The Reservation

Native American reservations in the United States are spaces allocated to native tribes that are considered a separate area from the rest of the country. Due to this separation and lack of support many of these reservations lead to poverty and destruction of native culture. In my life not many things are similar to native reservations, but i believe that the Black Belt in southern Chicago is the closest thing i know to an Indian reservation. The people in power during the time period of its creation forced one ethnicity of people to live there similar to the movement of native Americans, and then they were left to lose money through unfair business done by white people. They were shoved into one area to prevent them from taking up the land of those in power and then restricted beyond belief. The only major difference between the two is that one is a sovereign nation while the other is just a part of a larger city.

Native Sons

Bigger is a murder, rapist, fugitive, and thief. Yet some people still read about him and think that he is really a good person who was just put in the wrong situations. I see Bigger as he is at base value. He is a criminal and no matter how he got there he still committed crimes. Thus i see don't see Bigger in some heavenly light as a nice person in the wrong place. Bigger is not a nice person in fact he is quite the opposite. He doesn't make good choices, he doesn't help those he should, and he messes up the only true chance he had. Maybe if Bigger had tried a little bit harder, or actually have been in the wrong place at the right time i could believe that he is really a good person.
Though i don't like Bigger i do believe his punishment was wrong. In my opinion the death penalty should never be used, even if Bigger killed two people. The death penalty takes us back to a time when we couldn't function as a society, and required brute force to resolve our problems. Also it is not the choice of others whether or not someone should lose all the years they would naturally live. I don't believe Bigger is a good person he is just a bad person in bad situations.

A Principle to Keep

A Principle to Keep

I believe that a principle we as humans should always keep is to never inflict more harm than is necessary. Essentially i believe that you should never hurt someone or something more than you absolutely need to. For example if someone if wounded and you are being chased by rabid dogs then instead of leaving them for the dogs to rip apart you should kill them quickly yourself. If you kill them instantly they will have less total pain than if you left them, which means that you can obtain a sense of pity for others as opposed to being cruel. If you limit pain like this it would mean that torture would be abolished, but that war would not, for torture is unnecessary while there is no easy way to eliminate an enemy without using war. Now you may ask what if the pain is for a good cause like torturing an enemy to gain information to save live, and to that i respond with this. In World War II there was a German Interrogation officer named Hanns Scharff he was one of the most effective interrogators of all time, and he never used physical means to gain information. Thus proving you can achieve the same goals and success by limiting pain to the most minimal level.