Individual and Group Test of Intelligence

Individual vs group test Individual intelligence tests * There are two major types of intelligence test, those administered to individuals and thsoe administered to groups. * The two main individual intelligence tests are the: Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test (see Murphy & Davidshofer, 2001, Chap. 13) Wechsler tests, i. e. WISC for children and WAIS for adults (see Murphy & Davidshofer, 2001, Chap. 13) * These are individual intelligence tests which require one-on-one consultation with the child.The tests involve various verbal and non-verbal subtests which can be combined to give an overall IQ, but which also provide valuable separate subtest scores and measures based on the behavioural responses of the child to the test items. * Some of the content of these tests is clearly culture-loaded, hence there is the:Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children – a more recent test which attempts to minimize cultural bias.The test also attempts to separate crystallised and fluid intellige nce. Group intelligence tests * Group-administered intelligence tests involve a series of different problems and are generally used in mass testing situations such as the military and schools. * Examples of group tests are: Multidimensional Aptitude Battery, The Cognitive Abilities test, Scholastic Assessment Tests * There has been a trend towards the use of multiple choice items.Many of theses tests have separately timed sub-tests. A major distinction made between types of items is verbal and non-verbal. In recent years there has been a trend away from verbal and mathematical items towards non-verbal represented problems in pictures. * Part of the reason for shifting away from verbal-based tests, in particular, is the issue of culture-loading. Advantages of group tests: * can be administered to very large numbers simultaneously * simplified examiner role scoring typically more objective * large, representative samples often used leading to better established norms Disadvantages of group tests: * examiner has less opportunity to establish rapport, obtain cooperation, and maintain interest * not readily detected if examinee tired, anxious, unwell * evidence that emotionally disturbed children do better on individual than group tests * examinee’s responses more restricted normally an individual is tested on all items in a group test and may become boredom over easy items and frustrated or anxious over difficult items * Individual tests typically provide for the examiner to choose items based on the test takers prior responses – moving onto quite difficult items or back to easier items. So individual tests offer more flexibility.

Review of related studies on library service in the Philippines Essay

Library has increased with the complexity of our society. The rapid growth of technology has meant that many gadgets and equipment have appeared and continuous progress of the world the help of the Science and Technology. Library is considered the heart of the school it is expected to be taken care of for its normal functioning day by day. Many students, workers, and researchers need varies value information that are provided by the library and giving them important data that they need. At the same time libraries are progressing as the whole world progress. The world we live it seems so easier now because of the fast growing high technology that were given by the inventors. In the same phase of this statement, we have to aim the perception of the students in a particular library, are they satisfied regarding the services provided by the library, and are they comfortable. Library is derived from the French word â€Å"librairie† in Latin â€Å"liber† means book. It is an organized collection of information resources made accessible to a defined community for reference. It provides physical or digital access to material, and may be a physical building or room, or a virtual space, or both. A library’s collection can include books, periodicals, newspapers, manuscripts, films, maps, prints, documents, microforms, CDs, cassettes, video tapes, DVDs, e-books, audio books, database, and other formats. A library is organized for use and maintained by a public body, an institution, a corporation, or a private individual. Public and institutional collections and services may be intended for use by people who chose not to — or cannot afford to — purchase an extensive collection themselves, who need material no individual can reasonably be expected to have, or who require professional assistance with their research. In addition libraries are expected with provision to ensure maximum and availability of collection of all references needed, there by showing the satisfactory use of the library materials through adequate range and quality services. Administration should enforced proper coordination between the faculty and the library staffs in promoting effective use of library resources by the students. Modern libraries are increasingly being redefined as places to get unrestricted access to information in many formats and from many sources. They are extending services beyond the physical walls of a building, by providing material accessible by electronic means, and by providing the assistance of librarians in navigating and analyzing very large amounts of information with a variety of digital tools. In the Philippines, the national library can trace its history to the establishment of the Museo-Biblioteca de Filipinas (Museum-Library of the Philippines), established by royal order of the Spanish government on August 12, 1887. It opened on October 24, 1891 at the Casa de la Monedain Intramuros, then home of the Philippine Mint, with around 100 volumes and with both Julian Romero and Benito Perdiguero as director and archivist-librarian, respectively. Romero resigned in 1893 and was briefly replaced by Tomas Torres of the Escuela de Artes y Ofà ­cios in Bacolor, Pampanga (now the Don Honorio Ventura College of Arts and Trades), who in turn was replaced by Don Pedro A. Paterno on March 31, 1894. By that time, the library had moved to a site in Quiapo near the present site of the Masjid Al-Dahab. Later on, Paterno published the first issue of the BoletindelMuseo-Bibliotecade Filipinas (Bulletin of the Museum-Library of the Philippines) on January 15, 1895. The Museo-Biblioteca was abolished upon the onset of the America colonization of the Philippines. By the time of its abolition, the library held around 1,000 volumes and averaged around 25-30 visitors a day. The entire collection would later be transferred at Paterno’s expense to his own private library, of which some books would form the basis for the Filipiniana collection of subsequent incarnations of the national library. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library) In the University of Cagayan Valley, library offers student’s service such as informational service, Wi-Fi connection, and internet connection. In this way, the University of Cagayan Valley is getting for the best in uplifting the quality and training  of the students as the costumers of the institution. The University of Cagayan Valley operates with the open shelves and internet system. Book holdings are classified according to the Dewey decimal classification schemed, it consists of different section namely; the general reference section; periodicals; reserve section; circulation; filipiniana and reading room. Many students found it difficult to utilize the services just like the BSMT students perceptions in the library regarding of their services which in the internet system there are no printing machine provided to the students that they can use therefore, this is one of the reason which struck the researcher’s decision to conduct a research in order to know and evaluate how tertiary students perceive in the delivery of services of the library. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION This chapter presents the summary of findings, conclusions as well as the recommendations Summary of Findings: 1. Age – The frequency highest frequency of BSMT students from 2nd – 3rd year was 18 years old followed by 17, 19, 20, 21, and the last is 22. 2. Gender – The majority was male having percentage of 90% while the female is 10% only. 3. Civil Status – All respondents was single. 4. Religion – The Roman Catholic is the highest frequency having percentage of 97% and 3% only for the other religion. 5. Students – There 509 BSMT students from 2nd – 3rd Year of the University of Cagayan Valley and only 100 students who were chosen through random sampling. Conclusion: The data gathered showed by this study pertaining to the respondents profile were contributive to the effectiveness of the subject under the study. From the findings of the study, it could be further concluded that the perception of the BSMT students on the services of the library of UCV is often. BIBLIOGRAOHY Serafin D. Quiazon, â€Å"Reflecting of the Staff Development of the National Library†, Bulletin of the National Library association. NIV (March-June 1972) p. 8. Ferdinand Marcos, 46th General Conference International Federation of library Association and Institution. (Manila: IFLA, 1980), p. 5. Philippine Library Association, Bulletin of the Philippine Library Association. Vol. 7, Nos, 1-4. P. 53. Dr. Lino Arquiza, â€Å"The administrators Role in Developing Library Service†. p.2(114 JPL 27 (1&2): pp. 109-150) Veranda C. Sernande, May 2004, LIBRARY RESOURCE, FACILITIES AND SERVICES OF THE PRIVATE HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION ON THE CAGAYAN VALLEY REGION (Dissertation). Denny, Carolyn Ann King, A survey of User’s Attitudes Towards the Resources and Sources of the Three University Libraries in Saudi Arabia, Dissertation Abstract International, 55 (1995) Internet Resource http://www.studymode.com/essays/Review-Of-Related-Studies-1320212.html http://nnlm.gov/mar/about/valuerelated.html http://www.studymode.com/essays/Review-Of-Related-Studies-1397981.html Title: Production Scheduling for Manufacturing Execution System Author: Steï ¬â‚¬en Lamparter, Lars Jordan Farzana Shafique, Islamia University, Bahawalpur. http://www.studymode.com/essays/Review-Of-Related-Studies-1397981.html http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~mbolin/baskaran.htm http://paarl.wikispaces.com/file/view/Evaluation+of+Standards+for+Acad+Libraries.pdf Title: AN EVALUATION OF STANDARDS FOR   

Analysis of a Key Passage in One Hundred Years of Solitude Essay

The chosen passage is an extract from Gabriel Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. This passage was chosen because it is the final pages of the story that describe the great tragedy of the town of Macondo. At this point, the novel seems to become clear and everything that happens in between is justified. The passage describes the great prophecy of Melquiades. It reveals that all of the elements of the Buendà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½a Family’s lives were predicted down to the most trivial details. It is the exact antithesis of an existentialist novel, where the characters themselves are responsible for everything that happens to them. Marquez instead demonstrates the idea of an overall fate and destiny that lures you into its shadows and leads you down its dark trail. The ending may seem as an equivocation, but it is so much more. Marquez’s use of nature throughout the novel is ironic, because it is nature that eventually murders the town of Macondo, expunging all memories of it. Marquez’s use of a third person point of view is very essential to the novel’s understanding, because we are able to stand on the outside, and look down upon 100 years worth of time. Throughout this time, the characters are blissfully unaware of their future, living for moments alone. We as readers however, are able to decipher the cyclical writing through Marquez’s writing styles and techniques. The Buendà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½as were a huge part of the foundation of their town, Macondo. They built a civilization out of nothing, a wondrous place indeed. But little did they know that the town, along with themselves, was destined for doom. As the Buendà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½a family began to deteriorate, so did the society in which they lived. From generation to generation, the same things happened over and over again. Each new generation of the family seemed to repeat the same mistakes as their predecessors. This happened in accordance to Macondo’s deterioration until the town â€Å"†¦was already a fearful whirlwind of dust and rubble being spun about by the wrath of the biblical hurricane†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Mà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½rquez, p.416). Marquez uses this metaphor of a whirlwind to demonstrate how things kept going round and round, enclosed within a powerful force that is impossible to escape. This comes off as peculiar because when Jose Arcadio Buendà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½a died, nature showed its condolence with a shower of flowers. Nature was kind to Jose Arcadio Buendà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½a, because he did not have detrimental intentions. By the end of the novel, the story is corrupt with jealousy, hate, and lust. Therefore Nature had no sympathy for them. One such instance of the cyclical philosophy in the novel is Marquez’s usage of the Buendà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½a family tree. The confusion that is created with the repetition of names and personalities is intentionally concocted by Mà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½rquez in order to illustrate the idea that identity is not important and not present in the novel. By using the same names through all six of the generations, he illustrates the Buendà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½as’ desire to stay the same and resist change. Mà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½rquez’s stylistic choice makes it difficult to distinguish between characters with similar names, but this is merely to show that it simply does not matter. No matter what their name is, or which generation they are in, they’re destined for the same things. This is why most of the Jose Arcadias were tough and fighters, while most of the Aurelianos had an interest in science and art. Colonel Aureliano Buendà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½a for instance, grew tired of the war and became highly interested in poetry. This is in fact a bigger metaphor to represent the actual people of society. Mà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½rquez conveys that people, and ultimately society, never learn from their mistakes. This is the sole cause of their downfall. Because Mà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½rquez writes in magical realism time is essential to the story, but along with time, he also utilizes the motifs of amnesia and nostalgia. Part of the reason why things were always repeated, and people never questioned it, was because of the amnesia that swept over the people of every generation. After even the most memorable and life-changing experience of the Banana Plant Massacre, the people lost all memory that it ever even existed. Their willingness to believe what was told to them shows their lack of individuality and thought. In fact, they had to put up a sign reminding themselves that God even existed. If a person does not have any recollection of a past event, then ‘doing it again’ would seem to them, only the first time. This could explain the constant repetition that the town encounters. This would allow no margin for repent or a lesson to be learned.

