Month: November 2019

I learned a lot about the Vietnam War and the protests surrounding it in my APUSH class in high school and the violence and live footage of brutality still surprises me. At one point I knew the timeline of the actual war and each significant bombing in Vietnam but I think there more important information to get out of the Vietnam War era is the power of rhetoric from both sides of the conflict (the government and the citizens…not the US and North Vietnam).

One example of the powerful rhetoric used by the protester-side was the statistic shared by MLK Jr. He said something along the lines of ‘we have spent almost $230 on each enemy we kill abroad but only spend about $50 per person who lives in poverty in our own country’. I think this is extremely powerful because it demonstrates the power of aversion and diversion by the government that somehow labels international threats as more deadly than domestic ones. One thing I have learned about in this class and many of my other classes this year is that the US has a lot of work to do on its own before we can go trying to fix other places. Entering Vietnam was definitely the first mistake but mistake after mistake is what made people angry and dug the government into a deeper deeper hole of distrust.

From the other side however, the government, one part of the video that struck me as particularly powerful rhetoric was when Nixon said that the only people who can beat America are Americans themselves, not the North Vietnamese. At first I was perplexed by this comment, but then I realized it was a response to the protests across the country. I can definitely see how protesters felt they needed to resort to violence (for example throwing rocks at the National Guard at Kent State) but the response of deathly violence of guns to something like rocks is alarming to me.

Overall, I think the use of strong rhetoric from popular leaders on both sides of the protest conflict has shaped our countries views on the conflict as a whole as well as how the media can influence decisions almost too well. Now, it seems as if there is a “breaking news” story every five minutes on the news. We are lucky to live in a world where there are lots of ways to read about and view news, but if we are not careful, it is easy to get fed too much of one side of every story.

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I was very impacted by the youth who were so involved in these protests. College students, young adults and even teenagers banded together to speak out against unnecessary violence and war and spoke to promote peace. In this case, children and young people were more pacifist than many adults or older people, which seems to be frequently the case, but was very concrete and obvious in this specific case.

In a broader sense, young people oftentimes seem to be the ones speaking against violence and inequality and advocating for equality and progressive values. These people are often not listened to on account of their youthfulness, such as Greta Thunberg, the 16 year old who advocated for action to be taken against climate change. Older people have more ‘life experience’ or ‘wisdom’ and somehow in their minds this equates to accuracy and more knowledge. It is crucial that people of all demographics, including age, listen to one another.

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The Anti-war movement is one of the most interesting movements of the new left, I feel like it is very interesting because we see many different Americans from different backgrounds supporting the movement. Even MLK and Civil rights groups opposed the war. Even though it affected different groups in different ways, people still came together to fight against “tyranny”. It is in movements like these that I wonder how democratic our country really is, because of the sheer amounts of people who wanted to pull out of the war and end it, there was very little action by the government to appease the protestors until the very end. Even still it can be argued that the war only ended because we had actually lost.

One thing in this video that surprised me were the reactions of the soldiers already in Vietnam to the draft protests. They stated that if they should have been fighting than those at home protesting should be here with them or have already given up their lives for the country. I think they felt as if their service wasn’t being appreciated which was not the intention of the anti-war movement. Further, this video pointed out how political parties would use these movements to come into power. With Nixon’s rise to power.

Another thing this video opened my eyes to was the power behind college students and how dedicated they were to the movement, they fought the national guard many times and suffered many blows, however, they stayed until the end.

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After watching this short informative film I understand why it is titled “The 20th Century: Vietnam Protest Movement” because wow, there were a lot of protests and a lot of different sides as the war in Vietnam continued. Divides in the country were formed.

It is always a red flag when the authority (the government) is being violent and oppressive to a large group of people. I feel that when there is a large group of citizens, nationwide who feel a certain way their thoughts should be heard and dealt with in a regimented protocol that gives voices to the people in a way that they can be heard effectively. The tensions that arose between the government forces and antiwar protesters were all due to fear on both sides. Fear for the lives of loved ones or oneself being sent to kill or die in a country halfway around the world for reasons that were unclear and unjust and fear of the countries reputation stays intact. The government’s murdering of protestors is also a red flag that in my opinion dirties the reputation of the US government around the world and for those who live in it.

