The Rez

After reading Alexie's novel The Absolutely True Diary of A Part Time Indian, I realized that there are several parallels between the description of the reservation and my very own community of Beverly. These commonalities, auspiciously for me, are not as extreme or pronounced as exemplified in the novel, but are undoubtedly apparent in my life. One shared aspect is the familiarity of my neighborhood and the clique-like behavior emitted from its people. Like those that dwelled on Arnold's rez, most of the people in Beverly know each other, even to the point where some family names are common to hear from time to time. At my old school, Sutherland elementary, it was very frequent for families to have their children and the younger siblings of those youth attend the same school, creating a simulated legacy with the same linage learning in the same environment. Teachers often asked students if they were related to certain previous students and make comments such as, "I taught your brother before," or "you're just like your sister." The parents of these children often worked on the PTA and on the sports teams, so it was high improbable that a student did not know of that surname.  Speaking as an child with three step brothers much older than me who did not grow up in Beverly, I was excluded from that group of acclaimed long lasting "Sutherland" families. The density of the community does not cease at grammar school, however. Most kids that attended Sutherland or any grade school in Beverly often went to the local high schools nearby. Out of a graduating class of 70 students in 2012, approximately 25 of my former classmates went to the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences or CHAS. The majority of the rest went to Catholic high schools like Mother McAuley, Brother Rice, Marist, etc and about 12 of us attend selective enrollment high schools close to downtown, miles away from home. Those local high schools retain some of the same "legacies," even to the extent where that school might be a parent's alma matter.  Now, I am not insinuating that there is anything wrong with a legacy, not in the slightest, but what is problematic for me is how those legacies create limitations for people excluded simply because of their name and history. The children well known in the area and their parents are not very inviting to those who are "out of the loop," and often times the well known kids are friends with other well known kids and their parents frequent bars with other well known parents. My mother worked with other parents on school events and in some instances did not have her fundraising ideas fully acknowledged or credited because she simply wasn't "friends" with the other parents and, as absurd as it sounds, because she denied their requests for drinks at Cork and Kerry's or Bourbon Street. My father was treated is a similar fashion, much to his mutual apathy for them of course. As for me, I wasn't offered the same opportunities that the kids in the clique were, (especially not the same parties and events) but I believe what made people truly acknowledge me was my intelligence and desire to be an individual despite the actions of others; just being myself. To conclude this blog, I will say that I love my neighborhood, but for reasons mentioned above, I do enjoy exploring other areas of Chicago to see new things and not fall trap to the routine of knowing the same people. I want to meet other people that have different experiences than I do and have new perspectives on life so I can grow as a person instead of knowing the same people and excluding others.

Native Son: Max's speech

"When situations like these arise, instead of men feeling that they are facing other men, they feel that they are facing mountains, floods, seas; forces of nature whose size and strength focus the minds and emotions to a degree of tension unusual in the quiet of urban life"
"Let us banish from our minds the thought that this is an unfortunate victim of injustice. The very concept of injustice fests upon a premise of equal claims, and this boy here today makes no claim to you." 
"An outright lynching would be more honest than a mock trial!" 
"Injustice which lasts for three long centuries and which exists among millions of people over thousands of square miles of territory is injustice no longer; it is an accomplished fact of life."
"Did Bigger Thomas really murder?"
"The actions that resulted in the death of those two women were as instinctive ad inevitable as breathing or blinking one's eyes. It was an act of creation!"
"His very existence is a crime against the state!"

The following quotes above are excerpts of a powerful, thought provoking speech given by Bigger's defense attorney Max, as he pleads with the judge to spare Bigger's life and refrain from giving him the death penalty for the rape and murder of Mary Dalton. One of the most important components of Max's speech that the reader should realize is that Max is not suggesting that Bigger should not be punished for his actions, but that the court desperately needs to analyze the reason why Bigger performed his actions, as society plays a huge responsibility in Mary's murder via making Bigger the person that he is. Max reminds the court that Bigger and all blacks at the time inhabit a society that teaches them inferiority by limitation and oppression. The white community instills in them an intense level of pure animosity and hatred by telling them that their very existence, a factor they have no control over, is problematic and inhuman. Black people did not have the same rights as white people, the same opportunities as white people, nor the same protection under the law, simply because they are black. Max stresses that it is important to recognize that racial tension plays an enormous role in this case, and because of that, this case is not just about Bigger Thomas, but every black person in America that is faced with the same systematic corruption and alienation. Furthermore, it is this ostracization Bigger and black people face that make them lash out in defiance against the powers that be, and the sheer hatred that as manifested in Bigger simply because of who he is that has led him to murder Mary Dalton. However, the main reason why Max pleads for Bigger's life is because he believes that if they give him the death penalty, society will never address or solve the underlining problem of extreme prejudice and racial tension in America and society will never take responsibility in its role for teaching blacks the worthlessness of their lives. Yes, Bigger greatly lacked self esteem and even more so lacked any sense of value in his life. Max poses the question of "how can one expect Bigger to have respect for other human lives if he didn't have respect for his own?" especially due to the fact that society exemplifies that is existence is inauspicious and meaningless. A great example of this is how the court treats Bessie's dead body as "evidence" to only prove that Bigger is a "monster" and fails to address the loss of her life as relevant. Max challenges the court by implying that if they kill Bigger, he will never truly learn the value of life, which is essentially the purpose of lawful punishment, and that the vicious cycle of people molded by their being looked down upon as an abomination and killed by the hands of the law will never cease to exist. What I find to be extremely intriguing about Max's speech is the controversy over Bigger's crime being instinctual; State's Attorney Buckley even calls it a mere "excuse," but I fear that it's much more than that. In my eyes, Max was right about society affecting one's instincts, and one of the first things that arrived in my mind on that discussion is the 1712 Wille Lynch's pamphlet "Let's Make A Slave." Designed to alter's one's psychological state and condition a human mind to being treated atrociously, Lynch said, "When we do it with horsed we break them from one form of life to another; that is, we reduce them from their natural state in nature; whereas nature provides them with the natural capacity to take of their needs and the needs of their offspring, we break that natural string of independence from them and thereby create a dependency state so that we may be able to get from them useful production for our business and pleasure." These methods where applied by millions of slaveholders that read his works and is blatant evidence that people can be trained to act a certain way. The reader even sees early on in the text how Bigger's entire demeanor changes around whites. However, to conclude this entry, I would only like to say that the issues that Max addressed in his speech were very valid and extremely representative of unadulterated life in America in the 30s and 40s for that time.~
Alex Rogers