Facing Poverty with a Richs Girls Habits by Suki Ki Assignment

Facing Poverty with a Richs Girls Habits by Suki Ki - Assignment Example At this stage, when her very wealthy father was a millionaire, and then he lost all his wealth overnight. After all that her world become so cold because she could not imagine that her father had actually lost that entire he had previously owned the shipping company, hotels and restaurants, and the mining business. She goes on to intimately recount how and why they had to flee. Apparently back then, in South Korea, bankruptcy was a very serious crime and, in fact, punishable by one being sent to jail to serve a term, so they had no other option but to flee, without any penny, to America. She vividly remembers how she had to do things that she had never been used to doing, for instance, using public transport, doing her homework without being helped and also how things became seriously messy with no house maids around (Duane, 2008). She had to humiliatingly wheel their dirty clothes to some bleak place-Laundromat for cleaning. While away she noticed some things she had never know n courtesy of culture shock, like the fact that people of different races have different skin colors. Also, unlike back in Korea where students were always bowing to their teachers. It baffled her that students had no respect for the teachers, she explains it by an incident in which a teacher was busy calling the roll call, a male student was French-kissing a girl. Another thing that shocked her was graffiti that covered the walls and the whole concept of having a policeman guarding the gate and checking bags. The writer’s main purpose is to share her agony and tribulations. She wanted to share her experiences of how she lived life of poverty after being used to life full of comfort. Adjusting was not an easy thing because she went into a country that she had never been to and having no option other than mingling with people she absolutely shared no tradition or culture. This kind of essay can be classified as a narrative because it is in the writer’s point of vie w and perspective. She gives an account of her life from her own personal point of view. The kind of audience the writer was targeting could be general audience because the content of the essay doesn’t look like it can be restricted to people of a particular age group, class or creed. The essay has a melancholic tone; this is because from the story one is compelled to experience a lot of melancholy and a great deal of sadness, as well as depression for the writer’s experience. This can be explained by the fact that the essay has some sadness and depression which is of profound thoughtful and introspective in nature (Periodical: English, 2008). The emotional response that I have for this essay is very sad. Sad in the sense that the writer went through a very traumatizing experiences which makes one feel very sorry for her. From living life full of opulence and lavish lifestyle to struggling and having a need to adapt to hard times. The essay of an emotionally touching story which makes the reader immediately not just to sympathise but to empathise with the

Planning and conducting workshops Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Planning and conducting workshops - Essay Example arents with bruising that did not seem to staff to be the "usual scrapes and hurts" that children usually expose themselves too and a few of the children who used to be very happy, seem very sad. The parents explanations were suspect and some of the staff is wondering whether these children are being abused in some way. The staff is not trained in diagnosing child abuse and the CEO feels that it is important for them to understand the warning signs and what to do when they see something that looks suspicious. The CEO does not want to put the staff or the families into a panic, but they want to make sure that the children and families receive help where necessary. I first passed out questionnaires to the staff to find out the level of knowledge they had currently. I wanted to understand any myths they had about it and I needed to determine what type of training was needed to fit their needs. I also held individual and group interviews with the permission of the CEO. This allowed me to assess what each individual was hoping to learn from the training and how it would best fit into this particular environment. I gathered all this information together and it was clear that the staff needed a basic understanding of how to identify the signs of child abuse and what to do about it. All of the interviews a nd questionnaires basically came to this conclusion. I suggested to the CEO that we create a workshop that provides this information in an interactive format. We will create handouts hat explain the basic information and then use case studies created from actual situations the staff has seen that we will discuss during the workshop. The target market for this workshop is the staff and volunteers for XYZ Company. The staff and volunteers create a diverse group in ethnicity, gender and age. The target group is between ages of 27 and 65. They are primarily Caucasian and Hispanic, with a few Asian and African Americans on staff. Through the interviews I was able to get an

Director's Concept Anne in The Tropics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Director's Concept Anne in The Tropics - Essay Example The introduction of the Lector in the late 1920 amidst the Cuban-Americans working at a cigar factor does somewhat similar functions. He arrives to mitigate their inner darkness of the workers in the designated establishment and that he does through literature that illumines the inner world of the individual. He tries to mitigate their personal miseries. Exposure to enlightening literature makes one proud of one’s heritage and provides strength and meaning to lead a purposeful existence. A cultural void exists within the minds of the workers in a cigar factory, as most of the workers are from Cuba, who migrated to USA, out of economic necessity and not because of love for the land of USA. They carry the burden of great psychological strain and problems related to adjustments in a new environment. Recollection of the past, sweet or sour is a great intellectually gratifying experience. These cigar-factory workers love literature, the books of Anna Karenina, in particular, and they compare the events of their own life with that of Karenina. The issues refer to personal failings of human beings on the one hand and about the secular issues related to adjustment in the new environment in America. They left Cuba out of compulsion, and would like to remain in touch with their own customs and traditions and the arrival of lector amidst them serves this purpose. For, he doesn’t own any responsibility of producing goods and delivering the prescribed output at the end of the day. He regales and educates the workers in style and humor is his asset, even when he explains profound issues related to life through select book readings. The happiness of his arrival is comparable to the arrival of a baby in a joint family. He provides the means to adjust to the life in America and yet remain Cuban at heart! He provides them the confidence to retain the Cuban cultural identity. The important concept of â€Å"Anna in the Tropics,† is how to remain truly human

Religione Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Religione - Essay Example According to Jews, God created world in one day and later all the different species originated from it. They believe that before the creation of world everything was in darkness and void ness. 2) The Great Flood (2349 BCE): The great flood was a key event in Jewish history which wiped out sin from the face of earth. The God created flood in order to eradicate the lawlessness prevailed among people during that time. 3) 10 Commandments Received (1491 BCE: According to Jews the 10 commandments are the essence of the religion. The Jews are supposed to commit themselves to these commandments in order to lead a sin free life. Commandments describe the duties of a person to God and other fellow beings. 4) Israel became monarchy (1095 - 1020BCE): The kingdom of Israel was formed as they conquer the Philistine and form unity with all tribes of the Israel. The monarchy was ruled by great kings like Saul, David and Solo man. 1) Faith and belief in one God and also in Messenger Prophet Mohammed: This is the most important pillar of Islam and only if a person believes and practices it he becomes a true Muslim. The aim of this principle is to convey the essence of life that is to obey and serve God. 2) Praying five times a day: Praying five times a day is a very obligatory rule of Islam. This creates a direct connection between God and worshipper. Prayers are performed during dawn, mid-day, afternoon, sunset and at night, 3) Giving alms to the poor and needy: According to Islam everything in this world belongs to God and money also is held by human as a trustee. Every Muslim therefore has to give in charity a portion of his income or wealth fort the betterment of the society. 4) Fasting and proving one’s faith to God: Every year the Muslim population performs fasting during the month of Ramadan. They abstain from food and water from sunrise to sunset. This is a purification process for body and soul and deepens their faith .in God. a)

Systems Integration in Information Technology Research Paper

Systems Integration in Information Technology - Research Paper Example Shortly after the system wide integration, in 2006, problems within the system architecture resulted in a dangerous breach of patient care. The system breakdown as described by Kaiser Permanente executives and industry leaders was a direct result of integration of an information technology (IT) component of the KP Health Connect system. Kaiser Permanente envisioned the KP Health Connect system as a seamless integration of resources that in theory would electronically connect members to their health care team, to their personal health information, and to all relevant medical knowledge available to promote integrated health care.(Cochran, 2009) Ideally Kaiser Permanente members would complete an annual online health risk assessment, then receive customized feedback on behavioral interventions, start pro-active health behavior change programs, and choose whether to send results to KP Health Connect to facilitate communication and information sharing with their with their physician.(Montalbano, 2008) In reality Kaiser Permanente was abandoning a very costly attempt made in the late 1990’s and early parts of this decade to build its own clinical information system with IBM. Kaisers approach shifted to "buy, not build," (Montalbano, 2008) after the earlier failure with the IBM system. The project’s expansive scope was unprecedented for a civilian company. To purchase an â€Å"off-the-shelf system† (Montalbano, 2008), Kaiser studied two medical software vendors, Cerner and Epic Systems, ultimately selecting Epic as the primary vendor for a new system that would eventually become KP Health Connect. .(Cochran, 2009) Kaiser Permanente attempted with the â€Å"off-shelf† system to fully integrate the company’s previous EHR’s and collect all their data into one system.(Cochran, 2009) The resulting loss of access and availability of patient records and billing histories has

Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 4

Ethics - Essay Example Thus, when studying western ethics, it is incredibly important to be able to understand not just one but several ethical codes. Three of the most important ethical codes are virtue theory, deontological ethics, and utilitarianism. Virtue theory is an ethical code that rests on the intrinsic virtues of an individual. This theory has, in some ways, a highly internalized locus of control, and in other ways an externalized one. This is because one can evaluate virtue either on the individual level (meeting one’s own expectations of virtue) or on a societal level (mirroring societal constructs of virtuous behavior). The most important thing about virtue theory is that it is almost completely unrelated to individual action taking (Crisp & Michael, 1997), focusing more on the internal character of a person than background or consequence of actions. Virtue ethics remind me of times in which I try to improve myself for no reason other than being a better person – holding doors open, for example. Deontological ethics differ greatly from virtue ethics on a number of levels. The fundamental idea of deontological ethics is that one must comport one’s self in a method that complies with a set of rules. The origins of these rules can change drastically from philosopher to philosopher, ranging from highly variable understandings of rules as basic obligations to uphold certain philosophical principles, to highly restrictive understanding of rules such as those in moral absolutism, in which certain actions are either considered unambiguously moral or amoral. This philosophy obviously seems prone to an externalized locus of control. This kind of philosophy reminds me of occasions when, as a child, I would behave in a certain way (eating my vegetables, for instance) out of an obligation without necessarily agreeing with that action. The final major mode of ethics discussed in this paper is utilitarian ethics.

