Leadership and the Humanities Class Blog Posts

In today’s reading, Howard Zinn highlights a specific example of a person who’ s story and character has been told in a way that is not entirely accurate, Andrew Jackson. On page 130, Zinn describes the way in which in most historical textbooks, Jackson is characterized as being a “frontiersman, solider, democrat, and man of the people”, then draws the comparison of another fitting description of Jackson being a “slaveholder, land speculator, executioner of dissident soldiers, and exterminator of Indians”. It goes back to the common point that we refer back to so frequently in this class: the victors get to tell their story and we tend to accept it, and pass it along. What about the other side of the story though? In this case, it is the native American populations. Furthermore, as mentioned in the podcast, grouping all native Americans together is not necessarily the best thing to do, because they were not all the same, the did not share the exact same beliefs, actions, or specific experiences. However, the thing that I will unite them under, is the immense oppression by white settlers. This extortion of native populations is shown beautifully in the reading “Welcome to your authentic Indian experience”. Trueblood (the main character) is victim to a series of events that turn his world upside down. First, “white wold” (coincidentally named), seems to be down and wanting something more out of his experience. Trueblood, representing the Native population, invites him to become friends, goes to a bar, and spends time with White wolf. However, White wolf turns around, steals Trueblood’s wife, home, job, and sanity in the blink of an eye. Furthermore, he makes Trueblood feel ashamed and guilty of his actions and identity. These tactics are so cunning and sly that native populations were blindsided, as such greed is not prevalent in the majority of their cultures. In his farewell to his home, Blackhawk says that “he (the white man) would be put to death and eaten up by the wolves (based on their behavior)” (Zinn 131). 

What I am most interested in talking about though is the extent to which the native American’s stories have been silenced. Black and female rights movements have taken place and moved somewhat in the right direction towards progress, but is continuing to offer native tribes (relatively) small amounts of money, and letting them govern by their own rules in their own small reservations enough for the widespread pain and horror that was brought upon them? To be pushed further and further away from their own lands, and have “the white man warm himself before the Indian’s Fire” (Zinn 135), is nothing short of widespread, large scale robbery. 

Lastly, I think it is interesting to go back to the point of comparisons of superiority and inferiority. Colonists assumed that they were superior to the native people because they had superior weapons and were Christian. They hoped that “Indians will cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community” (Zinn 140). That obviously did not happen. but the podcast and Zinn both discuss ways in natives were far superior, in terms of lack of greed and selfishness, respect and connection to the Earth, and unity among the tribes. Before this class, I would have assumed that the colonizers had good motives behind their conquest, but the more we read the more I realize their motives were far more selfish and greedy, with insufficient excuses as support. 

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After reading Zinn’s chapter “As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs,” I realized how much information was left out of my history classes in high school. I remember learning about the Trail of Tears and how Jackson forced Native Americans out of their land. However, we never discussed what the motives for each side of the arguments were. On one side, the Native Americans were the first people on their land and therefore the land belonged to them. For this reason, the white settlers should be removed and boundaries should remain how they were created by the Native Americans. The other side argues that removing Native Americans from their land will create more opportunity for the economy and agriculture to expand. While we focused on the first perspective in high school, a perspective that I agree with, this chapter has confirmed the importance of being informed of every perspective. The fact Zinn mentions that some tribes were willing to adopt the white settler’s civilization in order to live in peace really surprised me. I knew that several tribes were against violence but I didn’t realize that some were likely to give into the white settlers’ wishes. However, after reading the rest of the chapter and understanding that friendships between the settlers and natives formed, it became evident that Native Americans felt pressures from the government much more than they did from certain other white settlers.

Similar to the concepts discussed during the American Revolution chapters, laws and acts that are passed might not necessarily represent the sentiments of the common person. Jackson, a white wealthy man and political elite, wanted to encourage settlers to move onto Native American land through formal legislation such as the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act which asserted that all treaty-making and negotiation between tribes and settlers are under the control of the federal government. This law applied to the Native American territories and pushed many tribes west as they had limited control over the governmental power over them. Additionally, the Removal Bill gave Native Americans no say but stated that Native Americans who did not move west would have no protection under the government. Zinn explained how this issue was very polarized between Northern and Southern sentiments. This is fairly comparable to modern day politics. A lot of issues have two partisan sides and people tend to form views based on their party affiliation. In the same sense, northerners shared similar sentiments and southerners shared similar sentiments.

