African
Essays

Media Coverage of the 2012 Presidential Election ONE: Introduction The diverse and sometimes ugly stories, attacks and sundry reports that have been published in print and broadcast in the media (including electronic media) thus far in the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election campaign reflect just how divided the nation is. These stories and ads in fact say as much about the sorry moral state of America – and about how out-of-control the issue of politically motivated money is – as they do about the campaign or the candidates. It is the opinion of this writer that there has rarely been a time in recent American history when conservatives and progressives have been so bitterly divided, and have attacked one another with such meanness and fierce antipathy – in particular the reference is to the conservative attacks against progressives – and never has their been an election where millions of dollars flow into campaign coffers from corporations and individuals with zero accountability as to the source. Some suggest that because President Barack Obama is an African American, those opposed to him have been particularly virulent in their attacks. Others suggest this election is really about two competing ideologies – those who are conservative (they are anti-abortion and anti-gay rights and doubt the science of global warming and evolution) versus those who are progressive (they tend to be pro-choice, support same-sex marriage and accept science as reported by bona fide empirically-driven researchers). These issues have been simmering for years and are just now coming to a head with Obama, the Black president, symbolizing for the right wing, the Tea Party, the GOP and conservative Christians (including evangelicals) all that is wrong with America. This election process is bringing bitterly opposing social and ideological divisions into the public view through the media, which itself is taking sides, as expected, but in ways far more potentially harmful to democratic ideals. This paper reviews and provides critical analysis of the media's role – and the role of money interests in the contest between Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama.

For hundreds of years, there has been a common idea that race and intelligence are statistically correlated. Even contemporary debate into this paradigm focuses on the differences in test scores when tabulated using…

Personal Narrative within a Cultural Context

Human Biological Variation: Is human behavior genetically influenced or biologically influenced?

More than half a century ago, the World Health Organization defined health as "a complete state of physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity (Ustun & Jakob 2005)." There…

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and analyze the topic of American history. Specifically, it will discuss the beginning of Freemasonry in America. Freemasonry has its roots in Europe, but historians are not…

Law enforcement officers often claim that racial disparities in rates of arrest and conviction for drug crimes merely correspond to difference in rates of criminal behavior, yet critics argue that law enforcement simply…

Mixed cultures and mixed ancestries are both a large part of the plot and the theme of Monkey Hunting. The characters of course bear the literary responsibility as to the impact of cross-cultural and mixed ancestries;…

This essay examines the film To Kill a Mockingbird in light of its rhetorical and narrative elements. In particular, two scenes of rhetoric serve to demonstrate the film's objective of revealing the underlying reasons behind bigotry as well as the difficulty of overcoming it with traditional modes of rhetoric. In the end, it is clear that Scout's personalized rhetoric is more effective than Atticus' traditional rhetoric in the face of ideologies resistant to logic and emotional appeal.

Rice is one of the most important crops grown in the world. Many, especially Asian cultures rely on a large amount of rice every day to sustain life, supplemented with vegetables and in good times some meat.