What Is Critical Thinking Essay Example for Free

What Is Critical Thinking Essay Critical thinking to me means a way of thinking that helps us understand what has been observed or being observed. With being a critical thinker it allows us take charge of our minds and our thoughts. It’s also a way to help us to analyze, reasonable and reflective thoughts. Distinguishing from your willingness and your feelings are the awakening of oneself and should always be an experience for you in the realm of knowing that once the mission is complete you will then have acquired more knowledge for oneself. While reading, Elder, L. (2007, 09). The Ctitical Thinking community. Our Concept and Definition of Critical Thinking. Retrieved 09, 2007, from http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/our-concept-and-definition-of-critical-thinking/411 it states that â€Å"Critical thinking is that mode of thinking — about any subject, content, or problem — in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use.† Just knowing that once you identify and evaluate the evidence it will then allow you to start the ability to apply logic and reasoning for the situation at hand. With having the ability of taking charge of your mind and thoughts defines to me what critical thinking really means. While continuing my research I noticed that there where so many different ways that Critical Thinking was mentioned. I found in Michael Scriven and Richard Paul. (2003). Defiing Critical Thinking. (http://www. criticalthinking.org/University/univclass/Defi ning.html, that its clear to me that in order to get down to the bottom of what is really Critical Thinking means is to take the word â€Å"Critical† which means â€Å"inclined to find fault or to judge with severity, often too readily or it means involving skillful judgment as to truth, merit, etc.†, Found on the dictionary.reference.com site. Then take the word â€Å"thinking† which means the action of using ones mind to produce thoughts or involving skillful judgment as to truth, merit and that’s found in the http://www.merriam-webster.com site. While taking the two words by themselves I came up with critical thinking is to making a judgment to find truth through formed thoughts and the ability to using logical reasons.

