Ethnic Background Essay Example for Free

Ethnic Background Essay My name is Stephanie Flowers and until this class assignment I never thoughtfully considered what my actual ethnic background was. After looking up the meaning of my last name I found it to be of Welsh origin. This means that I could possibility trace my family roots back to Great Britain. After reading chapter one of Race and Ethnic Relations I discovered that being a part of a certain ethnic background does not mean that you have to be part of that race, but you have to practice the common cultural traditions of that subculture. So based off of my name some people might think that I was English. I grew up with a few household traditions that I consider to be a part of my ethnic background. To begin with, I would consider my family to practice Irish traditions. We always have huge St. Patrick’s Day party at my house that turns into an all-day drinking and eating celebration. I might not know all the reasons behind this celebration and what I consider a part of my family tradition, but it is still a part of my ethnic background in my opinion. Drinking is a big part of being Irish and in my family most celebrations do involve some type of alcohol. In Irish culture it is normal to introduce alcohol to children before the actual drinking age, I think this is good because we grow up with this around us and never take consumption of alcohol to extremes because it such a part of everyday life. I am would also consider myself to be of German ethnicity. My family has a good luck tradition for New Years. We eat pork roast and sauerkraut in hopes that the next year will be filled with lots of happiness and joy. I personally love this tradition and get upset when I sometimes only get to eat this meal once a year. It is one of my top five meals to eat that my grandma cooks. Being from the United States of America I do think that I have picked up so many different traditions from all of the friends that I have had throughout my life. This is why I love living in this country I get to experience so many different cultures and ethnic backgrounds. My boyfriend is of the Catholic religion, his family maintains this culture by attending mass for Christmas, Easter, and whenever they feel the need strengthen their relationship with god. This is the way that they maintain their ethnic background. They are a common group of people who believe the idea that they all share the share cultural heritage. This stems from his Irish background where Catholicism is the main religion practiced in that country. So to me this is the way to stay in touch with being from Ireland even though they now live in America. My cousin Rachael is half Mexican. Her mom was an immigrant and came to this country to start a better life. I love getting to go to their house in Texas; her mom makes the best Mexican dishes. What I have noticed from her Mexican culture and ethnicity is that food is a way of bringing the family together, it is a time of bonding in their household. I believe that by cooking traditional Mexican food it keeps her in touch with her roots and makes her feel better connected to her homeland. After doing this assignment I am very interested in doing more research on my family roots and discovering more about who and where I came from. Like it says on the Ancestry. com commercial, â€Å"you don’t have to know what you’re looking for; you just have to start looking. † So that’s what I am going to start doing. Also, I would like to conduct interviews with the elderly people in my family and possibility start filling out my family tree, which would be an easy way to connect the dots of my family history. I will still continue to maintain my Irish and German background by drinking on St. Patrick’s Day and eating pork roast and sauerkraut. I am very proud to be an American and I wish I didn’t take all of the rights that I have in this country for granite.

Sylvia Plaths Poem Daddy Essay -- Sylvia Plath Daddy Poetry Poem Essa

Sylvia Plath's Poem "Daddy" Overbearing fathers who dominant their children’s lives dispose of comfort and security and instead cause irreversible damage. Sylvia Plath writes about her own experiences dealing with her authoritarian father in â€Å"Daddy.† In this poem, Plath utilizes literary devices like allusion, child-like diction, and dualistic organization to communicate her bitterness in this theme of resentment and scorn. Plath’s usage of allusion calls the reader to bring their own knowledge to the poem. She uses this device so that the reader can recall information without Plath needing to fully state the scenario. One of the first allusions which Plath uses is in the first stanza when she writes â€Å"black shoe in which I have lived like a foot.† She alludes to the nursery rhyme of the old woman who lived in a shoe. In the end of the nursery rhyme, the old woman â€Å"whips [her children] all soundly and sends them to bed,† comparing to Plath’s own experience with an emotionally distant father. She communicates his preoccupation with discipline and neglect of care and supp...

