Compare any two of these statements in relation to relevant concepts discussed so far in this class, namely "intersectionality", "cultural landscape" and "American values".
1. Captain John Smith. Poor Powhatan
had to make peace, embittered man.
Then teaching - insidious recourse -
enhanced Pocahontas and flowered of course
in marriage. John Rolfe fell in love
with her and she - in rank above
what she became - renounced her name
yet found her status not too tame.
The crested moss-rose casts a spell,
its bud of solid green, as well,
and the Old Pink Moss..." (M. Moore., "Enough", anthology, pp. 109-110)
2. "In Europe the lands are either cultivated, or locked up against the cultivator. Manufacture must therefore be resorted to of necessity not of choice, to supportthe surplus of their people. But we have an immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman. Is itbest then that all our citizens should be employed in its improvement, or that onehalf should be called off from that to exercise manufactures and handicraft artsfor the other? Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people". (T. Jefferson, 1787, anthology p. 111)
3. "Virginia's Recorder General, John Rolfe, known as Pocahontas's husband, produced Black America's birth certificate in 1619. (...)
Only slavery, only racism, only the mighty Atlantc blocing the way back home seemes to be promisde. But the community started to sing long before anyone heard that old spiritual: "We chall overcome, / we chall overcome someday."
There is no better word than we. When when it is involuntary - meaning to be Black in America is to almost neverbe treated like an individual. (Ibram X. Kendi, "A Community of Souls", anthology p. 118)
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