Toni Morrisons Contributions to American Literature

Toni Morrisons Contributions to American Literature Chapter One: Toni Morrisons Contribution to American Literature Paradoxically, immortality is not achieved through the defeat of biological death, but rather through the indomitability of the spirit, which leaves behind the fruits of wisdom and humanity, putting forevermore things in a different perspective for generations to come. This, however, is not a smooth and linear process and nor does it leave one untransformed. Referring to the motto above, Toni Morrisons lifelong work has been an accurate reflection of her and her races upheaval. Albeit she fictionalizes her novels to a great extent, her work does not fail to constitute a palindromic iteration of her thoughts, feelings, and experiences felt both directly and vicariously. To be more precise, if we overlook the minute details of her novels, one cannot tell where her fiction ends and her life begins, or vice-versa: they read the same, regardless of whether we â€Å"read† them from fiction to reality or from reality to fiction. This mirror in which Toni Morrison sees herself and w hose projections â€Å"fall† on the surface of our own interpretations and are thusly decoded and re-encoded is not hung there for the purpose of throwing vanity glances; instead she uses it to question the endlessness of possibilities and that of answers to such broad questions as those relating to racism in the U.S. or to an idealistic state of affairs. My books are always questions for me. What if? How does it feel to? Or what would it look like if you took racism out? Or what does it look like if you have the perfect town, everything you ever wanted? And so you ask a question, put it in a time when it would be theatrical to ask, and find the people who can articulate it for you and try to make them interesting. The rest of it is all structure, how to put it together. (Rustin) Timing is of immediate importance, as Toni Morrison herself points out, especially since her debut novel appeared on the cusp of the civil rights and feminist movement: a time of great transformations and unparalleled historical significance. She times the appearance of The Bluest Eye so well that its impact reverberates strongly into the present. This is no wonder since her writing is not intended to cater for the general masses, nor does it follow the narrow furrows and strictures of fiction writing which are usually implicitly understood. The importance of her work does not only extend along the dimension of aesthetic value: her work is not cathartic in the sense of presenting true beauty loftily idealized; instead she endows her fictional voices with daring, cunning, resolve, resilience; they are often the loud or muffled voices of the surprisingly articulate and heart-rending insane, the latter perversion of mind being perceived in relation with mind-numbing senseless conformity . One may never tell where artistry begins and ends and to what extent her literary offerings will shape future mentalities, but one thing is for sure: her unquenchable thirst for racial justice and her innovative techniques will never cease to challenge our take on things. If only to weave a flimsy mesh of interpretation around Toni Morrisons undeniably invaluable contribution on American literature and beyond, a closer scrutiny of her work would be most auspicious, especially if we proceed along the lines of racial formation, the importance of family and community, identity, conformity, independence, allegiance, displacement and all the binaries therefrom. Racial Formation and Toni Morrisons Literary Manifest Racial formation never has never been and never will be (one could safely imagine) a smooth and linear phenomenon of innocuous application. Not only that, but never has there been a time in American history when race wasnt a troublesome matter, from the initial clash between the early settlers who achieved the â€Å"conquest of paradise† and the native population, through every aspect of affirmative action, to present frictions with and around immigrants and the border (i.e. with Mexico), all still wrapped in the warm blanket of the American covenant. The exodus of people crossing the ocean has always been a defining feature of the rugged American fabric and trouble and tension an inherent aftermath, for as Thomas Sowell puts it:    The peopling of America is one of the great dramas in all human history. Over the years, the massive stream of humanity—45 million people—crossed every ocean and continent to reach the United States. They came speaking every language and representing every nationality, race, and religion. (qtd. in Girgus 64) Even though noble rank has been outlawed by the very Constitution of the United States, this does not necessarily ensure the homogeneity of multiethnicity. The social tension described by American sociologist Thomas Sowell and quoted by Sam B. Girgus in â€Å"The New Ethnic Novel and the American Idea† is that caused by the conflicting values brought to the American land, together with languages, customs, and, more importantly, creeds and moral values that this veritable Tower of Babel is still finding very difficult to take in and transform into a meld of acceptable conformity. A tendency existed and steeply evolved in the not very long course of American history to assert the superiority of the Aryan waspish faction of the American nation over all other non-Aryan groups. Since the budding nations ideals have always been slightly adumbrated by the skulking presence of slavery, the African-American paradigm of socio-cultural and political struggle has been conferred upon speci al significance and attention. As such, the status of African-Americans has undergone severe and painful shifts, from the moment they were brought to America as slaves, until at least quite recently. These days, the life of African-Americans in the United States is undoubtedly improved, a fact which can easily be proven by the recent election of the first â€Å"black† president in the entire history of this country. Not only at the highest level, but in all walks of life evidence exists of inclusion in the earnest of members of society belonging to the African-American race.   Albeit banned on some level for instance Executive Order 8802 issued by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt banned outright discrimination in the case of jobs related to the federal government and defence contractors open discrimination continued throughout the decades, the segregation and gerrymandering trailing for many decades. Several boiling pressures, however, undermined these discriminatory tactics, such as the Brown vs. Board of Education of 1954 or the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. These and other actions precipitated the adoption of affirmative action, a bomb which exploded in the face of Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, who had to make efforts to redress these social injustices through as some like to call it â€Å"positive† or â€Å"reverse† discrimination, in spite of Martin Luther King Jr.s dream, a veritable gem of rhetoric. His world-famous 1963 I Have a Dream speech is a watershed moment not only for the Civil Rights Movement a cause that i s brilliantly, persuasively and most important, peacefully championed but for every group that during the course of (American) history had been discriminated against. In it he advocates equality and fraternity, the vital prerequisites of coexistence in a sphere so decidedly multiethnic that, as Herman Melville phrases it, â€Å"You can not spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.† (qtd. in Girgus 65). The attitude taken by American people concerning the preference for or against affirmative action is linked to what everyone was educated to believe. The factor that leaves the greatest imprint on our mind is education and the vehicles for achieving this, such as literature, films, and other media, to say nothing of standardized school curricula and society at large. It is the first of these vehicles that will be investigated in what follows, tracing Toni Morrisons efforts as an epitomic endeavour, in order to isolate its influence on our belief system, values and life choices. Significantly, an original national literature was the first mark of Americas declaration of independence from Europes influence and the African-American one the declaration of independence from â€Å"white† hegemony. Benjamin Franklin believed that â€Å"A good example is the best sermon† (qtd. in Marcovitz 55), while Emerson, the father of transcendentalism urged the American people to be self-reliant above all. Though a maverick at heart throughout his entire glorious existence which, while dappled with tragedy, his work has been no less prolific in spite of all his hardships and his originality, humour and unmatched industriousness Mark Twain, The Father of American Literature, has been a most controversial and compliant figure (only in the sense of providing such an inspiring string of examples in the sense of self-reliance) in his time and continues to be so even today. If at first his masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was criticized for the language and subject matter by both his contemporaries and later admirers (Ernest Hemingway would provide a notable example) for being trite and vulgar and even excoriated by public libraries such as the Concord Public Library in Massachusetts or New Yorks Brooklyn Public Library, recent controversy has been focused around racial matters. Critics are split between those regarding the portrayal of Jim as disparaging and as a consequence offensive and those who find Jims superstitious behaviour to be an indication of an alternative perception of our bond with nature, or a more powerful connection with our spiritual side, to say nothing of the steep dissonance between the Waspish past and the politically correct present. In Toni Morrisons Playing in the Dark, Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is analysed from the perspective of the importance of the Africanist presence, a presence much silenced and only timidly analyzed for decades. Discussed in terms of socio-historic development, the distinction between â€Å"black† and â€Å"white† themed by Twains novel reaches a peak in the mid-nineteenth century, as evidenced in Toni Morrisons interpretation. This can be verified by the juxtaposition between Jims utter love for his masters and the â€Å"baroque† (Morrison 57) torture Huck and Tom subject him to. The â€Å"white† line of argumentation is brilliantly outlined in Mark Twains masterpiece and shrewdly detected by Morrison, who finds Jim â€Å"unassertive, loving, irrational, passionate, dependent, inarticulate†, which is exactly how the â€Å"others† are perceived. The religious, scientific, political, cultural and societal practices were so fas hioned around the time when Mark Twain lived as to legitimate slavery and abuse. Starting from the assertion that white people around Jim seek forgiveness and supplication veritable keystone concepts in Christian religions which, however, did not extend to everyone, considering the hovering doubt about the existence of the soul of the â€Å"others†, they (i.e. religions through their cloistered leaders) instead providing convenient ways for turning a blind eye on slavery and even extermination on condition that he accept his inferiority. Thus, she argues, only a representative of the African-American race could have been painfully humiliated by children after being presented as a father and an adult, while no one, not even a white convict, could have been submitted to this kind of treatment. Toni Morrisons discourse is by no means vituperative: she does not intend any reversed oppression through her writing, either in Playing in the Dark or in any of her works of fiction. However, her writing is so compelling that when Beloved does not win her the National Book Award, as many as forty-eight African-American authors and critics write to the New York Times claiming her literary prowess, which afterwards earns her the laurels of the Pulitzer Prize, and rightly so. Her lack of bias is evident when she praises the former President Bill Clinton calling him the â€Å"first black President, since he displayed almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonalds-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas† (Cooke), while her discursive equanimity can be traced from the way she analyses the Africanist presence in literature and the way it is regarded from the perspective of its relationship to mainstream literature and criticism: Like thousands of avid but nonacademic readers, some powerful literary critics in the United States have never read, and are proud to say so, any African-American text. It seems to have done them no harm, presented them with no discernible limitations in the scope of their work or influence. I suspect, with much evidence to support the suspicion, that they will continue to flourish without any knowledge whatsoever of African-American literature. (Playing in the Dark 13) While she does not wish to challenge or criticise anyone for their views and choices, Toni Morrison cannot bear to look the other way when the literary Jim Crow era is still so fiercely enforced. That it might be convenient for anyone to ignore any slice of reality or exclude any of the fibres in the fabric of a nation is quite obvious, and while this approach does not impair our intellect, it does however limit our understanding. This selective interpretation of things which leaves Africanist representation in a cone of darkness is especially significant, since it underpins racism and it bolsters its moral justification, especially along the lines of racial formation: a deeply-seated phenomenon which pervades every aspect of life in America and a very hurtful process for those slighted by it. The relevance of racial formation is underscored throughout Toni Morrisons work and, in their extensive study entitled Racial Formation in the United States: from the 1960s to the 1990s, Michae l Omi and Howard Winant, the two American sociologists who developed racial formation theory, argue that race is an artificial concept, because the bases according to which any particular individual can be labelled as â€Å"white†, â€Å"black†, and so on, may start from certain biological traits, but race transcends these. To illustrate the point, a person of â€Å"mixed blood† is considered from the point of view of North American and then Latin American racial identification whereby the same categorization would have the same individual first â€Å"black† and then unable to â€Å"pass† as â€Å"black†. At the other extreme, Brazilian legislation is willing to accept the assignation of several racial categories to various members of the same family. In addition to being intricate and far-reaching, these considerations help provide grounding for our study of Toni Morrisons work and its impact on American literature and even life in America and also help account for the perception of other races by the early settlers, whose religious and even scientific tenets had to be broached to accommodate these â€Å"new† categories, such as the â€Å"noble savage,† and dispute the very existence of their soul. This blatant dismissal of a persons soul based solely on the abstract and arbitrary consideration of race is an outrage that Toni Morrison starkly exposes in Beloved, about which Susanna Rustin comments the following in â€Å"The Guardian†: It is a novel of unspeakable horrors. But even more than the physical brutality, Morrison confronts us with the irreparable harm done by what Margaret Atwood described in a review as one of the most viciously antifamily