11/21 journal- White Mans Struggle poem vs. Black Mans Struggle poem

11/21 journal

From the white mans struggle poem, I got the idea that author had the idea that white people had to work really hard to create and maintain the earth, in a way. How white people were above other people but they served other people by making earths better place. This came off as a little shocking because at the time when Britain was colonizing, they treated foreign people as barbarians and referred to them as savages. In the opinion of the British, though, they were working to improve the earth as well as those peoples lives. From the black mans struggle poem, I got the idea that black people were the underdogs at the time with the white people dominating them, and even though they were enslaved in a sense, they still fought for them selves, despite their disadvantages.

11/15 journal

Conrad shows the hypocrisy of colonization through the setting, because while Marlow is traveling through the Congo, he describes scenes or torture, cruelty, and near slavery. It is hypocritical because the men from the company describe what they're doing as "trade" and development. While when Conrad shows the setting, he makes us realize how cruel the company men really were, and how much pain they were causing to the people or Africa, while they where convinced colonization as a positive thing.

Africa center

I was absent when the class when to the Africa center.

Darkness

Darkness seems to be very prevalent throughout the book, aside from the fact that it's in the title. Everything in the book seems to be dark; Africa and England are both described as gloomy and dreary even when the sun is shining. In the dark, we cannot see. It is similar to the book because in imperialism, we fail to see and understand other peoples and their lives and their culture, and failing to form some kind of bond or connection with one another.

Colonialism

I learned a lot from the discussion in class about European colonialism. I knew that Europe had and currently has colonies, but I was not aware that there were so many. I also learned that not only did they expand for military reasons, but also die to economy. I'm England, they do not have many natural resources that are valuable, so colonizing territories that have natural resources vastly improved their economy and trade. Also, colonizing became a competition of military and economy within countries. One thing I found very interesting was the difference between colonization and imperialism. I always thought they were the same thing, and most people confuse them as well. Imperialism is when a country takes over another territory and rules those people, while colonialism is when a country settles their people in a territory they took over.  

Oral history project over all

I enjoyed the oral history project overall, but I did see some places for improvement. I think we should have more time and do more in depth research about our person or their circumstances because a lot of the time in the interview we did not know about certain things we had gotten some facts wrong. So fact checking and more research time is what I would use to improve it. I enjoyed the actual interview though, as I hadn't ever done one and i learned a lot

Transcription

Transcribing for me is very tedious and is sometimes boring after I've been doing it for a while. Although that is the case, it is very interesting to look back at our interview and catch little things I had forgotten about or hadn't picked up on during the interview. One thing during transcribing though is that you realize places where you could've asked a better question or asked a follow up question. This realization is very helpful, because in the future if I ever interview someone, I could learn from my mistakes and improve the interview based on the previous one. Overall though, transcribing in my opinion tends to be tedious and tiring And not very enjoyable.

Interview

My interview was a positive one overall, but we did have a few bumps in the road. We interviews Lana Rigsby who owned Rigsby Hull, which is a communications design firm in West University. The most interesting part for me is when she told us about how she worked with the Evans Life foundation, which helped low income immigrants get on their feet. I think that the interview went really smoothly and our interviewer was very comfortable asking questions and our interviewee was also very helpful and open with her story, which made it easier for us to work with her. A problem we faced was that we thought we had enough questions, but we didn't end up having enough. Therefore, our interview needs up being very short and only fifteen minutes long. Overall, the interview process was very fun and I learned a lot.