Also- something that infuriated me was Nixon’s comment on how we as a country could not let North Korea win because that would be embarrassing and American’s dont loose….. LIKE WHAT. I understand it is important to have pride and to give each effort your all, however, with an incitative that was unclear and not supported by so many, including those who were being legally forced to fight, kill, and risk their own lives it is poor leadership and unjust. This just brings me back to how many early presidents (GWashington) played a long hands-on role in the battlefields in battles that were fighting for conflict in our own country; I wonder if the pride and reputation of America would come first if government officials or Nixon himself were forced to be on the battlefield.

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In the US I feel that we talk about the civil war and the world war’s much more than the Vietnam. This is odd to me because the Vietnam war was a pretty catastrophe heavy war. In the video I got a sense of the social movements that took place during the war. The anti-protest’s against the war spilled over into much grander issues in the United States. The “unjustness” of the draft caused issues within the United States to be highlighted.

The Civil Rights inequalities was one of the major issues. I feel like the Civil Rights Movement and leaders became stronger because of this. If the African Americans in the US were not being treated fairly, then why should they serve this country? I think the intersection of different movements here is neat. The anti-draft and Civil Rights movements fed off of each other for their arguments. Both groups provided more reasons not to go to war, and not to follow the leader-the United States.

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I think this protest movement gained so much traction and become such a big part of the nation was that a lot of people could relate to the inequalities of this draft. College, marriage, and money could allow people to decline going, and also Vietnam’s war was not so much our place to step in. Not only did it not involve us, but the Vietnamese people did not want us there. The years of fighting only resulted in very insignificant changes to the latitude lines between North and South, but over 25,000 American men died and couldn’t come home after fighting “a war that wasn’t ours.” I do think, however, the booklet created to avoid the draft, such as faking madness or homosexuality, is very unpatriotic and naive of the men to make. I agree that people should be able to decline the draft on some terms but the booklet took it too far in my opinion.

The extremism of the anti-war protest and how it seemed that world was getting taken over by these radical protestors didn’t help their cause. In my opinion, anyone who is trying to achieve a goal or in a leadership position, a cool and calm approach will more likely get them what they want than violence or extreme acts of protest. This goes back to effective leadership styles and I don’t think that the college students who began this protest necessarily obtained this qualities, maybe giving the reason for why the removal of last soldiers didn’t occur until 1973, eight years after the first soldiers were sent over.

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This past week I had attended a talk about race. Race is something that, unfortunately, still affects our society today. There is an organization in which there are post cards sent out and participants will send them back with a story that they would like to share in a short six words. Some of the stories shared were; “Married a white girl. Now what?”, “No where are you actually from?”. The idea of these stories were to bring a voice to a silent topic. Racism is thought to be something that was abolished many years ago but the matter of the fact is that it still exists today and is still heavily prevalent. This relates to our class Leaders today are still judged by their skin color. There was an Italian man, Rudy Giuliani who was ranked first in his class at Columbia and wanted to run for presidency but was hesitant and ended up not running due to the color of his skin and his association with the mob. Although he was not affiliated with the mafia in any way at all, the fact that he was Italian made him automatically affiliated with that stigma negatively. The value of listening and coming to venues like these is to hear other peoples stories and what it is like to live in different skin.  

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In the talk that I went to on Tuesday November 12^th, 2019 the speaker Michelle Norris discussed her work with the Race Card Project. I really enjoyed this talk because Norris was taking a completely different approach to having those hard conversations about race in the US. She was explaining why she wanted to even do this project in the first place, and the was saying that she wanted to lubricate the conversation about race. The way that the Race Card Project worked was 200 post cards were sent out asking people do express race in only six words. Norris got a lot of things that she did not necessarily expect back. There were a lot of “no word for what I am” or “father was racist. I’m Not. Progress!”. All of these results were super interesting because people ended up writing a lot of things that they would probably never say in real life.

I really enjoyed this talk because it brought to light a lot more of the problems with how race is dealt with in this country, especially because most of what was being written on the race cards were things that people would not be comfortable to say out loud. One example that really stuck out to me was the example of a principal hiring a person named Jamal. This was because the principal wanted to promote more diversity in the school, and he assumed that Jamal was black due to his name. Then when he showed up, and he was not black the secretary said something along the lines of “oh I thought you would be taller”. To me this shows how we need a change in this country, which is why I respect what Michelle Norris is doing because she is trying to keep the conversation about race going, and change it for the better.