institutions human beings have ever devised, a system that sought to deprive human beings of what it is that makes them human. (Rustin) Sethe, her heroine, learns the truth and is shocked to realise that her masters, whom she is so devoted to, are taught to distinguish between her human and animal characteristics, which means, in other words, that she is but a soulless beast of burden. Thats when I stopped because I heard my name, and then I took a few steps to where I could see what they was doing. Schoolteacher was standing over one of them with one hand behind his back. He licked a forefinger a couple of times and turned a few pages. Slow. I was about to turn around and keep on my way to where the muslin was, when I heard him say, No, no. Thats not the way. I told you to put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones on the right. And dont forget to line them up. I commenced to walk backward, didnt even look behind me to find out where I was headed. I just kept lifting my feet and pushing back. When I bumped up against a tree my scalp was prickly. [] Flies settled all over your face, rubbing their hands. My head itched like the devil. Like somebody was sticking fine needles in my scalp. I never told Halle or nobody. (Beloved 224) This episode in Sethes existence can never be erased nor her pain alleviated. The suffering she is caused is absolute and boundless. Her feelings of outrage surge like torrents in her brain and she feels utterly discombobulated. This memory will forever haunt her; it will shape her future and her attitude towards life, her behaviour towards her children, and it will serve as a constantly open wound. Whats even more tragic is that this mind-boggling injustice spared no one: men, women, or children. Remembering his own price, down to the cent, that schoolteacher was able to get for him, he wondered what Sethes would have been. What had Baby Suggs been? How much did Halle owe, still, besides his labor? What did Mrs. Garner get for Paul F? More than nine hundred dollars? How much more? Ten dollars? Twenty? Schoolteacher would know. He knew the worth of everything. It accounted for the real sorrow in his voice when he pronounced Sixo unsuitable. (266) Proceeding along these lines of dehumanization, monetary worth is assigned to each individual and that is the extent of ones value when assessed by the slave owner. Reality is raw, harsh, and beyond shocking, but sugar-coating it would not help if we are to learn the truth about racism and racial formation. The accuracy of Toni Morrisons writing in spite of the degree of fictionalization is the keystone of her discourse. It is her head-on confrontation of the underlying reality that lends Toni Morrison her uniqueness and that has earned her in equal measure respect and criticism. Despite the narrative voices that assert their own individuality in Toni Morrisons works, Sam B. Girgus comments on present-day African-American literary discourse, finding it too elaborate, and somewhat digressive to the detriment of thematic concerns such as the daily life, values, sorrows, tragedies, successes, woes, accomplishments, and so forth. He argues his point by referring to African-American writers Toni Morrison and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: both Morrison and Gates typify qualities of ethnicity that are common to many of the writers in the literary and cultural renaissance under discussion. They all write in English even when extolling a particular vernacular speech, dialect, or region. They are all extremely sophisticated artists who use the most complex modern and postmodern techniques to convey their highly individualized visions of experience. Although rooted in ethnic communities and concrete historic situations, their works as cultural artifacts and products are nevertheless aspects of complicated technological and bureaucratic systems of cultural and social production that often differ from the language, values, and daily life of the cultures for which they speak. (Girgus 61) This may be so if we for instance pick up Toni Morrisons Pulitzer-awarded novel Beloved where we find passages of stream of consciousness, dialectal dialogue, flashbacks from the past and the conflation of past and present resulting in a destabilized horizon of racial and individual formation. Toni Morrisons formal education may have driven a wedge between herself and the culture she was born into and which she proudly represents, but she still manages to put together an incredible manifesto that reaches deeper truths and meanings with absolute valences. In her novel the three heroines mother and two daughters have overlapping individualities and they represent good and evil in equal measure. Their existences are nonlinear and they run both ways along the temporal axis. This is especially true of Sethe, the mother, whose past still haunts her and impacts greatly her present and future; an impact which extends to her family as well. The state of nonlinearity, conflation, and duality is also found in other novels, such as The Bluest Eye or Sula, in which the heroines manage to become displaced from their status, they are isolated from their respective families and friends, and are forced into pursuing painful valences of individuality. From this point of view, Toni Morrison herself manages to overreach her scope by challenging the perceptions, values, mores, and principles we are ingrained with by society and education. Agnes Suranyi, a contributor to â€Å"The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison†, edited by Justine Tally, expresses just such a view: â€Å"The borderline between decent women and man-eating prostitutes is erased; only the latter are capable of giving love to Pecola, whose quest for it elsewhere is futile.† (16-17). This view is of great significance because it epitomizes Toni Morrisons take on life: nothing in her work is â€Å"fed† to us already masticated; it is quite the c ontrary that occurs: we have to interpret the facts stated, the innuendoes, the streams of consciousness, the multifaceted and split personalities, their actions and inactions all by ourselves, through our own filters and open up to a more thorough interpretation that must override dated tenets.     Ã‚   Applying the above stated, upon perusing Toni Morrisons novel Beloved, one cannot miss the connection between melding and overlapping identities and the life of people struggling with racial formation and being forced into conformity and assimilation. This assertion is further reinforced by the fact that Sethe lived in the time of the Underground Railroad, a time which saw a sharp increase in the severity of punishments for escaping bondage. The tenseness of life on the black / white divide is passed on to later generations who carry on with their incessant frictions all the way to Martin Luther King Jr. and beyond. In a 2004 interview with Rachel Cooke for â€Å"The Observer† Toni Morrison successfully proves why the battle with racism is not yet over, in spite of all the things that have changed since the beginning of affirmative action. I dont pass without insults. Let me give you an example. I walk into the Waldorf Astoria in New York to check in. Were going to have a drink, and then my friend is going to go home. She stands behind me, as I check in. Finally, the guy says, Oh, are you registering too? He thought I was the maid. My friend was trembling with anger. It was so personal. But the irony of it was that I was on the cover of a magazine that month, and there were these posters with my face on them all over New York. (qtd. in â€Å"The Observer†) The Bluest Eye her debut novel for instance, has had its popularity delayed many a year precisely because of the stark way in which Toni Morrison approached taboo subjects and because she strived to prove that â€Å"black† did not equal â€Å"ugly†. Growing up is difficult and the girls in the novel find their race assignation which is no fault of theirs a difficult burden to carry around. They do not have the easier lives of the lighter-skinned people in their community and their perceived ugliness is a feature which gradually seeps into their consciousness to such a degree that it becomes overbearing. The validity of this externally-imposed ugliness is reinforced not only by the white members of society, but by the very families themselves. In Pecolas case, her own mother finds her daughter repulsive and troublesome, choosing to love a white child more than her own an unforgivable and heinous deed. But then the destabilization of identity is a practice quite comm on for Toni Morrison, and rightly so, because although identity is formed at an early stage in our existence, the vector of external factors leave multiple indelible marks upon the essence of our character. For Toni Morrisons characters the insurmountable obstacles they have to overcome take too great a toll on their resilience, which ultimately becomes defeated. This reciprocal allegoric relationship between private and collective (in this case racial) identity is a true-to-life representation of many generations of oppressed African-Americans and their struggles to survive in a disparaging mainstream society. In Sula, the African-American writer uses the Bottom as a twofold metaphor: on the one hand the location of this neighbourhood is on top of a hill which, as the slave owner explains to the slave, is the bottom of the world from where God is watching and from which â€Å"the blacks† took â€Å"small consolation in the fact that every day they could literally look down on the white folks† (11), while on the other we see little black girls being picked on by the most recent immigrants who themselves would endure abuse, thus continuing this loop which is closed by the proximity to God that the hills afford them. The ramifications do not stop here: it seems that in any place in the novel, any novel of Toni Morrisons, there is a starting point for a new insight, for a new interpretation, for a kernel of postmodernist truth about life and literature, for novel literary technique and what it entails for both the novel itself as a genre, as well as for the reader and his/her perception of things thats constantly being challenged, just like the readers matrix of social tenets and belief system. Possibly the best example of this is served by the story which inspired Toni Morrison to write Beloved, the story of the African-American woman who would rather kill her own daughter than suffer to have her returned to bondage. As Nellie Y. McKay, the co-editor alongside William L. Andrews of â€Å"Toni Morrisons Beloved A Casebook† states another critics point of view (i.e. Karla F. C. Holloway, writer of â€Å"Beloved: A Spiritual†), Toni Morrison really manages to come up with a fresh and reinvigorating approach   For example, with myth as a dominant feature of Beloved, Morrison not only reclaims the Garner story from those who interviewed her after her childs death and expressed enormous surprise at her calm but also, as mythmaker, achieves a complete revision of the episode. [] The oral and written history that Morrison revises, consciously and unconsciously felt, considers many aspects of each life and reflects an alternative perspective on reality. [] In addition, Morrison, like many other African and African-American writers, often defies the boundaries separating past, present, and future time. This allows her to free Beloved from the dominance of a history that would deny the merits of slave stories. As Morrisons creation, Beloved is not only Sethes dead child but the faces of all those lost in slavery, carrying in her the history of the sixty million and more. Holloway sees Beloved as a novel of inner vision: the reclamation of black spiritual histories. (15) As Morrison herself points out in the novel, the press has no interest in presenting the truth detachedly. It also does not concern itself with such â€Å"trite† topics as the abominable abuses of slavery and it does not give praise where praise is due. Instead, it engages in shameless hectoring of a mother who kills her own daughter. If taken out of context, we would expect it to do no less and, but for Toni Morrisons reframing and revamping of the story, we probably wouldnt have given the story a second thought. But we cannot be left to stand idle before such brazen hypocrisy as regarding Sethe more animal than human, and then a murderess guilty of a heinously premeditated act done whilst in full possession of her faculties. Furthermore, her case is stripped of context, just as the plethora of various other deeds similarly perpetrated as a result of extraordinary duress. This time around Morrison gives ample space to her heroine to justify her actions, while not allowing her , however, to be absolved of the guilt she must bear until the end, hence the muddled border between temporal references, actions, characters, and individualities, which again escape their expected linearity and contiguity. Perception is a fickle thing, especially when something is stretched, filtered, re-filtered, decoded and re-encoded, challenged and stereotyped and warped in every way imaginable. We cannot assert our identity as long as we are unable to find the appropriate compromise between the adoption and rejection of every aspect that is debatable and that can be transacted over this social Carrefour of exchanges. But, more importantly, we can no longer acquiesce in this moral comfort zone set out by society, which overshadows whole groups based on artificial considerations, especially when the relativism of the preceding adjective becomes too overbearing and too painful to stand. The point being made here is that while maybe artificial in essence, the segregation inflicted on these groups and others, as well (while Toni Morrison is clearly concerned with the African-American case, it cannot fail to be propitious to generalise an assertion that we should internalise already if we havent done so and apply to any case in which double standards might occur) is absorbed by those whose mental health is abused incessantly and whose resilience truly worn out and even suppressed. What Toni Morrison attempts is to sow the seeds of individual and discernible thought willing and capable enough to probe things deeper than the shallowness of their outward appearance. Toni Morrisons works are soul-wrench ing panegyrics dedicated to the memory of the former slaves and her contemporaries who were still enslaved through omission and discrimination, as well as a testimony of the noblest and most dedicated application of ones moral ideals. Chapter Two: The Importance of Family and Community in Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and Sula Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company. (nobelprize.org) It is no secret or surprise that, first family and then family and community, have the greatest impact on our personality, shaping and reshaping our existence, validating and supporting our preferences and choices or going to great lengths to lay stumbling blocks in our path towards achieving these. Furthermore, the conceptions and principles professed within familial confines are based on the patterned behaviour of ones surrounding environment. This, in turn is founded on what is deemed just and acceptable behaviour leading to harmony and cooperation and is related to civic duty. According to Freuds structural model of the psyche, the development of the human psyche is a three-stage process which corresponds to the three most important stages in our existence. In the first stage, the id, our psyche is so shaped as to want nothing but to fulfil its own needs and wishes, regardless of those of everyone else. Then, as we start learning to distinguish betwee