Elements of Fiction in Dandelion Wine

Easily Mistaken Imagine, a killer is on the loose in your own town and he is known for murdering young woman in the ravine that splits the town in half. You and your friends decide to go see a movie and you know that by the time that you get out it will be dark and you’ll have to walk down the ravine to your house all alone, which earlier that day your own friend was found dead in, what do you do? This is the decision Lavinia Nebbs is faced with in the book Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.Many elements in the story create lots of suspense; three would be setting, foreshadowing and characterization. The setting played a huge role in the success of the suspense in the story. Since the ravine where the bodies were found split the town, Lavinia was forced to cross it to get home since she decided to not stay with her friends and her safety was questioned. â€Å"The ravine was deep black and black black! And the world was gone behind, the world of safe people in bed, the locked doo rs, the town, the drugstore, the theater, the lights, everything was gone† (73).The words used to describe this dark, lonely ravine makes the reader feel as if they were right there standing with Lavinia seeing, hearing and feeling everything that’s going on, along with what’s in her head. It’s scary to think of being alone with not a soul in sight and knowing that there’s possibly a killer out there just waiting. â€Å"Lavinia Nebb walked alone down the midnight street, down the late summer silence. She saw houses with dark windows and far away heard a dog barking† (72).This is also a good example of the description of the setting because the reader can tell how alone she really was do to no one else in town wanting to go out at night with the Lonely One roaming around. It sounds almost like Lavinia is in a deserted town with just her and the ravine. The way Bradbury incorporated nature into the setting also gave it a little more of a spooky feel. â€Å"The crickets were listening. The night was listening to her. For a change all of the far summer-night meadows and close summer trees were suspending motion† (75). This use of personification creates a feeling of uncertainty for the reader.The way that he gives the plants and animals human like qualities and says they are â€Å"listening† to her makes the night sound even more gloomy and eerie. The use of foreshadowing also helped to create suspense in the story. At the beginning of the story when the neighbors said â€Å"Won’t catch us out on no night like this, not with the Lonely One strangling women. Lock ourselves up in our closets with a gun† (64). It gives the reader a little bit of an idea of what might come up in the story, even though the Lonely One only usually strikes once a month and their friend Elizabeth was already found that day.Also knowing that Lavinia will be walking home alone, it causes the reader to worry if she’l l make it home alive or not. Then when they were all at the theater and the manager asks them to leave as soon as the movie was over sounded a little suspicious as well. â€Å"The police have asked us to close early tonight so everyone can be out at a decent hour† (69). This shows that even the police know that anything is possible with a murderer and they don’t just have a specific time that they can or can’t commit a murder so they want everyone in town to be safe. Yet even this doesn’t stop Lavinia from wanting to walk home alone.The ladies didn’t listen to the manager either, instead of going straight home they stopped by the drug store on the way. â€Å"Man sitting at the counter watched you walk out. Said to me ‘Who’s that? ’ Why that’s Lavinia Nebbs, prettiest maiden lady in town, I said† (69). The store manager also told Lavinia and her friends that the stranger asked where she lived and he told him where. It’s assumable that this stranger could quite possibly be the Lonely One and even with that thought in mind Lavinia still decides she’ll be okay walking alone with full knowledge that a stranger, possibly a killer, knows where she’ll be.The last element that created suspense in the story was characterization. The main character Lavinia was portrayed as a fearless, risk taker, who’s overly confident and has no common sense. She felt too safe in a town with a murderer running around and her careless actions could have cost her life. â€Å"’It’s early. Lonely One won’t be out til’ late. ’† (65). This is a quote from Lavinia herself, which alone proves her stupidity. A murderer doesn’t just have a certain time that they check to see and make sure it’s not too late or early, if they want to kill someone they’ll do it no matter the time.It wasn’t smart of her to just assume that he wouldnâ₠¬â„¢t be out early, especially if it was still dark even though it wasn’t that late in the day. â€Å"‘Lonely One won’t kill three ladies,’ said Lavinia, ‘There’s safety in numbers’† (68). She uses the saying â€Å"there’s safety in numbers† when she knows eventually she would be walking alone, therefore she completely contradicts herself. Just to be walking down a ravine alone at night takes no common sense let alone doing it when your own friend just got murdered there and a stranger asked who you are and where you live.She also puts on a fearless act when she’s around her friends but when it came down to her being alone and scared her thoughts ate away at her. â€Å"‘Oh bosh the police,’ laughed Lavinia, ‘I’m not afraid of anything’† (70). She says that she isn’t afraid but the second she’s walking alone down the ravine she catches herself almost runnin g down the steps and swears that she hears someone following her. She then even starts praying to God, and panicking, saying that she’ll never do that again if he just lets her live. Yet when she was with her friends it was as if there was nothing wrong at all.The fact that the story takes place in a town split by a ravine, the hints that the author gives, and how the main character Lavinia changes her attitude completely throughout the story created suspense in Dandelion Wine. The ravine was scary because it was so dark, long and empty, also the murders had been committed in it. The foreshadowing the author used put different thoughts in the reader’s mind of who could be the killer and if Lavinia was going to be the next victim. Also, the decisions she made by not staying with her friends and walking home alone made you wonder if she would even make it there..

