California endures as the world’s leading center of technological innovation because of its exceptional universities, skilled workforce, access to capital and a culture that rewards bold thinking. These advantages have helped California companies develop lifesaving medicines, cleaner energy and technologies that improve daily life.
Author argues that tax impositions on these industries will impact significant areas of citizens' lives, such as medicine, environmental concerns, and technology
On March 9, 1892, there were lynched in this same city three of the best specimens of young since-the-war Afro-American manhood. They were peaceful, law-abiding citizens and energetic business men.
notice Ida B. Wells' contrast in language; the intentional word choices that humanize the Black men lynched and the centering of their experiences
If the Negroes as a people possessed a hundredth part of the self-respect which is evidenced by the courteous bearing of some that the Scimitar could name, the friction between the races would be reduced to a minimum
Falsely frames incidents of racialized and anti-Black violence as a manifestation of Black people's poor behavior towards whites rather than a long-standing legacy of institutions, laws and polices, cultural attitudes and beliefs, traditions, and practices that are intentionally designed to maintain a violent dichotomy between the superior white people and inferior Blacks (non-people)
The innocent must suffer for the guilty.
yet they still must be punished because Blackness, in itself, is an offense to a white supremacist society
There are well-bred Negroes among us, and it is truly unfortunate that they should have to pay, even in part, the penalty of the offenses committed by the baser sort, but this is the way of the world.
'the good ones' specifically the ones that exist, in some capacity, outside the negative racialized and anti-Black images, stereotypes, and narratives, simply because their existence does not radically disturb the systems and institutions that remain whiteness as instrincally superior
But neither laws nor lynchings can subdue his lusts. Sooner or later it will force a crisis. We do not know in what form it will come.
This false framing of reality of both the Black man and wider Black community's relationship to its racial terrors (and the wider institutions and systems of anti-Blackness) perpetuates the idea that: a) Black men are inherently morally and sexually bankrupt, and they will stop at nothing to fulfill their desires to rape and b) that Black men and people are not utterly terrified, disturbed, and traumatized by the racially violent laws and lynchings
There is no longer a restraint upon the brute passion of the Negro.
perpetuate this idea that was propagated in the Birth Of A Nation Film, which was: chattel slavery was a justified and necessary institution because it kept a population of the most sexually, morally, and intellectually bankrupt population of "people" restrained from disrupting civility, organization, and safety of society and its people (specifically the most vulnerable group --- white women"
This continued darkness was oppressive.
"seemed" is an important choice of words. This relates to Jenn M. Johnson's concept of freedom and the in-between area of it. Harriet Jacobs suggests with this choice of word that this experience appeared as oppressive initially and but no longer appeared as such when faced with a new perspective
Joseph Wright of Derby, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, 1768.
look up this artist - what is your interpretation of this scene? what formal techniques are employed to achieve this vision/intention? do research on the cultural and socio-policital climate of this era, what was the pre-dominant subject of this artist's paintings and how did the subject matter/technique/medium, etc. evolve (or not evolve?) , identify why this painting is relevant to the conversation of "awe" and "absurdity"