Another idea that stood out to me was how some Native American tribes slowly started to own slaves and resemble the societies of the white settlers. I drew a connection between this idea expressed in Zinn’s chapter and the writing by Roanhorse. The main character in the story, Jesse, seemed embarrassed of his culture while also being protective of preserving his heritage. In Zinn’s chapter, the Native Americans changed their society maybe to appeal to the white settler’s way of living. This is similar to how Jesse was forced to change how he portrayed his Native American culture in order to appeal to the stereotypes that tourists expected. This brings me to the idea that minorities or people of color are seen as exotic and therefore are prone to having their cultures appropriated or forced to alter their cultural traditions in order to be seen as more exotic. This was shown when Jesse had to speak in the “best broken English accent” that he could or when he changed the name from “Pale Crow” to “White Wolf.” This contributes to false ideas of history and culture because tourists are getting an altered and exaggerated enactment of a culture.

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In Rebecca Roanhorse’s “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Culture”, the reader gets to see what the worst of cultural appropriation and commercialization could turn out to be.  A future is pictured where, using virtual reality, tourists are able to get an authentic Native American experience in exchange for money. The character of White Wolf is an extended metaphor for the way that white people exploit other communities’ cultures. While at first White Wolf merely seems to be a friendly stranger who wants to learn about Indigenous American’s culture, by the end of the story he has robbed the protagonist, Jesse Turnblatt, of everything. When white people enter into another culture’s space and assume parts of it as their own without experiencing any of the true hardship that comes with being a part of the group, it leaves true members of the culture stripped of their identity and sense of self as the protagonist is at the end of the story.

This fictional reading was made even more interesting by chapter 7: “As Long A Grass Grows Or Water Runs” in APHOTUS.  In this chapter, we learn about Andrew Jackson’s strategies of displacing indigenous people to further benefit white America. The chapter discusses how Jackson was hailed as an incredible leader in part for his military actions against indigenous tribes as well as how, as president, he supported Georgia’s right to remove the Cherokee tribe from its land in spite of the fact that the Cherokee helped him in an earlier battle against the Creek tribe. The history of the interactions between white and indigenous people is an unbelievable cruel one, which makes Roanhorse’s statement against cultural appropriation in her fictional story more powerful. As the cultural group that has directly caused much of the indigenous people’s suffering, it is even more inappropriate for white people to now adopt that culture as their own.

 

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Reading the short story, Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience, felt like something out of a Black Mirror episode. Not many assigned readings I have had in the past have actually captivated me like this one did, while also touching on a very relevant and serious topic in today’s society.

The plot of this story is told in a second person POV, which is an incredible tactic to make the reader internalize every emotion the main character is experiencing with the author constantly saying “you” while describe what the character is going through. The main character is Jesse Turnblatt, but goes by Jesse Trueblood instead to sound more “native” for the virtual reality company he works for. This company provides a virtual reality experience of live as a Native to rich white people. Jesse is an indigenios Native American but is forced to learn a type of fake realness the white people want that coincides with the Native live that Hollywood movies illustrate.

Jesse ultimately losing his job as he lets his guard down and describes his true life of a Native to a white man who claims he is Cherokee, but in reality only has one Cherokee relative, portrays the concept that America tends to only romanticize the Native culture that fits in their media-based stereotype, not any true culture told from actual Natives.

It is painful to read how Jesse accepts this appropriation of his culture, just so he can keep his job and support himself financially. Jesse experiences cognitive dissonance because he knows this isn’t the real him. The corporate world in America can truly make people lose their self-dignitity and self-identity simply for one to maintain their jobs.

This story also reminds me of the recent social movement to start banning offensive mascots from sports-teams and schools that appropriate Native American cultures, as well as other non-dominant cultures in America. It angers me to think about how Native American’s must have felt seeing sports teams like the Washington Redskins, and school mascots that resemble Native Americans (a recent example is Winchester High School in Massachussets replacing their Sachem mascot) appropriate their culture with no respect. There is a fine line between appreciating another culture and appropriating it, and I hope America learns the difference (and if you don’t know the difference then just don’t do it!!)