Uprooting terrorism in Pakistan Essay - 563 Words

Policymaking Decision-making process in antiterrorism has gone through a long way in Pakistan. From being merely a national initiative to one that weakens bilateral and international responsibilities of a state. The definition of terrorist acts has also broadened over the years and so has the legal implements to prosecute such acts. Legally the state is well equipped to deal with the terrorism, but due to incompetency in infrastructure, resources and friction between stakeholders, it has been unsuccessful in uprooting terrorism. The major inconsistencies in Policymaking exist between the military regimes and the democratic governments. Military regimes followed a more â€Å"mono-faceted approach† that relied exclusively on the use of force.†¦show more content†¦The role of civil society and media in showing viability of anti-terrorism efforts in Pakistan has yet to be utilized to its full potential. The actions carried out by governments are often labeled as means to gratify the external powers, specifically the U.S. Thus the dilemma remains how to suffocate terrorists politically, morally, socially and legally? Role of the Urban Planner In the realm of urban planning, anti-terrorism struggles need rational prioritization. These efforts include elements of design, structural hardening, technology and operational policies, to help prevent, mitigate and facilitate a desired response in the event of a terrorism attack (Coaffee, 2003; FEMA, 2003; Kozlow and Sullivan, 2000; Nadel,2004). The analysis by which security needs are defined is referred in many sources as risk assessment. Which consist of; (1) threat analysis which defines the level of threat to a facility by evaluating the intent, motivation, and possible tactics of potential offenders;(2) asset analysis that identifies and prioritizes the asset to be protected according to its nature, value, location and how, when, and by whom it is accessed and used; and (3) vulnerability analysis which defines the weaknesses of a facility in its design, construction, operation and location (AIA, 2001). The foundation to the modern crime preventionShow MoreRelatedColonialism And Imperialism1836 Words   |  8 Pagesdivision of Indian Subcontinent by the British Empire in terms of religion in 1947 prolonged socio-political unrest between India and Pakistan and harvested war and enmity which exists till now. However, the most significant role of colonialism was to abolish the slave trade from its colonies. Even though Karl Marx (1853) criticizes the British colonialism for uprooting Indian (in his terms, ‘Hisdostan’) agriculture and manufacturing industry, yet he agreed that the colonialism has brought about ‘theRead MoreLittle America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan2054 Words   |  8 PagesZone, one of the New York Times’s 10 best books of year 2007. Interestingly the author was a guest speaker at the USAWC and presented his thoughts to the students of class of AY 14. His talk at the USAWC and relevance of situation in Afghanistan to Pakistan prompted me to select his book â€Å"Little America† for writing the critical book report. Mr. Chandrasekarans thesis is that the Afghans could have prospered in their own terms and The United States could have achieved its objectives if the United