The Song of Achilles, created and written by Madeline Miller, tells the story of Achilles from the perspective of his lover and best friend, Patroclus. This story is a spin off Homer’s Iliad, and depicts a beautiful relationship amidst Achilles’ growth, training, and participation in the Trojan War. Patroclus is banished from his home country as a child and is sent to live in Phthia with Achilles, who is a god-born prince destined to be an unrivaled soldier but die in the Trojan War. Amidst this fate, he trains constantly to maintain his powerful image and attempt to overcome this destiny. Throughout this journey, he and Patroclus begin a beautiful friendship where Patroclus sees through his external cold and rugged exterior and begins to understand him deeply. Achilles is touched by Patroclus’s kindness and the two form an inseparable loving relationship up until his untimely and imminent death at war.
An overarching theme in this story is Achilles’ external strength, yet internal soft and loving characteristics from his childhood. His destiny to kill is instilled in him from birth, yet he took some time to fully grow into this position expected by him. A god claimed that “men will hear of (his) skill, and they will wish for (him) to fight their wars” (Miller, 85). At the time, Achilles’ answer rendered him incredibly unsure of his gift and where he felt his place was in history. Achilles embodies this image and gift when he agreed to fight Troy in the Trojan War, and brings Patroclus along with him. War culture ultimately engulfs Achilles, and Patroclus uses his deep understanding of the warrior to communicate how much Achilles is changed by the thrill of killing. Ultimately, his relationship with Patroclus is described as the only thing that ties him to his human kindness and his own childhood identity. Though I had read this story prior to this course, the recent reflection reminded me of Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Both Achilles and Okonkwo were driven to uphold an external identity supported by violence and it ended up ostracising both individuals.
I think Miller’s incorporation of Patroclus and Achilles’ relationship challenged both societal norms of heterosexual relationships in popular pieces of work, and Achilles’s identity with his power. Most know of Achilles as this harsh, brutal warrior with little compassion for others, yet he allowed his immense love for Patroclus to always break him out of his warrior exterior.
Sources:
Miller, M. (2011). The Song of Achilles. Bloomsbury Publishing
Hey everyone my name is Abbi and welcome to our podcast, Injustices To Be Heard. Our goal here is really to share different stories on current systemic injustices that are happening in America that we kind of all collectively feel like need to be heard by a bigger audience, and for todays episode we have actually decided that we are going to split it up into 3 different segments. Each of us are going to take on one of the segments and they’re going to individually pertain to 3 different injustices that each of us want to share with you guys.
So, for today I’ve actually decided that I really want to focus on injustices against minority groups. This is something that we all know is most definitely one of the boldest and biggest blemishes on America’s rather strong reputation and systemic racism is unfortunately what stands out to be the most prominent of many issues that are currently happening in america. So many African American individuals are being discriminated against and racially profiled and it’s definitely something that we need to collectively talk about and recently in Newport a landlord by the name of David Merrymen has really hit the spotlight over racially profiling most of his clients and the situation got so bad and out of control that a client decided to sue him for 8 million dollars. This particular lawsuit really caught the eye of many media houses and social activists just for the embodiment that this entire situation has on America’s systemic racism issue. After hearing about this I just feel like everyone has the right to live in a secure and happy environment without the risk of harassment or discrimination from their homeowner.
I think is important to also talk about housing discrimination when we’re on the topic of homeowners and something that I actually found out is that currently the property difference between black and white families is still jsut as big as it was a century ago and when we say that sentence out loud and put it into perspective its actually crazy. Almost 74% of white families currently in america possess their residencies while only 44% of black families do, which is something that we found out from a recent zillow group study. This massively undermines the hurdles that people of color and immigrants are forced to clear to have good residencies in America. Personally, I really feel like America needs to gradually aim to desegregate home and eradicate such racially motivated housing discrimination cases. I hope that this first segment was interesting for you guys, I’m actually going to hand it over to Maggie whos our next host and she’s gonna be talking about some interesting stuff on minority representation in our government systems and that’s going to be super interesting and cool to hear so stay tuned, and i’m actually going to pass the mic over to her now!
Maggie:
Thanks, Abbi! Just to introduce myself, my name is Maggie and Abbi gave a great introduction to systemic injustices against minority groups as a whole, and also really honed in on the housing differences between black and white americans. Buying a house can look completely different between these two groups. However I want to take some time to focus on the lack of representation of minorities in congress and then what impact that can have on various communities.