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Before watching this video I knew of some of the controversies regarding the Vietnamese war. However, I did not know of the extreme amount of chaos and social uprising that this war brought about. I was unaware that similar to WWI and WWII that men between the ages of 18-26 were forced to enlist and of those men only the ones of lesser intelligence were forced to go. This caused anger throughout the college youth and a feeling of injustice which sparked rioting at universities, rioting at major metropolitan cities, as well as violence against police and military officials. Many people did not believe in the war we were fighting halfway across the world which created this unrest amongst military-aged men and citizens of the United States. This caused extreme division against citizens of the United States and caused anger amongst the man deployed and why they were forced to fight when these other men were not obligated to do so.

 

I did some further research on this topic and discovered that Vietnamese women, as well as children, were forced to fight in the war as well. This caused again extreme unrest amongst American citizens and as long as US soldiers were being sent into Vietnam to fight Vietnamese women, as well as children, would continue to fight. It made me question what my actions would have been if I was a college-aged student during this time period. Would I have protested or would I have served my country in Vietnam? This also calls into question the psychological principle of mob mentality where people take actions they would not usually take if their identity was known because there are no immediate repercussions.

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I thought this reading was interesting. The dynamic ingroups and outgroups form by playing off each other reminds me of a catch 22 in some cases. In the case of an American who is fluent in Japanese, it seems like it is not possible to penetrate into the group because of the lack of the common group knowledge, but the only way to get that knowledge is to be a part of the ingroup.

One of the most interesting factors for me was how much of an effect language has on creating and maintaining ingroups and outgroups. On a basic level it makes sense, because if you don’t speak the common language of a certain group, it will automatically mark you as someone different. However, one factor that I didn’t really consider is the fact that each language has specific markers and emphasis on how it is spoken, the way it is spoken, and what is spoken. For example, I read an article recently called “Why the French Love to Say No.” One of the points in the article explained that while the English language has over 500,000 words, French only has around 70,000. As a result, while English is rather explicit and direct in how it is spoken and not heavily reliant on context, French is much more reliant on context and other expressions to show meaning, and ‘non’ can have many different layers of meaning and not actually mean no. Considering the fact that different languages operate in fundamentally different ways can be very helpful in converging different groups.

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Last week, I attended a c-suite conversation featuring Don Godwin, the chief financial officer of Newport News Shipbuilding, the largest manufacturing employer in Virginia. The interview had an emphasis on leadership in the business world. He had some really great things to say, some of which revolved around what we’ve talked about in class. Though he didn’t use any textbook terms that we have gone over in class, he talked a lot about the importance of staying in touch with what was happening at the shipyard, where the overwhelming majority of employees at the company work. He talked about visiting the shipyard often to see how things were going, and that he much preferred the visits that the shipbuilders did not know he was coming. This was because he said he viewed himself as equal to them and did not want to see a show put on for him, rather wanted to see the shipbuilders working as they do normally. Not only do I think this statement said a lot about him as a person, but as an executive leader as well.

Godwin also spoke briefly about the importance of having different minded executives. He gave some details about what made him and the CEO very different, yet explained why those differences become so useful in collaboration and coming up with new ideas. This made me think about the importance of different types of leaders within organizations. Though an organization or movement usually has one face that represents the movement, there are so many more important and influential leaders that make huge impacts, but they just are not in the limelight. I overall found the discussion very interesting and I thought he had a lot of great things to say about business, ships, and leadership.

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Prior to watching this video, I was not aware of all the resistance that occurred in the US during the Vietnam war. People were very passionate and expressive about there feelings.  One example that struck me was Muhammad Ali, refusing to go into war after being drafted and getting stripped of his title.  It is crazy how far this went. While watching this video I was wondering, how did it get to the point where it was that bad?

While watching this video I was disturbed about how bad it got and how the movement traveled onto college campuses. Particularly the one in Kent State. The students were hit with tear gas and then they started shooting and killing four students and a dozen were wounded. It was noted that this was the climax of the anti-war movement and I totally agree with that statement.

