{"id":86,"date":"2019-09-04T14:10:54","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T18:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/?p=86"},"modified":"2019-09-04T14:10:54","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T18:10:54","slug":"response-1-for-sept-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/2019\/09\/04\/response-1-for-sept-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Response #1 for Sept. 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olaudah Equiano’s retelling of his life’s events is an interest account, not just because of the nature of its contents, but because of the way in which it is written. As I was reading, I was surprised by how unemotional his writing felt. Of course, there were moments when he described to us his feelings of fear and sorrow and other negative emotions, but overall, for an autobiography, it felt very polished and almost manufactured. As a reader of this piece in 2019, I found myself feeling disconcerted at how calmly Equiano comes across, and how easily he gives praise away to the people who enslaved him. In today’s society, I think it’s very commonplace for people to worry over themselves and their situation and then possibly tack on “well, it could be worse,” but in the case of Equiano, who saw horrible things very frequently, he definitely focuses on that “it could be worse” mentality. He accepts his position in life because he knows first hand that his life could be far worse off. Towards the end of his writing, he does talk about his excitement at finally being free, and to me it almost feels like it’s a freedom from that “it could be worse” mentality. After receiving his freedom, he can safely say, “it\u00a0was<\/em> worse.”<\/p>\n

The part of Murray’s work which really spoke to me was, “Are we deficient in reason? We can only reason from what know, and if an opportunity of acquiring knowledge hath been denied us, the inferiority of our sex cannot fairly be deduced from thence.” This speaks to me, because I think it’s so relevant today. Not specifically about a disparity between men and women, but because of the way we talk about “equality” in America. People like to think that everyone in America is equal because they\u00a0can,\u00a0<\/em>theoretically, do whatever they want, just like everyone else and that, therefore, makes them equal. However, in our country there is a lack of equal\u00a0opportunity,\u00a0<\/em>which does not allow people to behave in equal ways with others. People say that if poor people want to have money and food and shelter, they should get a job and work harder. But those same people may have been born into a neighborhood which has a poor education system. So they were unable to go to college and receive the education necessary for a better paying job. I just think that Murray really touches on something very key. People do not control their circumstances. Her point is that it’s not women’s fault that they were born women and therefore weren’t educated in the same way their male peers were. Their lack of knowledge or understanding does not come inherently, it’s a lack of access to the resources used to acquire those skills. I believe we have similar issues today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Olaudah Equiano’s retelling of his life’s events is an interest account, not just because of the nature of its contents, but because of the way…<\/p>\n

Continue readingResponse #1 for Sept. 5<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3658,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3658"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}