are treated in our society today is science.

In my understanding ideology is how one thinks the blacks should be treated in our society. For an example if you take wine standing for ideology it could blind you, and it will lead you to think you can take action. These are just two prime examples, of the two important aspects in African American Studies. This is also my own interpretation on science, and ideology. I see W.E.B. Dubois relating to these two aspects, of science and ideology in a major way.

Dubois had written a book to talk about the way black history is. He had concentrated on the way black history was, and how it is now. Dubois also had tried to figure out the missing periods in African American Studies, which aren't mentioned, as well as what was leading us to remain unclear, on the history of our people. Science and Ideology is very important to Dubois as well as to the black history.

Which is why African American Studies is an academic field that combines general interletual history, academic scholarship in the social sciences and the humanities, and a radical movement for fundamental educational reform.