Community Stories

An Account of Experience with Discrimination

This story was very interesting. Primary documents give a more personal and biased perspective of a community because they shape their opinions of an area based on what has happened to them or what they have went through in that community whereas a short story or report is more general and not really personal at all. Sojourner Truth's idea of "the slaveholding spirit" in my opinion means that there is still some adjusting that has to be done in order for the blacks to get used to being freed and shake their slave mentalities. Their communities have shaped them to believe in that mentality because the community that they are used to has made them accept being talked to in the way the train drivers did and so they were made to think that its okay for them to be treated that way. 

Here is New York

This was a very good short story. I think the author starts off by defining New York by what it isn't to address the stereotypes that may be associated with New York or to change the opinions of people immediately. The author says that New York's inability to spread outward contributes to its beauty but to a traveler, this might make New York seem cramped and crowded. Some problems in NY are the hospitals and schools being overcrowded, the expressways are feverish and there is a lack of air and light. People get around and ignore these problems by getting a sense of belonging to something unique, cosmopolitan, mighty and unparalleled. Neighborhoods are cities within cities in NY. This means that each neighborhood is like its own different little area. They may be in the same city but they all function and operate so separately and differently from each other that they are almost like different places. This is just like Chicago because each area in Chicago is like a different city where you can go a couple of blocks over and feel so lost and out of place.