Can I just say I love my African American Slavery class? I'm doing the reading right now and I am totally in to it. One of the writers was arguing how the discrimination existed before the slavery and the the slavery was a result of that discrimination. Another writer was saying how because England had this kind of sudden introduction to a people that was completely opposite of them and that was the darkest skinned people meeting the lightest skinned that they kind of went in to a shock for a minute and then went completely ethnocentric. The reading I am doing right now is kind of pulling it together a little.

But what I find interesting is the stigma of interracial marriage was founded back in like the mid seventeenth century and was pretty much forbidden because it would cause class and status confusion. But white women that fell in love and married Negroes got the shitty end of the stick because they became life long slaves of their husband's master. White men didn't have that and I think it says a lot just about sex inequality as well as racial. In some way it is romantic that a woman might give up her freedom for love but all the same I doubt it happened much. I mean going towards four hundred years later that is still there in a way. It just amazes me.

It also kind of amazes me though is my American Feminism professor. I think she is expecting a lot more to have changed from the 60's but it hasn't yet. It took a long time to achieve a strong movement in women's rights and it may take even longer for those rights to completely penatrate. History tends to cycle a little and there are things that take a long time to change completely. It doesn't just happen over night and I think when she asks us questions she is surprised because she believes there should be more effect by now.
But if the impacts of African American slavery are still echoing through today than the same goes for women.

These are two REALLY good classes I am taking. They are a lot of work but I feel extremely inspired by the Slavery course. Again, it's something I've always kind of been interested in since I read the biography of Frederick Douglas in 4th grade (the real First Book for me) but now it's like...just beautiful in how I want to learn and how it's changing me as I read it.

Oooh oooh ooh! One last thing!
The Spanish and Portuguese had a different experience because they already HAD experience with Negroes. I mean the Iberian peninsula had been conquered and occupied by Moors so the were already known as people, even ones more advanced than Iberians. They also had the Roman slavery laws which viewed slavery as more an accidental unfortunate unfreedom for people. Once one was free they lost all stigma. The Roman Catholic Church also was very strong about how once Christian a person could not be enslaved. So it made the whole experience of the Spanish and Portuguese a bit different in the way they approached slavery and Negroes.
I find that fascinating since it's something I have never heard about and it further makes me want to go research Spain. Yes, they committed great atrocities to the native peoples of South and Central America but in some small way there was that freedom involved.

Oh mah gawd, I'm like spewing.
Must stop and save it for the paper I have to write.

Yippie!

I'll write more later on real-life-present-day stuff.
Adios.
Peace.
~Lo