Author: m.purisic

Introduction

• Introduce West Side Story
• State argument (“West Side Story brings awareness to the reality of the cultural and racial differences that prevented an easy adjustment for the Puerto Ricans that migrated to the mainland in the 1950’s.”)

Paragraph 1

• Provide a summary of the movie and its historical context that supports my argument
• Introduce one New York Times article (Big Issues Cited On Puerto Ricans, Jan 17,1960) and relate it back to the claim

Paragraph 2

• This paragraph will be specifically regarding that gang activity that was present in New York and how these gangs were organized
• Introduce another New York Times article (Few Gang Battles Laid to Race Bias, August 19, 1956)
• Analyze a specific scene in West Side Story and connect that back to the article

Paragraph 3

• Introduce and quote from my secondary source (Social Mobility of Puerto Ricans: Education, Occupation, and Income Among Children of Migrants, New York, 1950-1960)
• Relate that quote back to the movie and discuss the ideas about race and immigration in New York during that time period involving Puerto Ricans

Conclusion

• Reintroduce my main argument
• Summarize how the movie directly relates to my argument and how people can use this movie to learn about the historical context of that time period

Terry J. Rosenberg, and Robert W. Lake. “Toward a Revised Model of Residential Segregation and Succession: Puerto Ricans in New York, 1960-1970.” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 81, no. 5, 1976, pp. 1142–1150. www.jstor.org/stable/2777559.

Kantrowitz, Nathan. “Social Mobility of Puerto Ricans: Education, Occupation, and Income Changes among Children of Migrants, New York, 1950-1960.” The International Migration Review, vol. 2, no. 2, 1968, pp. 53–72. www.jstor.org/stable/3092041.

Carol Oja, “West Side Story and The Music Man: Whiteness, Immigration, and Race in the US during the late 1950s.” Studies in Musical Theater 3,1 (2009)

Briggs, Laura. Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science and US Imperialism in Puerto Rico

First two can be found on the Newman Library databases and the last two are on the list of recommended readings

Option 1- West Side Story

West Side Story is a musical that incorporates many themes in it; one of them being race. The musical is about two street gangs, Jets and Sharks, that have a hatred for each other. The Jets are white and the Sharks are Puerto Rican. The story takes place in New York in the mid 1900’s.
In one particular scene, both gangs are at a dance. The whites stay on their own side of the room and the Puerto Ricans stay on the other side of the room. They don’t care to mingle with each other. The Jets keep their women close to them. The sheriff even tries to play a game that would force the two groups to interact and confront one another. This doesn’t end up working. Instead, they end up having a dance battle, each group trying to outdo the other. The Jets are way too stubborn and there is an obvious tension with the Sharks. They believe the Puerto Ricans are the enemy and they will only change and damage to the American ways and culture.
This scene is related to L. Briggs’ “Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and US Imperialism in Puerto Rico” because he talks about this social and cultural difference between the two groups. Many argue that Puerto Ricans that have migrated from Puerto Rico to the mainland aren’t even immigrants because it is a part of the US. Others would disagree completely. That is where this hatred came from essentially. Puerto Ricans were turned to racialized minorities in the mainland and they were treated just as that. They were looked upon as having bad families and they weren’t given real jobs.

The Brown reading was a very interesting one. It focused on the concepts of authority, applying fear, and rituals. In this time period in Jamaica, the slaves were killing themselves more and more often because they thought death was better than being a slave, as well as their belief of reincarnation in their hometown with their youth renewed. To prevent slaves from killing themselves, slave owners would fix the heads of dead slaves onto poles and prove to the other slaves that this belief of reincarnation was false. “How is he in his homeland when his head is still right here with us?”, the slave owners would ask the slaves. This was their way to manipulate the slaves and it did work for a while.
Slaves soon enough developed their own rituals and cultures and beliefs about the afterlife, and they would gather together and talk about it. They had magical practices, such as obeah. Obeah men were able to treat disease or manipulate human behavior. The white men feared that this practice could inevitably result in the slaves revolting and directing political action.
This article relates to the African Burial Ground exhibit because the exhibit was about the Africans that came together to talk about cultural rituals and their beliefs. The colonial law banned African funerals during this time period, but they would still find a way to get together and bury their dead respectfully within their culture.
In the outside portion of the exhibit, there was something called the Circle of the Diaspora, which had symbols engraved in the wall. These symbols were from the different African cultures, which goes to show that they were able to establish their own culture and practices while being enslaved.

“It is not the fear and equity of the law that forbids the slave from stabbing his master, it is the consciousness of absolute power that he has over his person. Remove this bit, he will dare everything.” (page 137)

I found this quote very interesting because the author is basically saying that the slaves are not afraid of the consequences that come from the law of the land. They do have extreme resentment and hate towards their masters, but they wouldn’t kill them. Instead, he says that the thing that forbids them from killing their masters is the awareness of this absolute power that they hold. If you remove that awareness, they will be willing to risk everything for vengeance.

The author continues to talk about how during the 18th century in Jamaica, everyone lived in fear. Plantation owners had great economic growth with the help of their angered slaves. The ratio between slaves and Europeans was 9 to 1, and Maroon attacks were now common.