Toni Morrisons Contributions to American Literature Toni Morrisons Contributions to American Literature Chapter One: Toni Morrisons Contribution to American Literature Paradoxically, immortality is not achieved through the defeat of biological death, but rather through the indomitability of the spirit, which leaves behind the fruits of wisdom and humanity, putting forevermore things in a different perspective for generations to come. This, however, is not a smooth and linear process and nor does it leave one untransformed. Referring to the motto above, Toni Morrisons lifelong work has been an accurate reflection of her and her races upheaval. Albeit she fictionalizes her novels to a great extent, her work does not fail to constitute a palindromic iteration of her thoughts, feelings, and experiences felt both directly and vicariously. To be more precise, if we overlook the minute details of her novels, one cannot tell where her fiction ends and her life begins, or vice-versa: they read the same, regardless of whether we â€Å"read† them from fiction to reality or from reality to fiction. This mirror in which Toni Morrison sees herself and w hose projections â€Å"fall† on the surface of our own interpretations and are thusly decoded and re-encoded is not hung there for the purpose of throwing vanity glances; instead she uses it to question the endlessness of possibilities and that of answers to such broad questions as those relating to racism in the U.S. or to an idealistic state of affairs. My books are always questions for me. What if? How does it feel to? Or what would it look like if you took racism out? Or what does it look like if you have the perfect town, everything you ever wanted? And so you ask a question, put it in a time when it would be theatrical to ask, and find the people who can articulate it for you and try to make them interesting. The rest of it is all structure, how to put it together. (Rustin) Timing is of immediate importance, as Toni Morrison herself points out, especially since her debut novel appeared on the cusp of the civil rights and feminist movement: a time of great transformations and unparalleled historical significance. She times the appearance of The Bluest Eye so well that its impact reverberates strongly into the present. This is no wonder since her writing is not intended to cater for the general masses, nor does it follow the narrow furrows and strictures of fiction writing which are usually implicitly understood. The importance of her work does not only extend along the dimension of aesthetic value: her work is not cathartic in the sense of presenting true beauty loftily idealized; instead she endows her fictional voices with daring, cunning, resolve, resilience; they are often the loud or muffled voices of the surprisingly articulate and heart-rending insane, the latter perversion of mind being perceived in relation with mind-numbing senseless conformity . One may never tell where artistry begins and ends and to what extent her literary offerings will shape future mentalities, but one thing is for sure: her unquenchable thirst for racial justice and her innovative techniques will never cease to challenge our take on things. If only to weave a flimsy mesh of interpretation around Toni Morrisons undeniably invaluable contribution on American literature and beyond, a closer scrutiny of her work would be most auspicious, especially if we proceed along the lines of racial formation, the importance of family and community, identity, conformity, independence, allegiance, displacement and all the binaries therefrom. Racial Formation and Toni Morrisons Literary Manifest Racial formation never has never been and never will be (one could safely imagine) a smooth and linear phenomenon of innocuous application. Not only that, but never has there been a time in American history when race wasnt a troublesome matter, from the initial clash between the early settlers who achieved the â€Å"conquest of paradise† and the native population, through every aspect of affirmative action, to present frictions with and around immigrants and the border (i.e. with Mexico), all still wrapped in the warm blanket of the American covenant. The exodus of people crossing the ocean has always been a defining feature of the rugged American fabric and trouble and tension an inherent aftermath, for as Thomas Sowell puts it:    The peopling of America is one of the great dramas in all human history. Over the years, the massive stream of humanity—45 million people—crossed every ocean and continent to reach the United States. They came speaking every language and representing every nationality, race, and religion. (qtd. in Girgus 64) Even though noble rank has been outlawed by the very Constitution of the United States, this does not necessarily ensure the homogeneity of multiethnicity. The social tension described by American sociologist Thomas Sowell and quoted by Sam B. Girgus in â€Å"The New Ethnic Novel and the American Idea† is that caused by the conflicting values brought to the American land, together with languages, customs, and, more importantly, creeds and moral values that this veritable Tower of Babel is still finding very difficult to take in and transform into a meld of acceptable conformity. A tendency existed and steeply evolved in the not very long course of American history to assert the superiority of the Aryan waspish faction of the American nation over all other non-Aryan groups. Since the budding nations ideals have always been slightly adumbrated by the skulking presence of slavery, the African-American paradigm of socio-cultural and political struggle has been conferred upon speci al significance and attention. As such, the status of African-Americans has undergone severe and painful shifts, from the moment they were brought to America as slaves, until at least quite recently. These days, the life of African-Americans in the United States is undoubtedly improved, a fact which can easily be proven by the recent election of the first â€Å"black† president in the entire history of this country. Not only at the highest level, but in all walks of life evidence exists of inclusion in the earnest of members of society belonging to the African-American race.   Albeit banned on some level for instance Executive Order 8802 issued by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt banned outright discrimination in the case of jobs related to the federal government and defence contractors open discrimination continued throughout the decades, the segregation and gerrymandering trailing for many decades. Several boiling pressures, however, undermined these discriminatory tactics, such as the Brown vs. Board of Education of 1954 or the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. These and other actions precipitated the adoption of affirmative action, a bomb which exploded in the face of Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, who had to make efforts to redress these social injustices through as some like to call it â€Å"positive† or â€Å"reverse† discrimination, in spite of Martin Luther King Jr.s dream, a veritable gem of rhetoric. His world-famous 1963 I Have a Dream speech is a watershed moment not only for the Civil Rights Movement a cause that i s brilliantly, persuasively and most important, peacefully championed but for every group that during the course of (American) history had been discriminated against. In it he advocates equality and fraternity, the vital prerequisites of coexistence in a sphere so decidedly multiethnic that, as Herman Melville phrases it, â€Å"You can not spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.† (qtd. in Girgus 65). The attitude taken by American people concerning the preference for or against affirmative action is linked to what everyone was educated to believe. The factor that leaves the greatest imprint on our mind is education and the vehicles for achieving this, such as literature, films, and other media, to say nothing of standardized school curricula and society at large. It is the first of these vehicles that will be investigated in what follows, tracing Toni Morrisons efforts as an epitomic endeavour, in order to isolate its influence on our belief system, values and life choices. Significantly, an original national literature was the first mark of Americas declaration of independence from Europes influence and the African-American one the declaration of independence from â€Å"white† hegemony. Benjamin Franklin believed that â€Å"A good example is the best sermon† (qtd. in Marcovitz 55), while Emerson, the father of transcendentalism urged the American people to be self-reliant above all. Though a maverick at heart throughout his entire glorious existence which, while dappled with tragedy, his work has been no less prolific in spite of all his hardships and his originality, humour and unmatched industriousness Mark Twain, The Father of American Literature, has been a most controversial and compliant figure (only in the sense of providing such an inspiring string of examples in the sense of self-reliance) in his time and continues to be so even today. If at first his masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was criticized for the language and subject matter by both his contemporaries and later admirers (Ernest Hemingway would provide a notable example) for being trite and vulgar and even excoriated by public libraries such as the Concord Public Library in Massachusetts or New Yorks Brooklyn Public Library, recent controversy has been focused around racial matters. Critics are split between those regarding the portrayal of Jim as disparaging and as a consequence offensive and those who find Jims superstitious behaviour to be an indication of an alternative perception of our bond with nature, or a more powerful connection with our spiritual side, to say nothing of the steep dissonance between the Waspish past and the politically correct present. In Toni Morrisons Playing in the Dark, Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is analysed from the perspective of the importance of the Africanist presence, a presence much silenced and only timidly analyzed for decades. Discussed in terms of socio-historic development, the distinction between â€Å"black† and â€Å"white† themed by Twains novel reaches a peak in the mid-nineteenth century, as evidenced in Toni Morrisons interpretation. This can be verified by the juxtaposition between Jims utter love for his masters and the â€Å"baroque† (Morrison 57) torture Huck and Tom subject him to. The â€Å"white† line of argumentation is brilliantly outlined in Mark Twains masterpiece and shrewdly detected by Morrison, who finds Jim â€Å"unassertive, loving, irrational, passionate, dependent, inarticulate†, which is exactly how the â€Å"others† are perceived. The religious, scientific, political, cultural and societal practices were so fas hioned around the time when Mark Twain lived as to legitimate slavery and abuse. Starting from the assertion that white people around Jim seek forgiveness and supplication veritable keystone concepts in Christian religions which, however, did not extend to everyone, considering the hovering doubt about the existence of the soul of the â€Å"others†, they (i.e. religions through their cloistered leaders) instead providing convenient ways for turning a blind eye on slavery and even extermination on condition that he accept his inferiority. Thus, she argues, only a representative of the African-American race could have been painfully humiliated by children after being presented as a father and an adult, while no one, not even a white convict, could have been submitted to this kind of treatment. Toni Morrisons discourse is by no means vituperative: she does not intend any reversed oppression through her writing, either in Playing in the Dark or in any of her works of fiction. However, her writing is so compelling that when Beloved does not win her the National Book Award, as many as forty-eight African-American authors and critics write to the New York Times claiming her literary prowess, which afterwards earns her the laurels of the Pulitzer Prize, and rightly so. Her lack of bias is evident when she praises the former President Bill Clinton calling him the â€Å"first black President, since he displayed almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonalds-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas† (Cooke), while her discursive equanimity can be traced from the way she analyses the Africanist presence in literature and the way it is regarded from the perspective of its relationship to mainstream literature and criticism: Like thousands of avid but nonacademic readers, some powerful literary critics in the United States have never read, and are proud to say so, any African-American text. It seems to have done them no harm, presented them with no discernible limitations in the scope of their work or influence. I suspect, with much evidence to support the suspicion, that they will continue to flourish without any knowledge whatsoever of African-American literature. (Playing in the Dark 13) While she does not wish to challenge or criticise anyone for their views and choices, Toni Morrison cannot bear to look the other way when the literary Jim Crow era is still so fiercely enforced. That it might be convenient for anyone to ignore any slice of reality or exclude any of the fibres in the fabric of a nation is quite obvious, and while this approach does not impair our intellect, it does however limit our understanding. This selective interpretation of things which leaves Africanist representation in a cone of darkness is especially significant, since it underpins racism and it bolsters its moral justification, especially along the lines of racial formation: a deeply-seated phenomenon which pervades every aspect of life in America and a very hurtful process for those slighted by it. The relevance of racial formation is underscored throughout Toni Morrisons work and, in their extensive study entitled Racial Formation in the United States: from the 1960s to the 1990s, Michae l Omi and Howard Winant, the two American sociologists who developed racial formation theory, argue that race is an artificial concept, because the bases according to which any particular individual can be labelled as â€Å"white†, â€Å"black†, and so on, may start from certain biological traits, but race transcends these. To illustrate the point, a person of â€Å"mixed blood† is considered from the point of view of North American and then Latin American racial identification whereby the same categorization would have the same individual first â€Å"black† and then unable to â€Å"pass† as â€Å"black†. At the other extreme, Brazilian legislation is willing to accept the assignation of several racial categories to various members of the same family. In addition to being intricate and far-reaching, these considerations help provide grounding for our study of Toni Morrisons work and its impact on American literature and even life in America and also help account for the perception of other races by the early settlers, whose religious and even scientific tenets had to be broached to accommodate these â€Å"new† categories, such as the â€Å"noble savage,† and dispute the very existence of their soul. This blatant dismissal of a persons soul based solely on the abstract and arbitrary consideration of race is an outrage that Toni Morrison starkly exposes in Beloved, about which Susanna Rustin comments the following in â€Å"The Guardian†: It is a novel of unspeakable horrors. But even more than the physical brutality, Morrison confronts us with the irreparable harm done by what Margaret Atwood described in a review as one of the most viciously antifamily