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The Vietnam Protest was a movement against the United States involvement in the war, in addition to the draft. This draft would kill thousands of young American men to die, and protests were being held during this time on college campuses throughout the nation. Many young men claimed that the reason they were protesting was because they didn’t want to be forced to fight in a war that wasn’t their, and one they barely knew about.  According to this film, the draft was initially created to give all men an equal chance to fight and represent their country in times of war. However, as it was soon discovered, there were many loopholes in the picking process. If a man was in college or was college educated, his draft admittance was deferred. Additionally, if a man was married, he was also deferred. This concept angered many people, and from this came the Vietnam Protest Movement. 

I completely see the argument that the protestors had, and if I were a young man during this time period I would be scared every day that I would randomly be called to serve in the war. Moreover, I also see why the draft was created and being used, and why it was hard to cut their cords with Vietnam after being involved. I also see why men wanted to serve, and why they were proud to be serving as American soldiers. However, I don’t agree with the idea that certain men were exempt from war and others were not. Just because a man wasn’t married doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a family or girlfriend that loves him very much, and just because a man isn’t college educated doesn’t mean the value of his life should be measured in a different manner than someone who was. I also think that people should be working together during times of stress, and this movement created a huge divide amongst the men of America; those who wanted to serve, and those who didn’t. 

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Before watching this video, I understood that the Vietnam War was a highly contested, extremely divisive moment in American history. I had heard about the shooting at Kent State and the enormous role students took in the protests. One thing I wasn’t taught in school was the way the draft targeted specific populations. By getting married or going to college, men would be deferred from the draft, leaving those without the means to do so vulnerable. It also led to a disproportionate amount of young black Americans being killed in a war many of the troops fighting didn’t even believe in, as evidenced by them throwing away their medals during protests. 

Another thing I didn’t understand was the government – particularly Nixon’s – role in fostering division among the American people. When Nixon took office, he promised a quick, peaceful end to the war and removal of American troops from Vietnam. However, within the year following his inauguration he had not only not ended American involvement in Vietnam, but further increased it in what many viewed as an invasion of Cambodia. He also actively pitted anti-war protesters against those who supported it by calling those in favor of the war “patriots” and using derogatory terms for those who were against it. He added to this by defending the National Guard who open fired on college students merely using their right to protest. I knew Nixon because of his later mistakes as president, but learning this about him made me think about the president’s role in our country. Not only should they be transparent about their actions and follow through on their word – things Nixon didn’t do – but they should also work towards peace among the American people instead of quite literally the opposite.

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I went to the Sharp Viewpoint Speaker Series on the 12^th, where Michele Norris gave a talk called The Race Card: Observations on Race, Identity, and Inclusion. One of the main things she talked about was The Race Card Project, a project she started several years ago where people would tell stories about their identity in 6 words. It was an inspiring speech, because the goal of this project was to promote speech and give a voice to topics that are generally silent. The project has collected over 500,000 post cards, and that number is constantly growing larger with digital cards and social media allowing for even larger participation.

Some of the most interesting points in her speech, for me, was when she brought up how racism is a spectrum that can range from a noose down to a small social papercut (microaggression), saying that “biases are baked into western DNA.” Serious, uncomfortable discussions are necessary to move us closer to a post-racism society. To end, Michele Norris’s two six-word stories are “fool them all, not done yet” and “there’s still work to be done”

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Before watching this video, I had no idea that so much resistance took place in the United States at the time of the Vietnam war. I was surprised to hear that the anti-war movement began on college campuses nationwide as a protest against the war and the draft. Specifically, the killings of Kent State really disturbed me. These killings marked the climax of the antiwar movement, as the government fired on its own children, and I am extremely shocked that our nation got to that point of extremism and violence. 

I think it is really important to consider the role of leadership in these events. Around 1967, civil rights leaders began publicly speaking up against the war. MLK, for instance, stated in one of his speeches that “[the bombs in Vietnam] destroy the dream and possibility for a decent America.” In addition to verbally opposing the war, he also described, “war is not peace and tyranny is not freedom.” In my opinion, this last quote is extremely inspiring because MLK proves that the war has more disadvantages than benefits. In fact, increased militancy caused increased anger and backlash, which explains how the protests rapidly turned violent.

