In the beginning of class, Mr. Lazarow talked about the community puzzle fundraiser the Interact club is doing to raise enough money to send a man to college (The Catholic University of Ghana) for another semester. Each puzzle piece is $1 and they can be purchased from Mr. Lazarow or any of the interact officers.
We then started talking about the concept of witch hunts and the other various witch hunts, besides Salem, that have occured in the past and are happening at the moment. These examples include:
-McCarthyism: during the 1950s. This involved the hunt of communists, especially in Hollywood (The Hollywood Blacklist). Arthur Miller was acquainted with many of the people whose names appeared on the Hollywood Blacklist and witnessed the ruin a hunt like this can do to someone's life. Both in Hollywood and Washington D.C. It started with McCarthy looking for people within the state department who showed communism sympathies. All of the hunts demonstrate the fact that people will do a lot, and even go to extremes, because of fear.
-French Revolution: worse than McCarthyism and much more similar to Salem, mass slaughter to those who were suspected of committing counter-revolutionary activities.
-Post 9/11 Terror Hunt: predjudices against people from the middle east or those of middle east descent. Due to their appearance, they were and are still, at times, accused of being terrorists. They are much more likely to be pulled out of a security line at an airport and checked more thoroughly.
-Japanese Internment: during WWII. People of Japanese desecent living in America were containded because they may have had Japanese sympathies.
-Kuwaiti Genocide
-Sexual orientation: during the Clinton years, accusation of homosexuality led to people being shunned or pushed to the outside
Genocides, including the Cambodian Genocide, Rwandan Genocide, and Nazi Germany, as well as the Great Purge, are considered to be racial cleansings and not really witch hunts.
Our homework was to read Joe McCarthy's speech.
We were also asked to make a list of 10 rules of what it means to be a part of this society. I wasn't really clear on this assignment so if someone could explain it better than I did, it would be appreciated.
-Julie S.
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3 comments:
The Homework assignment to make a list of the 10 things that represent being part of the MHS community. Basically this means that you list 10 things that all MHS students do/know/say/act in a certain way. The purpose of this assignment (as I understood it) was to have a class discussion relating to witch hunts and how we would identify "witches" in our school due to their abnormalities in behavior. However once we do the activity perception could change about the assignment.
-Tyler H
Were we supposed to make a list of 10 things that are characteristics of our "society" or make a list of things that could be?
-kelsey
I believe that the assignement is to make a list of what our society is suppose to be like. Whether it is or it isn't relies on personal opinion, but the point is that the items on the list are what define our norms. I think we are suppose to then utilize this list to define what acts, that may or may not oppose those on the list, lead to someone being singled out as different...
-Jen
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