institutions human beings have ever devised, a system that sought to deprive human beings of what it is that makes them human. (Rustin) Sethe, her heroine, learns the truth and is shocked to realise that her masters, whom she is so devoted to, are taught to distinguish between her human and animal characteristics, which means, in other words, that she is but a soulless beast of burden. Thats when I stopped because I heard my name, and then I took a few steps to where I could see what they was doing. Schoolteacher was standing over one of them with one hand behind his back. He licked a forefinger a couple of times and turned a few pages. Slow. I was about to turn around and keep on my way to where the muslin was, when I heard him say, No, no. Thats not the way. I told you to put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones on the right. And dont forget to line them up. I commenced to walk backward, didnt even look behind me to find out where I was headed. I just kept lifting my feet and pushing back. When I bumped up against a tree my scalp was prickly. [] Flies settled all over your face, rubbing their hands. My head itched like the devil. Like somebody was sticking fine needles in my scalp. I never told Halle or nobody. (Beloved 224) This episode in Sethes existence can never be erased nor her pain alleviated. The suffering she is caused is absolute and boundless. Her feelings of outrage surge like torrents in her brain and she feels utterly discombobulated. This memory will forever haunt her; it will shape her future and her attitude towards life, her behaviour towards her children, and it will serve as a constantly open wound. Whats even more tragic is that this mind-boggling injustice spared no one: men, women, or children. Remembering his own price, down to the cent, that schoolteacher was able to get for him, he wondered what Sethes would have been. What had Baby Suggs been? How much did Halle owe, still, besides his labor? What did Mrs. Garner get for Paul F? More than nine hundred dollars? How much more? Ten dollars? Twenty? Schoolteacher would know. He knew the worth of everything. It accounted for the real sorrow in his voice when he pronounced Sixo unsuitable. (266) Proceeding along these lines of dehumanization, monetary worth is assigned to each individual and that is the extent of ones value when assessed by the slave owner. Reality is raw, harsh, and beyond shocking, but sugar-coating it would not help if we are to learn the truth about racism and racial formation. The accuracy of Toni Morrisons writing in spite of the degree of fictionalization is the keystone of her discourse. It is her head-on confrontation of the underlying reality that lends Toni Morrison her uniqueness and that has earned her in equal measure respect and criticism. Despite the narrative voices that assert their own individuality in Toni Morrisons works, Sam B. Girgus comments on present-day African-American literary discourse, finding it too elaborate, and somewhat digressive to the detriment of thematic concerns such as the daily life, values, sorrows, tragedies, successes, woes, accomplishments, and so forth. He argues his point by referring to African-American writers Toni Morrison and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: both Morrison and Gates typify qualities of ethnicity that are common to many of the writers in the literary and cultural renaissance under discussion. They all write in English even when extolling a particular vernacular speech, dialect, or region. They are all extremely sophisticated artists who use the most complex modern and postmodern techniques to convey their highly individualized visions of experience. Although rooted in ethnic communities and concrete historic situations, their works as cultural artifacts and products are nevertheless aspects of complicated technological and bureaucratic systems of cultural and social production that often differ from the language, values, and daily life of the cultures for which they speak. (Girgus 61) This may be so if we for instance pick up Toni Morrisons Pulitzer-awarded novel Beloved where we find passages of stream of consciousness, dialectal dialogue, flashbacks from the past and the conflation of past and present resulting in a destabilized horizon of racial and individual formation. Toni Morrisons formal education may have driven a wedge between herself and the culture she was born into and which she proudly represents, but she still manages to put together an incredible manifesto that reaches deeper truths and meanings with absolute valences. In her novel the three heroines mother and two daughters have overlapping individualities and they represent good and evil in equal measure. Their existences are nonlinear and they run both ways along the temporal axis. This is especially true of Sethe, the mother, whose past still haunts her and impacts greatly her present and future; an impact which extends to her family as well. The state of nonlinearity, conflation, and duality is also found in other novels, such as The Bluest Eye or Sula, in which the heroines manage to become displaced from their status, they are isolated from their respective families and friends, and are forced into pursuing painful valences of individuality. From this point of view, Toni Morrison herself manages to overreach her scope by challenging the perceptions, values, mores, and principles we are ingrained with by society and education. Agnes Suranyi, a contributor to â€Å"The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison†, edited by Justine Tally, expresses just such a view: â€Å"The borderline between decent women and man-eating prostitutes is erased; only the latter are capable of giving love to Pecola, whose quest for it elsewhere is futile.† (16-17). This view is of great significance because it epitomizes Toni Morrisons take on life: nothing in her work is â€Å"fed† to us already masticated; it is quite the c ontrary that occurs: we have to interpret the facts stated, the innuendoes, the streams of consciousness, the multifaceted and split personalities, their actions and inactions all by ourselves, through our own filters and open up to a more thorough interpretation that must override dated tenets.     Ã‚   Applying the above stated, upon perusing Toni Morrisons novel Beloved, one cannot miss the connection between melding and overlapping identities and the life of people struggling with racial formation and being forced into conformity and assimilation. This assertion is further reinforced by the fact that Sethe lived in the time of the Underground Railroad, a time which saw a sharp increase in the severity of punishments for escaping bondage. The tenseness of life on the black / white divide is passed on to later generations who carry on with their incessant frictions all the way to Martin Luther King Jr. and beyond. In a 2004 interview with Rachel Cooke for â€Å"The Observer† Toni Morrison successfully proves why the battle with racism is not yet over, in spite of all the things that have changed since the beginning of affirmative action. I dont pass without insults. Let me give you an example. I walk into the Waldorf Astoria in New York to check in. Were going to have a drink, and then my friend is going to go home. She stands behind me, as I check in. Finally, the guy says, Oh, are you registering too? He thought I was the maid. My friend was trembling with anger. It was so personal. But the irony of it was that I was on the cover of a magazine that month, and there were these posters with my face on them all over New York. (qtd. in â€Å"The Observer†) The Bluest Eye her debut novel for instance, has had its popularity delayed many a year precisely because of the stark way in which Toni Morrison approached taboo subjects and because she strived to prove that â€Å"black† did not equal â€Å"ugly†. Growing up is difficult and the girls in the novel find their race assignation which is no fault of theirs a difficult burden to carry around. They do not have the easier lives of the lighter-skinned people in their community and their perceived ugliness is a feature which gradually seeps into their consciousness to such a degree that it becomes overbearing. The validity of this externally-imposed ugliness is reinforced not only by the white members of society, but by the very families themselves. In Pecolas case, her own mother finds her daughter repulsive and troublesome, choosing to love a white child more than her own an unforgivable and heinous deed. But then the destabilization of identity is a practice quite comm on for Toni Morrison, and rightly so, because although identity is formed at an early stage in our existence, the vector of external factors leave multiple indelible marks upon the essence of our character. For Toni Morrisons characters the insurmountable obstacles they have to overcome take too great a toll on their resilience, which ultimately becomes defeated. This reciprocal allegoric relationship between private and collective (in this case racial) identity is a true-to-life representation of many generations of oppressed African-Americans and their struggles to survive in a disparaging mainstream society. In Sula, the African-American writer uses the Bottom as a twofold metaphor: on the one hand the location of this neighbourhood is on top of a hill which, as the slave owner explains to the slave, is the bottom of the world from where God is watching and from which â€Å"the blacks† took â€Å"small consolation in the fact that every day they could literally look down on the white folks† (11), while on the other we see little black girls being picked on by the most recent immigrants who themselves would endure abuse, thus continuing this loop which is closed by the proximity to God that the hills afford them. The ramifications do not stop here: it seems that in any place in the novel, any novel of Toni Morrisons, there is a starting point for a new insight, for a new interpretation, for a kernel of postmodernist truth about life and literature, for novel literary technique and what it entails for both the novel itself as a genre, as well as for the reader and his/her perception of things thats constantly being challenged, just like the readers matrix of social tenets and belief system. Possibly the best example of this is served by the story which inspired Toni Morrison to write Beloved, the story of the African-American woman who would rather kill her own daughter than suffer to have her returned to bondage. As Nellie Y. McKay, the co-editor alongside William L. Andrews of â€Å"Toni Morrisons Beloved A Casebook† states another critics point of view (i.e. Karla F. C. Holloway, writer of â€Å"Beloved: A Spiritual†), Toni Morrison really manages to come up with a fresh and reinvigorating approach   For example, with myth as a dominant feature of Beloved, Morrison not only reclaims the Garner story from those who interviewed her after her childs death and expressed enormous surprise at her calm but also, as mythmaker, achieves a complete revision of the episode. [] The oral and written history that Morrison revises, consciously and unconsciously felt, considers many aspects of each life and reflects an alternative perspective on reality. [] In addition, Morrison, like many other African and African-American writers, often defies the boundaries separating past, present, and future time. This allows her to free Beloved from the dominance of a history that would deny the merits of slave stories. As Morrisons creation, Beloved is not only Sethes dead child but the faces of all those lost in slavery, carrying in her the history of the sixty million and more. Holloway sees Beloved as a novel of inner vision: the reclamation of black spiritual histories. (15) As Morrison herself points out in the novel, the press has no interest in presenting the truth detachedly. It also does not concern itself with such â€Å"trite† topics as the abominable abuses of slavery and it does not give praise where praise is due. Instead, it engages in shameless hectoring of a mother who kills her own daughter. If taken out of context, we would expect it to do no less and, but for Toni Morrisons reframing and revamping of the story, we probably wouldnt have given the story a second thought. But we cannot be left to stand idle before such brazen hypocrisy as regarding Sethe more animal than human, and then a murderess guilty of a heinously premeditated act done whilst in full possession of her faculties. Furthermore, her case is stripped of context, just as the plethora of various other deeds similarly perpetrated as a result of extraordinary duress. This time around Morrison gives ample space to her heroine to justify her actions, while not allowing her , however, to be absolved of the guilt she must bear until the end, hence the muddled border between temporal references, actions, characters, and individualities, which again escape their expected linearity and contiguity. Perception is a fickle thing, especially when something is stretched, filtered, re-filtered, decoded and re-encoded, challenged and stereotyped and warped in every way imaginable. We cannot assert our identity as long as we are unable to find the appropriate compromise between the adoption and rejection of every aspect that is debatable and that can be transacted over this social Carrefour of exchanges. But, more importantly, we can no longer acquiesce in this moral comfort zone set out by society, which overshadows whole groups based on artificial considerations, especially when the relativism of the preceding adjective becomes too overbearing and too painful to stand. The point being made here is that while maybe artificial in essence, the segregation inflicted on these groups and others, as well (while Toni Morrison is clearly concerned with the African-American case, it cannot fail to be propitious to generalise an assertion that we should internalise already if we havent done so and apply to any case in which double standards might occur) is absorbed by those whose mental health is abused incessantly and whose resilience truly worn out and even suppressed. What Toni Morrison attempts is to sow the seeds of individual and discernible thought willing and capable enough to probe things deeper than the shallowness of their outward appearance. Toni Morrisons works are soul-wrench ing panegyrics dedicated to the memory of the former slaves and her contemporaries who were still enslaved through omission and discrimination, as well as a testimony of the noblest and most dedicated application of ones moral ideals. Chapter Two: The Importance of Family and Community in Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and Sula Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company. (nobelprize.org) It is no secret or surprise that, first family and then family and community, have the greatest impact on our personality, shaping and reshaping our existence, validating and supporting our preferences and choices or going to great lengths to lay stumbling blocks in our path towards achieving these. Furthermore, the conceptions and principles professed within familial confines are based on the patterned behaviour of ones surrounding environment. This, in turn is founded on what is deemed just and acceptable behaviour leading to harmony and cooperation and is related to civic duty. According to Freuds structural model of the psyche, the development of the human psyche is a three-stage process which corresponds to the three most important stages in our existence. In the first stage, the id, our psyche is so shaped as to want nothing but to fulfil its own needs and wishes, regardless of those of everyone else. Then, as we start learning to distinguish betwee