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While reading chapter 7 of A People’s History of the United States I couldn’t help but recognize the direct parallels or connections between the removal of Native Americans and both slavery and later housing segregation of African Americans throughout American history. Zinn stated that the main forces behind the removal of the Native Americans were not the poor white frontiersmen, but from big businesses and the federal government collectively. In fact, the frontiersmen and the natives bonded over common problems and lived in friendship and peace. This made me recall in earlier chapters how slaves, white servants, poor whites, and freed slaves formed friendships and even marriages in colonial America and how these relationships were only broken up by the racially charged language of the elites and the federal government. This is a blatant repetition in American history and unfortunately, the poor whites didn’t learn from the past and were used yet again as a pawn to advance the selfish economic desires of the rich. I also noticed parallels between the perseverance and fighting spirit of both the slaves and the Native Americans when they were experiencing brutal conditions. The bravery and determination that these two ostracised groups embodied are almost unbelievable given how horribly they were repeatedly treated by the most powerful agents in the nation.

Another parallel that is worth exploring is the role of “de jure” practices throughout American history. In this chapter, it is clear that the government, and most specifically Presidents Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson, led the initiatives to remove the natives from their own land and try to assimilate them into American society. This is an example of “de jure” practices where the government played an instrumental role in ostracising and obliterating the culture and livelihoods of the Native Americans. The government and the minority that was the Southern elites overpowered the North and the beliefs of whites across America to further their own needs through forced legal action. They basically coerced the nation into agreeing with their views and removing the Native Americans. It should be noted, however, that even though there was backlash against these actions, the American people knowingly let these injustices take place because they weren’t the ones who were mostly affected by it. Racially charged de jure practices can also be seen in housing segregation throughout the 19th and 20th centuries where the government implemented public housing that perpetuated ideals of segregation regardless of the views of the American people. Even in racially integrated communities where whites and blacks lived in harmony, the government implemented segregated housing units while claiming that they were simply maintaining the status quo. They used manipulative language, which is also seen in the removal of the Native Americans, to insist that they were doing the right thing and that their actions were motivated by the overall good of the people, especially the racial minorities. This dangerous language is what aided the government to pereptuate racist idealogies and divisions with “de facto” reforms targeted at both Native Americans and African Americans.

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Chapter 7 of Peoples History of the United States was very interesting to me in the sense that I had never really read about president Andrew Jackson in that light before. While I have learned in history that he passed the Indian Removal Act, the way this was played out was horrifying to read about. Zinn portrayed the cruelty that was used to move out Indians. In fact, it was actually their land that they were being forced to leave. They were marginalized and even killed in order for white people to settle on their land. In the episode 9 podcast, Dr. Bezio discusses the fact that we must accept that we will never know the full truth and every single detail to history. While this may be true, reading Zinn’s chapter made me wonder why history teaches us to characterize Andrew Jackson as a hero, when in fact, the horrifying details of his Indian Removal Act are know. I wish we learned more about these truths rather than being taught the glorified version.

The short story, Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience was also very interesting to me. I felt that this story tied both the podcast and Zinn’s chapter together by giving us a personal experience. In this story, Jesse essentially has everything in his life taken from him by other people. He comes back to work after being sick, only to find out he was replaced by someone better. After finding this out, getting into a fight at the bar, and waking up realizing his wife was probably very angry, Jesse goes home to find out that the “White Wolf” had talked to his wife who decided she wanted Jesse out. Essentially, his wife was also taken from him. To me, this story portrayed the way that white people took Indigenous people’s land from them in the 1830’s. It was their land first, the same way it was Jesse’s job and wife first.

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The reading in A People’s History of the United States, I was less surprised as I have been in past chapters. The reason for this could be because I’ve learned a lot about Indian Removal and the horrible things that happened on both sides. While I say I’ve learned about it, one of the most important parts (if not the most important) of the Indian removal is the role of Andrew Jackson, which I didn’t really know about until senior year of high school. Before that, I only knew him as the president who passed the Indian Removal Act, which in itself is already horrible. But, learning about the truly inhuman things he did or thought was normal for these Indians was shocking. The main reason for this shock was because, as Zinn says, he was “a national hero”. He was someone that was respected, and he was someone people looked up to, yet he did some really horrible things. I know now most people disagree with Jackson’s actions and do not like him, but was it the same when he was living? Although, Zinn mentions how Northerners were opposed to Indian Removal, so clearly some realized the horrible things Jackson wanted. What surprised me was how the Northerners eventually stopped caring, preoccupied with their own issues. 

