The Largest Animal for the Largest Problem

A lot of times in a conversation or debate, there is a really awkward problem that nobody wants to bring up because they do not want to be the one who announces the issue. Everybody in the room knows that there is something wrong, but nobody decides to bring it up. The saying for this is commonly known as “the elephant for the room” because the elephant is such a large animal and it so not usual to see it in an ordinary room, yet nobody comments on why it is there. In the United States of America, a classic way of seeing how slavery was the elephant in the room was when there was the huge debate between the North and South. Slavery was not officially abolished, and still legal in some ‘slave states’ which were in Southern America. In Northern America, there were ‘free states’ where slaves could become free. This begs the question, “How do we know the debate over slavery was the "elephant in the room" for American politics in the early 19th century?” As America grew the issue became drastic because nobody was sure of what to do with the territories that were becoming more populated. Many issues ended up having answers to them, but there was always a tension between the North and South, and it seemed almost inevitable that the civil war was going to happen.

In America, the first thing that citizens decided to do what the come up with a compromise to please both the Southern and Northern states. The compromise was named the Missouri Compromise, and it allowed Missouri to become a slave state, but nothing about the Missouri line could ever become a slave state. The reason Missouri became a slave state it because Maine wanted to enter the Union as a free state. When Missouri entered as a slave state, it allowed the balance of slave states and north states to become equal, which would allow fair vote in legislature. This worked for a little bit, but eventually California wanted to enter as a free state, which would offset the balance of free and slave states. Clearly, there was an obvious problem and one man, Henry Clay, thought he’d be able to fix it with a five part plan named the compromise of 1850. This plan would take away the Missouri Compromise, and it tried to make a balance between the North and South while pleasing everybody. Clay said that California will enter as a free state, and Texas will become a slave state and receive ten million dollars to help pay off debt. Also, Washington D.C would abolish slavery, and when other territories such as Utah, and Nevada become more populated, they will decide on what to do with them. This holds out yet another inevitable factor because once the areas become more populated, it will only cause more issues. The plans that were being made were only temporary, and nobody seemed to point it out.

Other issues that happened that made Slavery the elephant in the room were the Bleeding Kansas act and the Kansas Nebraska Act. Both of these things pushed people to their limits and made them realize that pushing this situation out any further was only going to cause more trouble. The Nebraska Kansas Act happened in 1854, and ultimately abolished the Missouri Compromise, which allowed Nebraska and Kansas to be on its own in the question of slavery. This act pleases southerns because now they have an opportunity to open up slavery more across America. However it also helped Chicago become very wealthy, making it part of transportation and commerce. This made another major city, and made the start to where north transcontinental railroad begins, allowing Northerns to make it possible to transport anti slave settlers into the north. The Bleeding Kansas Act of 1856 created a huge dilemma that pushed people to their limits. Many people such as John Brown, and senator of Massachusetts Charles Sumner were apart of this situation. John Brown and five other proslavery advocates raided antislavery houses and killed the men right in front of their families. Obviously this creates explosion between the North and the South, and many people had their own opinions on what should be done. The act that John Brown and his fellow advocates did began many more terrorizing acts in Kansas causing many deaths and bloody battles. Also,  Charles Sumner gave a speech about how the southerns forced slavery upon Kansas, which makes the South look very bad. All these actions eventually led up to the Civil War, and nobody ever thought of trying to stop it before it became too late.

All these actions that took place eventually led to a bloody, sad, civil war. Nobody throughout the state could agree on what to do with all the new territories and whether or not they should have became slave states or free states. The actions and consequences may have been preventable, but since nobody decided to step up, everyone let slavery act as the elephant in the room.

These two images here show the timeline that was created in class.  This was the project we did to help us understand the events leading up to the civil war more clearly, and it shows all up them by date with a description and image. 