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Every time I study the Vietnam War I am left with the same question: how did LBJ and his administration let it get so far? The video shows the continuous escalation of the war through numbers and protests. At first, protesters were peacefully marching and performing sit-ins to fight back against what was supposed to be an “equalizer” draft. Then in August 1967, 50,000 more troops were ordered to fight in Vietnam. This meant that a half a million soldiers were now going to fight in Vietnam. This escalated protests to larger stages: the senate, pulpits, and other governmental or societal platforms. The video says that in this moment LBJ knew the opposition had shifted- it was no longer just on the streets. Yet that following April 44,000 more troops were called. This number was an escalation to more recent drafts that had been happening. So, in the face of an escalating public push back, LBJ and his administration still decided to continue to fully participate in the Vietnam War. Once Nixon took over protests got even worse and culminated in 1.5 million college students involved in protests and famously 4 college students dying on Kent State’s campus. People from across the nation, from all different background came out in that moment to be a voice of protest. This ignorance of the peoples’ protests is a reoccurring theme throughout history. I just don’t understand how presidencies can turn such a blind eye to the results of their actions.

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Mae Ngai, an American historian, spoke about refugees in America and the myth that surrounds them. American stance on refugees and immigrants is encircled by a myth like the one that surrounds the founding fathers we talked about in class. The narrative we tell in history classes about the founding fathers is one of humble beginnings and extraordinary success. We do not hear of the slaves they owned, their refusal to grant all humans rights, the lack of flexibility the system has upheld beyond those eight men. A similar narrative reigns true for refugees. Professor Ngai summarized the narrative by the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty. “The Colossus” poem suggests that a part of American’s foundation is immigrants and that not only would one find liberty in America, but also refuge. That myth defines the surface of our nation’s immigrant and refugee policies, but Professor Ngai went on in her speech to share staggering statistics about refugees in the US and around the world.

First and foremost, she put a crack in the foundation of the founding fathers. The Second Amendment went into the constitution to protect the vast diversity of religions in the new colonies. But in fact, in the beginning, each state still held their own policy and affiliation with a certain religion. The mythical utopia of diverse religions isn’t true. Then, globally the first policies to support refugees stated, and still do, that any person has the right to exit a country but holds no formal right to enter another. That policy is paradoxical. I believe as a result to this foundational declaration, there are 71.44 million “persons of concern” across the world. Most of these people are internally displaced, and refugees and that number does not include the 5 million people currently displaced in and near Pakistan. Only 1% of the world’s refugees are resettled. The rest remain in camps or are temporarily hosted in countries. One refugee camp has now hosted three decades of Somalian refugees. Professor Ngai emphasized that this is not an issue to be discussed country by country, but as the Geneva Convention on Refugees in 1951 states, a problem that is international. Yet, the US is accepting less and less refugees and asylum seekers as the total number of these people rises. The facts break the myth that begins at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

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I thought that this was an interesting video because I had no idea that there was this type of backlash against the Vietnam War. That being said, I understand but do not agree with what the protestors were doing. I think that it was reasonable for them to be upset about the war, but that they should have supported their country more. Their protests were disrespectful to soldiers who wanted to volunteer and were giving their lives for their country. It must have been very demoralizing to be fighting for the USA but not getting the proper amount of support. The protests also divided the country. During a war the country should unite even more so that there is a higher chance of them winning. Lastly, the protests turned violent and people were often injured and even died. This is kind of ironic because they were protesting a war, but causing a lot of violence by doing so.

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I learned about the Vietnam War in high school, but before watching this video I didn’t know that much about the resistance taking place in the United States. The beginning of the video talks about how the draft was supposed to be an “equalizer” because all men over 18 were required to be in the draft but the loopholes to get out of the draft, such as getting a deferment to go to college, were more accessible to wealthy people. During a demonstration at an induction center, a protester told men who were there to register for the draft that “if you’re a white, middle-class, Dean’s List kind of guy, you have nothing to worry about.” This really stood out to me because it highlights the inequality in the draft process. A disproportionate number of those sent to Vietnam were black and/or lower income, which I never knew. I also did not know that MLK participated in protests against the Vietnam War, but what he said about how the United States spent $322,000 on each enemy killed in Vietnam but only $53 on each American classified as poor also stood out to me.

Something else that I found interesting about this video was that President Nixon’s response to the anti-war protests was to increase the divide between those who supported the war and those who opposed it. He did this by portraying protesters as unpatriotic and sending in the National Guard to demonstrations on college campuses. This didn’t really make sense to me because one of the ideals of America is that we have the right to express our opinions about what the government is doing, even if we don’t support it.

 

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