Just like most other chapters in this book, it does not put the US in a very positive light, or at least who were supposed to be the leaders and representatives of the country. This chapter made me realize once again that there are so many things to not be very proud of in our history. Although, it also reminds me of how important it is to stand up for what we believe in and fight back when we need to. It makes me think back to the last chapter about women, because my life is different today because of a few women who spoke up, when they knew something was wrong. For the Indians, there seems as though there was no right thing to do, except try to speak up. If they signed the treaties and agreed to leave, the treaties were broken or they died while leaving, and if they tried to fight back, they lost their land and once again died. In this story, the oppressed didn’t gain anything back, the same way women and slaves eventually did. Like Zinn says in the first sentence “Indians were the most foreign, the most exterior”, which was in part the reason for being pushed out, because as history shows, we fear and push out things/people that are different from us.

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I was deeply horrified while reading Chapter 7 of PHUS. Zinn discusses the process of Indian removal for white occupancy in the 1800s. The main reason for this removal was to expand white American territory to allow more farming, new cities, and an overall larger United States. This was done with very little concern for human life and deep-rooted culture. Jefferson proposed that they would abandon hunting and many of their traditions, and this would lead them to “civilization”. The Indian tribes were seen as obstacles that needed to be removed in order to expand looking for money and success. There was extensive bribery, manipulation, and force used to move the tribes off of their own land. I thought a very powerful portion of the chapter was the description of what removal meant to the Indians. They had a very deep bond with the land and a spiritual connection with their ancestors who had been buried there. They also wanted the white Americans to treat them as they would want to be treated, and to remember that they faced very similar circumstances when they faced persecution in Europe which led them to the New World. However, none of their pleas or proposed treaties never fully accepted. 

I was very surprised to learn about the horrific actions done by Andrew Jackson because I had learned about him as the hero of the War of 1812 and the President of the United States. He is rarely described as a slaveholder and “exterminator of Indians” (130). He initiated the killings of thousands, burnings of villages, and horrible treatment of Indian peoples before and during his presidency. As soon as Jackson became President, laws were made that gave states rule over Indians in their territories, so they were subject to militia and state laws without a right to vote or testify in court. Indians were not “forced” to leave but people made it very difficult to want to stay on that land. I think that the history of indigenous peoples in the colonial period of America and post independence of America has gone unspoken and unknown throughout history and it is important that these truths be told. 

 

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I thought all of the readings tied in together to tell a very interesting story about the history of the oppression and rebellion of women in America. While I have always been aware of the low-level status women held in earlier societies, it was alarming to have my memory refreshed on the specifics of how unequal women were treated. One thing that stuck out to me was the fact that, although situations and conditions have definitely improved, a lot of the same general themes and categories of oppression are still very prevelant in today’s society. Women’s worth is often determined based on their marriage status and whether or not they have children, evidenced by the fact that most gynecologists refuse to perform tubal ligation on women in their twenties and thirties, claiming that they could change their minds and want children in the future, or marry someone who wants children. Additionally, the problem of women being paid less than men for doing the same job still remains at large today, not to mention that America is still one of the few developed countries that does not provide women paid maternity leave. Although women have made tremendous progress in the past few centuries, it is still painfully obvious to see that a lot of these old attitudes die hard.

 

Despite this, I enjoyed reading about ways women rebelled against the inferior status imposed on them and found strength and solidarity through different means. One story in particular that I found interesting was the “coffee party” – the spin-off of the Boston tea party in which women forced a man overpricing coffee to give up the keys to his store so they could take all the coffee for themselves. Additionally, the story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Seneca Falls Convention reminds us that women have always been strong, perserverant, and capable, and women now have more resources than ever before to continue to fight for equality. Although it is sometimes difficult to grapple with the blatant inequalities in our society, reading the stories of strong and determined women is a great reminder of the strength we possess and the goals we can achieve.

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Upon reading “The Intimately Oppressed,” I was faced with anger, as I have been with all the other chapters in this book. I thought it was very interesting that this chapter came after the chapters about enslavement, so the comparison could’ve been made about being a woman and a slave. It is funny that I always knew that women were seen as property as were slaves and never made that connection, and I assume most people haven’t. The idea of using “biology” to justify treating people as inferior is what disgusts me the most though. Most of the time when I learned about feminism, and the feminism movement, it referred to the 1900s so it was what I was expecting from these readings, but I was surprised to see a form of rebellion or the slightest appreciation of women of the 1800s, who I had never heard of.

Anne Bradstreet was someone who’s poetry was beautiful and spoke about things that pertained to women. Her poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband” was a type of poem only women could relate to, and as I read it I kept trying to analyze it as sarcasm, but I actually do think she loves her husband, which says something about the times we live in today versus the times she lived in. Although Bradstreet was important in the sense that she was the first woman published, Wheatley actually surprised me the most. As I read about her, I was very surprised that she was able to accomplish what she did within her given circumstances. When I read her poetry, it felt more emotional and rawer, like good poetry is, and it actually made me feel something.