Effects of Donald Trumps Trade Policy

Effects of Donald Trumps Trade Policy Normative Effects and Prospects on President Donald Trump’s Protectionism Abstract A newly elected president of the United States of America, Donald Trump has been acknowledged for several radical policies. Concerns from all over the world for his protectionism has risen as he took steps to enforce policies. The United States has been reviewing free trade agreements (FTA) with numerous countries, attempting to impose a tax on foreign products so, domestic manufacturing industries could able to compete and outsell. In short term, it would create the instant profit. There were mainly two concepts of protectionism; imposing a tax on foreign products, and limiting the number of imported goods. However, there were professional worries internationally, even inside of this country as well. There were feasibilities to lose domestic corporations’ willingness to invest in research and development and competitiveness in other countries, resulting in degeneration of domestic industry. Foundation of Study Donald Trump’s Presidential election attracted worldwide attention. There are lots of views that are conflicting each other on the new U.S President’s political outlook. Protectionists argue that protection will lead to greater prosperity and strength (Merry, 2016). Trump’s base is profoundly suspicious of American engagement abroad. He opposed stubbornly of Clinton on foreign policy. He has doubted what the U.S. gets out of core alliances with NATO, Japan and South Korea (Powell, 2016). One the other hand, anti-protectionists assert that the changed policy will boost the rate of inflation and ultimately depress U.S exports. This new condition is an ill bode for the proposed twelve-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, designed to usher in a new generation of free-trade deals (Merry, 2016). This research examines how Trump’s shift in trade policy will affect U.S. Background of the Problem Protectionism is the opposite term with free trade that is trying to close and isolate its country by giving control, like taxing goods and services made from overseas. Trump wants to protect American manufacturers and workers by throwing away the free-trade principle. All of the policies regarding international trade, protectionism in this research, such as the decision to withdraw from the TPP, decision to renegotiate NAFTA and FTA, and decision to impose great amount of tariffs (Panchak, 2016), contain strength and weakness, and entail positive and negative impact on global economy: Therefore, politicians must undergo prudence process of thinking and meeting in every respect, includes (a) advantages on protectionism, (b) disadvantages on protectionism, (c) opposite policy’s merits and demerits (free trade), and (d) solution. Problem Statement The United States, as well as other various countries, had taken action to protect their home industries after the global financial debacle. The international financial crisis caused not only economic uncertainty about the world economy, but also delay on economic recovery after the global financial debacle. Especially, the United States posted a huge amount of trade deficit for several years (Hannon, 2016). Trump attributes the cause to other partner countries. For example, he blames that China had been manipulated their currency selfish interest, and exerts his pressure to administration to trading partners. â€Å"Donald Trump says he’ll declare soon after he takes office that China is a currency manipulator because it is devaluing the yuan against the dollar. He may want to rethink that. These days China is intervening in the capital markets to prevent the yuan from going into free fall. The currency is now close to an eight-year low, down 12% from its peak in January 2014 (Wall Street, 2016).† Today’s enthusiastic debate over US trade policy with the vast tariff debate of the late 19th century. The 2016 presidential campaign trumpets the return of protectionism. Mirroring the paranoia of Republicans past, those who support free trade initiatives are now charged with being part of a great conspiracy to attenuate American democracy (Palen, 2016). The central research question examined in this study is the following: How will the revised policies, originated from â€Å"Make America Great Again† campaign, affect the U.S and other countries? Presentations of Findings Protectionism helps domestic industry in competition by charging high imported tax to foreign products. There is unfortunate story that imports killing the Mon Valley caused by the free trade. It states, â€Å"The more I read of local businesses and factories shutting down, workers being laid off, towns dying as imports soared. The more I began to ask myself, the price of free trade in painful† (Merry, 2016). However, Protectionism’s negative effects would hit even more to the U.S. – the world’s largest economy – while restricting export markets, increasing prices of imported goods and services for consumers and producers. Even for the U.S., three quarters of the world market in financial terms, and 95 percent of the world’s customers in people terms, lies outside its borders, it is not just a domestic matter. A protectionist U.S. economy focused only on its domestic market can never match the advantages of orientation to a global economy. Fo r Germany, 95 percent of its potential market is outside its borders, for Brazil 97 percent, for Australia 98 percent, and for Thailand over 99 percent. Such countries, therefore, applaud Xi Jinping’s unequivocal defense of globalization, not because of deference to China but from national self-interest because globalization really is â€Å"win-win† (Ross, 2017). One of the most important factor when choosing products among different brands, price takes a key role. No one would not want to pay more for the same quality of goods. For example, if the custom of the United States of the America imposes to the automobile of the Japan, not many customers want to buy Toyota’s Camry for forty thousand dollars when you could have Ford’s Fusion with the half price of Japanese cars’. In a first glance, it looks feasible and domestic companies gain the advantages in competition. However, there is a possibility that domestic corporations lose the willingness to invest in research and development (R&D) because they do not need them. If you can win the competition with less or no efforts, you do not want to struggle in R&D. There is an English example in the early era of the car industry. In England, when the automobile was developed in the 1990s, horse cars and automobile were competing. Due to the repulsion of horse car owners, the House of Parliament enacts the law limiting the speed of automobile that cars cannot outrun the horse cars. The law had been enforced for twenty years, leading the failure to compete in the automobile industry. This example does not relate with the protectionism, but it gives a lesson when there is no competition, the competitiveness do not get stronger nor stay the same, it degenerates. In order to remain our competitiveness, ironically, domestic companies should struggle with others. Worse thing than losing competitiveness is other countries can do what we do. If we can impose taxes on foreign imports, they also can impose taxes on American products. Smooth-Hawley Tariff of 1930, for instance, which raised duties on some twenty thousand imported goods, in some instances to record levels. American economists had petitioned the president to veto the bill as economic poison. â€Å"Countries cannot permanently buy from us unless they are permitted to sell to us,† said the economists, echoing the views of that rustic Texan, Roger Mills, and the more we restrict the importation of goods from them by means of even higher tariffs the more we reduce the possibility of our exporting to them (Merry, 2016). Furthermore, we are already losing money on foreign markets, and if we lose our competitiveness for imposed taxes, we would never compete with anyone. The functioning structure of American economy is not supported by manufacturing. We make fortune from the Informat ion Technology (IT), out of state technologies, and finance. For example, Trump administration is reviewing the FTA between South Korea and the United States. We think we are not making fortune for the military we offer for them, and the products we export to them. Stupidly, it is not true that even though we are losing a fortune in trading our goods, but we sell our weapons. I am not talking about small firearms, but I am talking about the fighter flights, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems and so on. The deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense is in South Korea. The approval of the South Korean government to deploy  THAAD  in the country in response to the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test of North Korea (LEE, 2017). At the end, we win the war while we lost some battles, losing hundreds of million dollars while earning hundreds of billion dollars. For another example, Mexico is currently the 3rd largest goods trading partner of the US, w ith $531 billion in bilateral goods trade during 2015. Goods exports totaled $236 billion; goods imports totaled $295 billion. â€Å"Interestingly, 40 per cent of the parts in a typical Mexican product originate in US, illustrating that Mexico (and other countries such as Canada) are integrated into the US global supply chains, according to the Commerce Department. Hence, around 6 million US jobs depend on trade just with Mexico, according to the US Chamber of Commerce. Thus, tariffs on Mexican products could ultimately lead to loss of jobs in the US and degenerate the US economy, in addition to the impact on consumers (Shawn, 2017). There is a way to implement the protectionism that limiting the number of foreign goods. If there is a limit of the number of imports, there are limits of the fortune that the foreign countries would make. Likewise, it is a very shortsighted idea, resulting in degeneration of domestic industry again. The invisible hand is well-known terminology for the free market that the economy is controlled by the supply and the demand. Every time the government tried to manipulate for its own favor, the results did not follow the expectation like a football ball. Multiple economists and analysts expressed their pessimism about the potential benefits of protectionism, a trend that is expected to increase in line with populist political movements in Europe and the US. â€Å"Past practice shows that trade protection is both costly and ineffective. High tariffs translate into higher prices both for consumers and companies. Protectionism disproportionately hurts poorer households who spend a greater share of income on traded goods,† said Gary Hufbauer, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and former deputy assistant secretary for international trade and investment policy of the US Treasury (Shawn, 2017). There is a point that the United States was a young and lively nation, rich in resources and geographical advantages, populated by a robust and expansionist people, beneficially situated upon the American continent, facing two oceans. Its destiny seemed secure irrespective of fiscal policies at any given time or the political passions unleashed by the tariff issue (Merry, 2016). Reflections Trumps protectionism would lead negative impacts on domestic and international industries. We must think if we can do on foreign goods, then they also can do on domestic exports like imposing taxes or limiting the number of products. I admire his effort to vitalize United States’ economy with politics, however, his protectionism has too many risks that might result in the collapse of the economy like the one of Japan in the late 1990’s. There was a long-term stagnation and instability of the Japanese economy in the 1990s (so called â€Å"lost decade†). Especially of the protracted deflation and insufficient final domestic consumption, the asset price bubble collapse at the beginning of the 1990s has probably activated and amplified impacts of other complicated processes in the economy. The blast of the bubble has negatively impacted both Japanese financial sector and production and investment activity of Japanese companies and so on (Zuzana, 2012). It is not the government who make decisions to make the America great again with the strong economy, but it is the corporate themselves with lots of creative ideas and competitiveness to compete with foreign businesses. Conclusion To sum up, such a considerable alteration in policy, strategy and tactics will hardly be easy. It will meet strong headwinds in today’s domestic political climate (Ezrati, 2016). We do not know the consequences of our protectionism policy to the domestic economy and international markets. Although there are concerning voices against the policy, quoting trial and error of foreign countries, we would not know the results until we know the result. Some dislike not the only protectionism for losing our ability to fight against others, but also eventually we lose the competition at the end as result of a negative cycle of degeneration induced from eliminated benefits from the fair competition. These might be the reasonable concerns, however, we cannot ignore the instant impact the protectionism would have to our economy because the crowd has spoken with the media of vote. Trump was elected thanks to his radical policies, including the protectionism, and that is what the majority of people want in the United States. As the president of this country, he has to implement what he promised to us during the election. If the protectionism is going to lead bad sequences of our economy, he should reconsider the foreign policies but that is not the end of his job. He needs to come up with different policies pertaining to both domestic and international businesses to facilitate to get out from the era of economic depression. When you watch the news, there are still protestors against Trumps administration, nevertheless, if he can make America great again, the voices against him would disappear along with the concerns questioning his ability as our president. Politics and economy are like betting for the gamble. Even though you have all data and calculated expectation, still players bet for the probabilities. What they do is eliminate the unlikelihood and maximize the probability of what they bet. Protectionism is a gigantic bet playing where participants are coming from the all of the worlds. Alea Iacta Est; it is a dice is cast in Latin. Trump’s protectionism would have impacts on the domestic economy and foreign countries. We do not know the future yet hope these policies make America great again. References Ezrati, M. (2016). Defending free trade. National Interest, 144, 51-55. Hannon, P. (2016, November 26). Global trade rebound threatened by protectionism after trump victory. Wall Street Journal, 1. LEE, B. (2017). THAAD deployment in South Korea. Harvard International Review, 38, 34-37. Merry, R. W. (2016). Protectionism in America. National Interest, 146, 28-36. Palen. M (2016). The return of protectionism. History Today, 66, 6. Panchak, P. (2016). Trump and trade. Industry Week/IW, 265, 6. POWELL, B. (2016). How’s that gram you?. Newsweek Global, 167, 12-15. Ross, J. (2017). Weeks when decades happen: Global thought leadership passes from the U.S. to China at Davos. China Today, 66, 40-43. Shawn, T. (2017). The promise and the peril of the Trump economy.  Fortune, 175. Zuzana, S. (2012). Japan’s lost decade: On the development of the Japanese economy in the 1990s.  Journal of International Relations,  4. (2016). Trump’s Chinese currency manipulation. Wall Street Journal.