Historic trends have had non-hispanic white Americans representing an incredibly diverse nation but without the proper representation of other races and ethnicities that also live in the United States. I wanted to start by throwing out some statistics, so 77% of the voting members in congress are white, but white Americans make up only 60% of the whole population of the United States. Over the years these ratios have definitely improved, for example black individuals make up around 13% of the US population and that matches their percentage of representation in congress, close enough. Hispanic and asian Americans, however, they really don’t have the same ratio of congress representation to percent of the population. So, overall, this statistic shows that there is definitely still some work to be done to help these other communities and other minorities have a larger voice in their government systems to then impact the policies that are made.
Currently, our government is proud to have the most diverse congress yet in our nation’s history. And this is great progress from where we started, but I think the celebration should be saved until everyone has adequate representation in the government. It’s important to take a deeper look into those statistics as well. Most of this diversity is coming from our democratic representatives, so this is implying that the large scale representation is becoming more present, but we have to ask ourselves if the minority
groups in republican states are also feeling as heard?
This can definitely be tied into our discussions about Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak”. I think they most definitely can speak, they have been speaking, and should be able to speak even way louder than they already do. But, our government makes it incredibly difficult when people tend to vote for who is “familiar”. Unfortunately, the ones that are familiar are the older white individuals because they have had power in congress for decades. This then creates a cycle that is incredibly difficult to break, where familiar white individuals are being reelected to make decisions for everyone, and can shape what kinds of policies are enacted and can make really long lasting impacts. Many controversial topics in America, such as gun violence or abortion, for example, can negatively impact these minority groups more so than white individuals. Just to touch on this lightly, access to abortion is decreasing drastically and minority women make up the majority of women receiving abortionsas a whole. If access to safe abortions continues to decline like this, the women primarily affected will be the minority women. And I would like to assume that If there were greater representation of these minorities in congress, or in the government as a whole, combined with having more women in congress, the abortion decision could be determined by the women who would be receiving them, in support of all the women across the country. So, I hope you enjoyed that part of the segment, I’m going to pass the mic over to Akhil, who is our next host, and he will continue to talk about systemic injustices that were brought to light during Hurricane Ida. So, I’m going to pass the mic over to him now.
Akhil:
Thanks Maggie! Thinking about Louisiana I think about the rich culture and some of the best food in the country. Or maybe you’re aware of the New Orlean Saints or the Pelicans. Regardless of what you associate Louisiana with it’s one of the best cities to visit. But there’s been something even greater that Louisiana has been in the news for in the last few months. Although Louisiana endures some of the worst weather during hurricane season this year they took another hit with Hurricane Ida. It is sad to see many lives lost and communities completely uprooted. But coinciding with the theme today, in what should be an equal battle for all isn’t the case. Due to years of systemic racism, infrastructure built around the state is uneven in quality and abundance. For example, black communities don’t have the same resources available compared to those of the wealthy, white neighborhoods. This is due to the direct failure of political and corporate leaders not building adequate infrastructure for black communities and people of a minority.
I believe that hurricane Ida was a blessing in disguise in a sense. Due to this incident, it brought out an ongoing problem in our country; years of inconsistent development by our government to minority communities. This is a clear issue risen fromsystemic racism/injustice. Seeing as the problem is embedded in our government system it can only be changed at a high level. This was also clearly seen in Hurricane Katrina as most white families were able to recover at an alarmingly fast rate and the black community was blatantly neglected. I believe that now the black community has a stronger voice than it had 16 years ago. Even this may not be enough to see an immediate change. The problem is deeply rooted in our government as politicians try to convince us that racism is the result of individual behavior, rather than policies, but in reality, several of these policies are designed to maintain white supremacy and privilege.
Additionally, climate disasters themselves aren’t just the product of misfortune. It is a derivation of poverty and corporate powers abusing the influence they have in politics causing politicians to cut off resources from communities from groups that need them. Corporations that have the means to ensure housing and substantial recovery for survivors of disaster but choose to do nothing are attacking Black communities, no matter what their slick advertisements featuring Black people may say. To understand the impact of climate change and refusing to implement legislative regulations to halt its impact is another form of attack on Black communities.
Last year, corporations of all kinds publicly claimed to care about racial justice. But the fact is, moments like these let us know which corporations are actually willing to put their money where their values are. Energy providers like Entergy and hospitality companies like Hyatt have an opportunity to uphold their commitments to justice and directly help those displaced in Louisiana. If they claim to care about Black lives, they, too, must support Black livelihood and wellbeing.