As I write this, right after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I have a deeper appreciation for Zinn’s writing about women’s history, and all the women he mentioned. Ginsburg was someone who was so greatly credited for women’s rights, and someone who fought so hard and changed so much for the benefit of women, that this assignment being assigned right after her death is almost eerie. It feels so closely connected and so relevant at the same time.

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The chapter “The Intimately Oppressed” details the immense oppression women faced throughout the history of the United States and exposes the lack of emphasis on the lives and legacies of women in our country’s history books. Zinn’s description of the unjust treatment of women throughout our history was very eye-opening and horrific to learn about. 

Ever since women first arrived in the United States on the Mayflower, women have been faced with unequal treatment, which unfortunately still occurs to this day. Zinn reveals the unjust actions of male colonists towards women in Colonial America within the chapter. For example, Zinne explains that males acquired the, “absolute possession of [their] wives personal property” (107) and viewed their family “…as a patriarchal sovereignty in which [they were] both a king and priest” (108). I was disgusted to learn the way in which male colonists asserted their control over women. Unfortunately, male colonists’ behavior toward women set the precedent for the unequal treatment of women for many centuries to come. For example, in the 19th and century women were not given equal opportunity to get jobs in comparison to men and instead were typically responsible for household work and raising their families children. Zinn described this fact by claiming that women were “separate but equal” (114) as their household work was equally as important to their husbands job, but separate and different. Furthermore, women were not given the right to vote until 1919.

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Zinn’s exploration of “The Intimately Oppressed” is something that I’ve never really encountered in much depth when learning about history. The roles and experiences of women in American history have always been mentioned in my education, but only as an afterthought, whereas Zinn pays hommage to the collective American woman through his examination of her experience as chattel. He offers certain points of historical context that I had never been fully aware of; though it’s always been clear to me that the first European settlers in the colonies were men, it never occurred to me how women were later brought to the colonies. Like indentured servants, some women were shipped to the colonies in bulk, the cost of their travel becoming a debt they subsequently owed to their newfound male “masters,” which they paid in the form of housework, submission, and sexual exploitation.

In reflection of my lack of prior knowledge about this transportation of English women to the colonies, I’d like to speak on the issue of intersectionality for women of color. I was more surprised about the early commodification of white women than I’ve ever been on the topic of commodification of enslaved black women. While discussion of the commodification of black lives through slavery is often approached somewhat casually, made to be normalized through our education, I feel that history fears to reflect on the experiences of white women as plainly. This is not at all to say that the conditions faced by white women in the colonies were comparable to those of enslaved and free black women, that could not be any further from the truth. However, I feel like history’s nonchalant approach at discussing slavery and hesitant approach at discussing gender disparities is indicative of a gross normalization of the exploitation of black women in our history. When history is quicker and less apologetic in admitting its denial of humanity to black women than that of white women, I think that it reflects on America’s continual prioritization of the livelihood of white women over that of black women and other women of color. It seems to me almost as if the writers of our history are more ashamed to admit that white women were oppressed than they are to admit to the (far, far worse) oppression of black women. If the discussion of slavery is more commonplace and not as frequently given the same emotional weight as the idea of white gender inequality, what does that say about our country’s continual dehumanization of black women?

I do appreciate that Zinn explores the exploitation of enslaved black women in this chapter. He includes a quote from a formerly enslaved woman named Linda Brent who refers to her fifteenth year as “a sad epoch” in her life as a slave, the start of a season of sexual abuse and exploitation for her. These are the same words Dr. Daina Ramey Berry uses to describe the onset of puberty in her book The Price for Their Pound of Flesh, which discusses the commodification of enslaved black people through different periods of life. The sexual exploitation of women in bondage is morally unfathomable. At the onset of puberty, enslaved women were commonly sexually abused by their enslavers, forced to have sex with male slaves in the practice of “breeding,” and exploited for the purposes of objectification as well as medical research. In fact, the field of gynecology actually emerged from the practice of evaluating enslaved women’s reproductive health to determine their appraisal values in the domestic slave trade. Additionally, certain enslaved women up for auction were categorized as “fancies,” meaning that they were especially sexually attractive and bought with the primary purpose of being exploited for sex. These are horrors that white women in our history never faced and that seem to get less emphasis in the discussion of gender disparities as an aspect of our history’s normalized commodification of black women.