This relates to the text as a whole because the author continues throughout the rest of the chapter talking about the this fear instilled in the Europeans in Jamaica. He talks about the many slave revolts that have occurred and how it became a common thing. Because of this, they slowly gave the slaves some rights, such as to move around, carry guns, and consume alcohol.

1. Why did this consciousness of absolute power overpower the laws?
2. Why were slaves given these freedoms that violated the safety of the white men?

“These men were among the most privileged slaves, enjoying significant material advantages and considerable autonomy in their personal lives and generally protected from the harsher features of slave life” (page16, paragraph 1)

I found this line from the text to be interesting because it surprised me when I was reading it. The revolt was bloodless, rather they focused on destroying property that belonged to the white. The part that surprised me and the Jamaican planters and British policymakers as well was the fact that the leaders of the rebellion were slaves who had it the best, compared to other slaves. They weren’t living in harsh conditions and had many advantages over the rest of the slaves that lived in much worse conditions. Two of the leaders, “Daddy” Sam Sharp and George Taylor, were given the freedom to travel among estates. They were leaders in the Baptist church and “Doctor-men”. Robert Garden, another leader, even admitted that he was treated very well by his master and said “…our skins would be found to be as smooth as any white man’s”.

This line is important to the text as a whole because it gives you a sense of what is going on and who is in charge of it. It is quite unexpected that the most privileged slaves would be the ones to be rebelling in Jamaica. The author later in the text talks about the inspiration behind the rebellion. Those slaves were literate, and they got a hold of some newspapers talking about the abolishing of slavery in England from the British government. This angered these privileged slaves and that was the reason for the revolt.

1. Why did the privileged slaves lead the rebellion, as opposed to the slaves that lived under harsher conditions?

2. Why did the newspaper accounts of the abolitionist movement in England anger the slaves?

After reading both articles, I can agree with Colin Dayan’s statement. During this time in the Atlantic world, masters had complete control of everything involving their slaves, and this quality was a very harsh and inhumane one.

In the Dred Scott Decision (1857), Scott’s master, Emerson, took Scott to Illinois, a free territory. Emerson claims that Scott was not made free when he stepped foot in Illinois because that was Emerson’s decision whether he wanted to free Scott or not. This power goes against policies and the general government, but it is overruled because Scott is a slave and is considered property, rather than a human being.

In Frederick Douglass’ Narrative, he claims that he did not know his age. His master tried keeping Douglass as ignorant as possible by not sharing this type of information with him. He was also not allowed to see his sick mother or attend her burial.

Douglass talks about his master, Captain Anthony, who he describes as “not a humane slaveholder”. He took pleasure in whipping his slaves for absolutely no reason. Douglass describes an incident when Anthony tied up his aunt and whipped her back until she was covered in blood. He showed absolutely no emotion or remorse, and as she kept yelling, he whipped her even harder.

This harsh punishment was common and normal to the masters. They had complete dominance and power with the slaves. Dayan’s argument is supported by these two texts, as Scott and Douglass are both victims of this “absolute dominion of the master”.

“They almost seem to believe that their status has not changed if they do not have one more day per week” (Plantation Rule of Etienne Ploverel, page 140)

This sentence in the article was interesting to me because it is Ploverel’s interpretation of the former slaves’ thoughts on their freedom. He is implying that the former slaves are unappreciative of this freedom they have finally received and that they are asking for too much at this point. According to Ploverel, they do not consider themselves free if they do not get Saturday’s off from work. He criticizes them of being lazy and he starts talking about how they do not realize that if they take this extra day off, they are cutting back on one-sixth of the year’s work, which ultimately doesn’t benefit them or the landowners. He gives them exact calculations of how much money they’d be losing out on if they took an extra day off. He continues by letting them know that taking a day off is their choice; they are now completely free, but he does bring up the fact that they have to eat, sleep, and provide for their family, which requires working and earning money.
This sentence in the article relates to the text as a whole because Ploverel is arguing his plantation policies directly to the field workers in a way where the former slaves cannot take advantage of their citizenship and new freedom.

“I then was a little revived, and thought, if it were no worse than working, my situation was not so desperate: but still I feared I should be put to death, the white people looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage of a manner; for I had never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruelty; and thus not only shewn towards us blacks, but also to some of the white themselves” (page 56-57)

I found this line intriguing because the narrator is expressing how shocked he was to find that the white men on the slave ships were as brutal and cruel as they were towards the prisoners. He expresses that he had thoughts of attempting to jump over the side but feared he might be put to death. He witnessed Africans being whipped for hours for not eating, and therefore could not imagine what the consequence would be for trying to escape. The narrator mentions how he portrayed the acts of the white men to be “so savage of a manner” because of how the prisoners were put down under the decks where the stench was unbearable and how they cut the prisoners when they misbehaved. The narrator continues to mention how he considered these acts to be brutal cruelty and surprisingly, how they performed these brutal acts towards some of the white men as well. For example, “One white man…. flogged so unmercifully with a large role near the foremast, that he died in consequence of it.” (page 57). He continues to talk about how he feared this kind of treatment, but at the same time, expected it.

This line is relevant in regards to the whole text because it summarizes how the prisoners were treated on the slave ship on their way to Barbados, which was very different than the way they were treated by their slave masters in Africa. The white men were much more harsh and cruel and this experience foreshadowed what was to come for the narrator under the ruling of a white slave master.