To this day we haven’t seen enough change in how the black community gets treated. And this isn’t just at a community level but rather at the government level. They allow builders to create low-quality homes for black people in order to return higher profits. This form of systemic racism becomes amplified when these communities are in need of help. To combat this, we need to acknowledge how systemic racism has affected the nation and not be blind to small gestures that show it. Our country has seen the effect of how natural disasters and COVID has affected communities that don’t have proper infrastructure due to exploitation. It shouldn’t take another hurricane or global pandemic to bring out the problems our government is trying to turn a blind eye to.
Thanks for tuning into Injustices to be Heard! And until next week be proactive in your community and let your voice be heard!
Sources:
Schaeffer, K. (2021, January 28). Racial, ethnic diversity increases yet again with the 117th congress. Pew Research Center. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/28/racial-ethnic-diversity-increases-yet-again-with-the-117th-congress/.
Politics play a major role in the everyday life of an individual in the United States whether someone is involved in politics or not. The basis of our government prides itself in representation of the people, however our incredibly diverse culture has never had sufficient representation in congress. Specifically, black people in America have not had sufficient representation in Congress, making up only 12.5% in the House of Representatives, and 3% in the Senate. African Americans make up 13% total in the U.S, so at a basic level these statistics seem accurate, to some degree. However, this data seems better only when looking from an outsider’s perspective. Despite the increase in minorities in the country, the representation in Congress does not reflect that. First and foremost, this country prides itself in believing it has a congress to represent all of the people it governs over. While this shows that we are making progress as a system, it also means that this is the first time that old white individuals are not making all of the decisions for an entire, incredibly diverse, country. This ties into Spivak’s question of whether the Subaltern can speak or not. By having a system of representation that typically only directly represents older white individuals, Spivak would determine that minorities are, in a way, unable to speak. 79% of Congress is white, while only 60.4% of Americans are white. This is creating incredible bias in the types of decisions that are made, and implying that the opinion of minorities is not important enough to be represented in congress to then get a voice. If speaking as a priority for this government, it would be a requirement for minorities in America to have a voice large enough to make political decisions for the future of this country. Additionally, states with a Republican majority tend to have a lesser chance of receiving such diversity due to historical voting habits. Additionally, when states tend to vote along party lines, change on a large scale becomes increasingly difficult. The lack of political diversity in the government can strongly influence the policies that are enacted, and what ethnic groups may be more or less affected by them. Therefore, many of the systemic racism that is present in this country remains unchangeable due to the lack of representation of minorities that are continuously oppressed. This then creates a cycle that is incredibly difficult to break, where more white Americans in Congress are biased to stand by policies that may negatively influence the non-white community more so than white Americans.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was written with courage from a small Birmingham prison cell. At the time of the letter, he had most recently been arrested for breaking an Alabama law that prevented mass gatherings and demonstrations. White clergymen had made a comment sharing their opinion of MLK’s nonviolent protest methods, calling them “unwise and untimely” (King, 1). His response is eloquently written, with most of his arguments all pointing towards the fact that justice and equality is required immediately, and non violence is the only way. King, in a backhanded apology, states that it is unfortunate for the peaceful demonstrations to be occurring, however “it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the N*gro community with no other alternative” (King, 1).
One example of injustice he references multiple times is the topic of police brutality. King claims that the “ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country” (King, 1). Racially biased police brutality in the United States has continued for decades, resulting in black people being 3x more likely to be killed by police (Mapping Police Violence). In 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement was founded in response to 17 year old Trayvon Martin’s murderer being declared innocent. BLM protests have since occurred across the country in support of other innocent black individuals being killed by police, such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
These recent non violent protests and gatherings unfortunately brought the same type of police response that Martin Luther King Jr. was describing from 1963. In response to people around him telling him to wait his turn for justice, he claims how difficult it is to do so when “you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity” (King, 2). Similarly, the protests in response to George Floyd’s murder brought brutal force from police which included military grade protective gear, rubber bullets and tear gas into crowds of protestors. These “control” tactics hospitalized some, and injured many. Contrastingly, these same police organizations chose to take selfies with the individuals at the January 6 capitol raid. The differences are jarring.
It should speak volumes about how much reform is necessary when Martin Luther King’s letters from the 60’s are still relevant to today’s police responses. As time progresses, I can only hope that police departments begin to create change from the inside and protect their entire community, not only those with white skin.
Sources:
“BLM Demands.” Black Lives Matter, 12 Feb. 2021, blacklivesmatter.com/blm-demands/.