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Today’s Zinn chapter on the gender struggles in the United States and the subsequent poems by two iconic female American poets, Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley, clearly demonstrated how gender inequality is an ongoing issue in our nation since its inception. Howard Zinn begins by talking about the impossible standards that women were held to in the colonial era. The men were always right and whatever they did was wrong. Men wrote literature directed at women to put these sexist beliefs in their heads, like in Advice to a Daughter. Women were taught to be seen but not heard, and always be subservient to their husbands, masters, or fathers. However, this construct, unlike others we studied, cannot be bypassed. Women in the upper class still face sexism like women in the lower class. Their lives are of better quality, but their rights are the same. They are treated as objects and never asked about their own opinion on anything.

It was so rare for women to have published literature because of the public disregard for women’s opinions. The poems of Bradstreet and Wheatley were of utmost importance to the transition to women having more rights and an equal say. When men across the world were able to read the published poems of women and actually hear their ideas for the first time, they saw them as equals and not inferiors for the first time. Their poems provoked conversation and were relatable to the present time. They were widely revered across America and England despite initial backlash about publishing women’s literature, especially black women’s literature in the case of Phillis Wheatley. The work of these great American poets encouraged other women to speak their minds and fight for the rights they deserve. The famous Seneca Falls Convention was the first major step in fighting for women’s suffrage, something that wouldn’t be achieved until 1920. Only a few short years after that in 1933, A woman named Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born. In this new society where Women could finally participate in the government, she worked her way to the top of the judicial system in America and became a Supreme Court Justice. Her career as a Supreme Court Justice was catalyzed by the powerful women before her who fought for gender equality since the first women landed in the colonies. RBG’s lifelong career in politics and law and her work against gender discrimination will truly be remembered for centuries to come.

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I was in shock reading Howard Zinn’s “The Intimately Oppressed.” Coming from an all-girls middle and high school, I thought that I had learned most of what there was to learn about women’s oppression but I was wrong. Although there are still some inequalities between women and men in society today it is nothing compared to what was going on in the past. Zinn compares the treatment of women and slaves to each other and this shows the level of disrespect that women had. Women and slaves were even looked at as being biologically inferior to men. This made me wonder if black men treated their wives just as bad as white men. Were white men the only ones who looked at women as property? 

Women did rebel against the discrimination they faced. On page 109 Zinn writes that John Winthrop described Anne Hutchinson as “‘a woman of a haughty and fierce carriage, of a nimble wit and active spirit, and a very voluble tongue, more bold than a man, though in understanding and judgement, inferior to many women” (Zinn, 109). Zinn uses this quote by John Winthrop to show how certain women used their voices to stand up for themselves. Women like these are the reason that we now have more rights. Anne Hutchinson ended up being banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony because she was threatening to men and society as a whole.

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Howard Zinn’s chapter, ” The Ultimately Oppressed,” really shows the gender inequality in the 18th and 19th centuries, and how it is based on culture, status, and race. We learned about women and how they were treated, but I never knew they were treated this bad. What surprised me was Zinn talking about how women from Native American tribes were treated with the same amount of respect as men. While white and black women were mistreated frequently and were basically used for child making purposes or as a sex slave. Sojourner Truth was a name that I had heard about from past history lessons, but I never learned everything she had to go through. She worked the fields and would get lashed when punished, and had to watch all her kids get sold into slavery, all because she was a black woman and no one helped her because of that.

In this chapter, Zinn explains the mistreatment of woman as half the population being invisible. Women were objectified by men because of how they looked, this makes it seem like women were viewed as property instead of human by men. What is really crazy to me is how some of these men tried to justify their way of viewing women by using their religion. We still have some inequalities when it comes to gender today, but looking back at how women were treated throughout history it was a lot worse. But that does not mean women have to settle with how we are treated right now, it just means we have to do like the woman in history did, and fight for equality.

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I find that the most important thing to take away from Zinn’s chapter, as well as the poetry, is the tendency of women to lead regardless of their oppressed nature in society. In early American society, it is clear that despite history’s overlooking, women still posed as leaders in capacities that transcended the laws and institutions that barred them from being public officials. We know that leaders don’t need an official title to be an impactful member of society. Anne Hutchinson, for example, led many to a kind of spiritual reckoning that begged for a deeper analysis of Puritanism and its restrictiveness. Her presence in Massachusetts court directly challenged the nature of gender roles in the world she lived in, and her subsequent move to Rhode Island made a certain statement that undoubtedly caused a shift in Puritan thinking. Lucy Stone’s involvement in the anti-slavery movement and her writings on the matter had enough influence in academia that she needed not carry an official public title. The women discussed in Zinn’s chapter are a testament to the fluidity of leadership in the public sphere: it does not necessarily respond to title, and in the case of women in history, it more likely responds to societal influence.