Degrading Human Dignity

The United States of America stands for many great things and has many powerful symbols. One of the most important symbols our country represents is freedom. Every man and woman has the right to be free, and all humans should be treated the same, no matter what ethnicity or race. However, in the early 19th century, it was not always like this, and the states were put to the test when slavery was entrenched in economic society. Many Americans held slaves and nobody ever thought it was a bad thing. Slavery is degrading and puts many men and women in terrible conditions. Slavery was brought into America for many reasons, and it was not likely to change for a long time. Many slaves who were brought over from Africa were economical benefits for the slave owners. They were cheap labor, and did a lot of hard work. After slaves were examined, they were arranged to be sold. Someone would purchase the slave and keep him or her for their own benefits. Society craved slavery for many years during the early 19th century, and if something bad were to happen to a slave, it would be a big financial hit to the owner. One example is Prince Rahman, who was the son of the King of Futa Jallon. His owner, Thomas Foster, hated to see Prince Rahman run away because it was such a financial hit for him. This shows that slavery was a big deal at this time and was most likely not going to change for a while. Another thing that happened with Prince Rahman, and many other slaves, was taking leadership roles. Many of these slaves would train others and oversee them, which helped the owners out a lot. All these things that came from slavery were reasons as to why it became entrenched in society during the early 19th century.

Although slavery seemed like a good thing in the eyes of the owners, it was still a terrible thing to do to humans. All humans deserve rights and should be treated equally. Slaves would be beaten and treated poorly if work was not done to the owners demand. It is a degrading thing for any human, and since it was based off of race it was even more degrading for the African men who were enslaved. Africans would be shipped in a slave ship and put below deck, where many people were crammed and nobody noticed if someone died. The African men would be put to work and all the white men would torment them. This is degrading towards the Africans because it shows white men are more powerful than colored men, and it is just because of skin color. The African men are just as much humans as the white men are, so there should be no reason as to why the white men had more power of the people who they enslaved. Clearly, this was not a fair and something had to be done. However slavery lasted many years until is was abolished, and throughout the entire time it was degrading and affected human dignity the whole time.

A system of slavery based on race ignores many aspects of how life should be. All hard work done on the plantations and fields was done by the slaves, no matter how skilled they were at it. If one was not skilled at the job and did not do it well enough, they were most likely beaten. This was not fair and showed that the owners did not care about their slaves at all. If a white man was more skilled than a slave, he would still make the slave do the work. One thing that was interesting was that slave owners claimed that the slaves would rather be enslaved, than be free. Nothing can be assumed though because most, if not all men, would rather be free to live their own lives than having to be told what to do all the time. A system of slavery based on race effects human dignity in the eyes off the country as a whole, and the men and women who are being enslaved. There is a lot of hypocrisy involved in a situation like this because America claims to be a free country, yet they enslave so many men. This is degrading towards the men being enslaved and country because it is full of hypocritical people.

This Image here is the cover of the PBS film, "Prince Among Slaves" which is a documentary about Prince Rahman and his voyage to America as a slave. The video shows in great detail about how Prince Rahman became a slave, and then eventually went on to bigger and better things later on in his life. 

Fianl Reflection

I started by coming up with ways to change the game from its original start. This way it would give me a brainstorm and list of ideas that would act like a draft. Next, I dove right into the project and began putting some of my ideas on the code. Everything came along nicely for the most part,but it took some trial and error to figure out how to change the background after a score was reached. I realized I was using a code similar to the correct one, but it was incorrect so I had to change it in order to get it to work. I tested the game one little part at a time rather the whole thing at the end. I learned how to do this when I watched the video on broadcasting because the guy doing it showed us that if you check all your work at the end, and something did not work...then you would have to go back and fix everything leading up to that point. In the end everything seemed to work in my test run and I was able to post it successfully.

Final Project

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/23554489/ The link posted above is for my final project for Scratch in Computer Applications.

Project Overvierw

The purpose of the game I am making for my final project is to try and get the ghost to eat the fish without getting intro trouble with the shark and orange. The orange will make you lose points and so will the shark, and to get to new levels you need to get higher scores.When the points reach specific amount,the level will go up and the background will change. I had some trouble figuring out why I could not get the level to change, so I still need to find a way. It seems that the code is not going through but I put a code using the "if and then" block to say, if the score reache3s a certain limit, then change the background.It did not work,so hopefully I can figure out how to get the process to work.

Reflection De-bug it

The most challenging one in my opinion was the third one because there was a lot of broadcasting that you had to do, which can get confusing. Also, a lot of things that I did on that had trial and error processes that did not always work. The easiest one was the one where we had to change the dinosaur because it was the same process that worked for each background. One of the strategies I used was trial and error because it would get me to an answer pretty quickly and I could see the progress I made, which was helpful.

De-Bug it 2.5

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/23508210/