There are, however, multiple caveats to which women led, and why. Literacy and class hierarchies seem to carry a weight that was relatively unavoidable, in a way that men didn’t always have to let their downfalls stop them from becoming influential. Literacy determined any woman’s accessibility to becoming a leader, and class standing dictated how far their leadership extended into society. It is no surprise that those women who came from affluent backgrounds had a relatively easier time reaching a larger scope of people. Female leadership has always existed, no doubt, but I think that it would be an effective exercise to closely examine how societal barriers (not including legal, that is self-explanatory) kept more women out of leadership positions than men. Moreover, the concept of intersectionality on a broader historical scale might point to more answers about how and why women led.

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Howard Zinn’s chapter, “The Ultimately Oppressed,” paints a sad picture of gender inequality in the 18th and 19th centuries. The treatment of women as lesser is rooted in the societal norms that our country was founded on. According to Zinn, “societies based on private property and competition, in which monogamous families became practical units for work and socialization, found it especially useful to establish this special status of women, something akin to a house slave in the matter of intimacy and oppression, and yet requiring, because of that intimacy, and long-term connection with children, a special patronization, which on occasion, especially in the face of a show of strength, could slip over into treatment as an equal” (Zinn 2245).

This arbitrary status of women in society was fluid at times. Notably, women held very different responsibilities during war time. During the American Revolution, women expanded their role in the economy, garnering influence in traditionally male-dominated sectors of life. For example, women held positions in newspapers, tanneries, taverns, and other skilled, middle-class industries that had previously been restricted to males. As a result, women received more education. Between 1780 and 1840, literacy among women doubled (2536). This educational growth led to a growing number of female teachers in primary schools. 

It also fueled female involvement in various political movements, including the antislavery and temperance movements. That said, the women who are mostly highly regarded for their involvement in political action came from privilege. This disparity was felt throughout the feminist movement; much of the progression that women received was disproportionately granted to the upper classes and there was very little trickle-down effect.

Significant progress was made in the struggle for gender equality, but this problem still persists today, in many respects. Women make up 4% of Fortune 500 company CEOs and hold 20% of elected positions, despite accounting for the majority of university students. Even female dominated industries such as the medical field and education are disproportionately male in leadership roles. Sadly, these disparities do not seem to be going away anytime soon.

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I found this weekend’s readings from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States as well as the poems and readings about both Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley to be very enlightening. While reading “The Intimately Oppressed” from A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn discussed how women were treated based upon culture, status, and race. He explained how women of other cultures such as Native American were often treated much better than the black and white women of the colonies. Specifically, Zinn talked about how women from Native America tribes such as the Zuñi tribe were not treated as equals to men; however, they were treated with the same amount of respect as a man. White women in the colonies were frequently mistreated and were often used for child-barring purposes or as a sex slave. On the other hand, black women in the colonies faced the greatest problems. Not only did they have to deal with slavery and racism, but they also had to deal with the same problems that white women faced. The only difference was that white women had the opportunity to fight a court case, if there was one regarding an immoral act, whereas women who were enslaved didn’t have the same opportunity. An excerpt said by Sojourner Truth on page 124 of A People’s History of the United States was very powerful. She talked about the problems that she had endured because she was black and because she was a women. She argued that with a man who claimed that “women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches” even though she never received this treatment. In fact, she worked the fields, was punished “by the lash”, and watched most of her thirteen children get sold into slavery yet nobody helped her simply because she was black.

I also found the readings and poems by Anne Bradstreet to be very interesting. I thought that she was very fortunate that her father worked as a steward for the Earl of Lincoln, thus giving Anne the opportunity to read the library within the home. The amount of reading she did, paired with her father educating her allowed her to prosper both as a reader and as a writer. When coming to the colonies with her husband, she found the conditions to be horrendous. She ended up living in a one room home shared between her family and another. In addition to that, she managed look over her eight children, complete her domestic responsibilities, as well as continue writing poetry. What was most interesting about her poetry was that she used her own experiences as a source to base her writing off of. The poems To My Dear and Loving Husband as well as Before the Birth of One of Her Children were both based upon Anne Bradstreet’s real life experiences.

Another poet who used her personal experiences to spur ideas for her writing was Phillis Wheatley. She was a young girl who was purchased by the Wheatley family in Boston. The family who purchased her ended up educating her in various subjects. Like Anne Bradsteet, Phillis Wheatley used her personal experiences within her poetry. She wrote about coming over from Africa on a slave-ship and being a black women in America. What I thought was intriguing from the article that we read was that not only did the Wheatley family educate Phillis, but they also helped her pursue her dreams as a poet. They helped her post advertisements in the streets about her poetry and over time, she gained numerous subscribers. In fact, her poetry was a catalyst for the Anti-Slavery movement within the colonies. Overall, I found the Phillis’ life story to be most interesting simply because I don’t believe it was common for white families to educate and aid a black women during this time in the colonies.

 

 

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Even though I feel I have learned a decent amount about the history of women’s oppression, reading the chapter “The Intimately Oppressed” in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History Of The United States made me feel as if I was hearing it all again for the first time. It will never not be shocking to me that women were treated so poorly and with such disrespect. Zinn explained it as being that half the population was invisible. Reading the quote from Julia Spruill when she says, “he was not entitled to inflict permanent injury or death on his wife” (Zinn 106) was horrifying. The fact that it needed to be outlined that it was not okay to kill your own wife is scary. Also something about that quote I found off putting was the word “permanent”, making it seem that types of injuries a husband could give to a wife that weren’t “permanent” were okay. 

 

Hearing about all of the details of women’s oppression makes me so thankful for the first female activists to stand up against this and rebel. Who knows what would have happened if there were never rebellions and protests for women’s rights. However, there are definitely still problems with gender inequality and there is still work to be done, making this history all still extremely relevant. In the last four years there have been plenty of feminists protests where women fight for their rights like wage gaps and their own bodies. I wonder if and when these (necessary) fights will ever stop. This is an issue with such deep roots, so can it truly ever be solved? Will there ever be a world where men aren’t seen as the most powerful and roles will be reversed?

 

On a side note, it is extremely coincidental that we are beginning to discuss gender inequality right after the passing of one of the most famous women’s equality activists, Ruth Bader Ginsberg. I am sure we will be hearing much about her legacy and how her death may affect us in the future, because she was a Supreme Court Justice.

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In response to the material that focuses on gender inequality throughout history, I can see why Gender Essentialism was popular in the past and how this ideology is being perpetuated in today’s society. Zinn (1980) talks a lot about how women were objectified by their husbands because of their physical characteristics that these men sought to exploit for personal gain. For instance, when men looked at women, they saw them as their property, as servants, sex partners, companions, and as the mother of their children. This system of oppression was reinforced by men who imposed strict social standards and who passed laws to ensure that women would be kept in their place at all times. It is not surprising, then, that these same men used religion to justify their unjust system of inequality against women.

As Dr. Bezio mentioned in her podcast, the intersections of class and gender also influenced the level of oppression women faced because the struggles that wealthy, white women faced were radically different from the struggles that poor, white women faced. For example, wealthy, white women had more freedom, opportunity, and time to deviate from traditional gender norms to explore their curiosities. On the other hand, poor, white women did not have the freedom,  opportunity, nor as much time as wealthy, white women because they had to learn how to not only manage their household but how to also perform well on their low-wage job, where they worked long hours and under harsh conditions. This comparison does not begin to consider the struggles that black women also faced during the 17^th century as slaves. In the early 19^th century, though, Zinn (1980) points out that the feminist movement grew in power as women- primarily, those in the middle-class- learned how to properly advocate for themselves and the causes they were passionate about. Women accomplished this goal by educating themselves on how to read and write better since society prohibited women from pursuing higher education.

On that note, the poems Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley wrote fascinated me. A common theme that I notice in Anne’s work is the zeal she has in wanting to end women’s submission to men because her identity as a devout Puritan conflicted with her gender identity as a woman. Although her religion urged her to only focus on her devotion to God, Anne was ready to start the conversation about things that most women weren’t supposed to discuss in colonial America, such as love and a commitment to other people than just solely God. Likewise, I was really interested in the story of Phillis Wheatley and the impact she had on the world. Her life as an African slave was uncommon and is not heard about in history when we examine the lives of African slaves from the 17^th to the 19^th century. What’s more than this is that she had her work published across Europe and North America while still being an African slave, in which her poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America” uses biblical allusions to appeal to the religious colonists in America to take action in abolishing slavery.

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