Here are three postings that a student completed in this course several years ago. The student went from a "-" to an "=" to a "+" in eight weeks of posting.

Posting #1: Assessed at a 2.0
The Native American shift in gender roles was a change made out of the need to survive. For hundreds of years Native peoples have lived off the land. They have worked it, taken care of it and respected it. Until the arrival of Europeans land was always treated the same by all indigenous people. Everyone understood the importance of the land and what it could produce for them when given the opportunity.

The Native Men were working with the U.S. Government to try and keep the land so that the women could continue to work it. This hurt them because it forced the Native people to become “Americanized” they had to live as the Europeans did. Specifically, the Cherokee women lacked the economic resources and military might to exercise political power. They weren't able to exert their power like before.

The shift finally occurred when women were taken out of the fields and placed only in the homes to work. This change was encouraged by missionaries and people of high society. No longer were women regarded with high importance now only men had importance so it changed their entire way of living. Now the women who worked so hard to build so much were regarded only as domestic maids instead of equal partners and individuals who had the ability to give life by “…pulling children out of their bodies…” (paraphrased pg 94)

Posting #2: Assessed at 3.2
I would like to address question 4 and the importance of keeping men as active parts of family life. In doing this I will begin to examine some examples of men as inactive parts of family life and the repercussions that followed. We see evidence in both our texts that the use of slaves as “human chattel” as a regular occurrence.

Slaves often desired a “normal,” stable family structure but slaveholders prevented them from achieving it. Slave owners often wanted reproduction to occur so quickly that they encouraged or even forced men and women to form new relationships (breeding) as quickly as possible. In these cases, women and men could not form strong, loving relationships. Because women were forced to allow polygamy it filled the family relations that remained with much discord and tension. “…such overwhelming problems, some slave couples responded in ways that further augmented the destruction of their marriages and familiesThen, slaveholders sold men more often then women, and had little regard for connections of the fathers as opposed to the mothers (Stevenson 54). This pushed men away from the family structure because children stayed either with their mothers in the field or with the elderly. Finally, slaveholders and overseers sometimes raped or coerced slave women into having sex, preventing men from serving in their traditional "protective" role (Stevenson 56). Alcoholism, domestic violence….”(Stevenson 53) all contributed to the turmoil within the home.

Stevnson demonstrates the importance of both slave parents involved in a child’s upbringing. First, men's presence fit with the larger society's ideal of a "proper" family. Second, fathers could provide economic resources for the family. Third, the father could provide balance and support for the mother. The marginal role of fathers caused resentment, discontentment and tore apart the “slave family” piece by piece, family by family. And in the long run it changed family structure from that of being dependant on the father/male figure to a more independent generation of women, which had mixed effects.

Posting #3: Assessed at 3.8
As Brown argues, Southern Black women’s actions were an extension of their historical communal lifestyle. They did not define their freedom on individualistic or market-oriented terms. They brought to the table a sense of collective, community participation and operated out of a “notion of community; wherein all-men, women, and children; freeborn and formerly slave; native and migrant –had inherent rights and responsibilities requiring no higher authority than their commitment to each other” (Catch, 138). Southern Black women's actions were a response to the historical conditions of the time, allowing them to survive the brutalities of the South after Reconstruction. However, while this approach made sense for the community's survival, it may have a negative effect on individuals.

Southern Black women's communal approach provided them with access to limited political power. Brown argues, pretty starkly, that the women "...understood that there was no such thing as individual action” (Catch, 136). The issue was not for “autonomy but responsibility,” and they viewed black men’s voting as a “new freedom that they had all achieved by turning the occasion into a public festival and celebration (Catch, 137). Southern Black women were giving up claims to individual power for collective power. As Brown argues, they held that the ballot was “collectively owned" and not the sole property of men (Catch, 129). This rationale came from their thinking about community/family members as a collective responsibility that had to be maintained from generation to generation (Catch 125). It “extended past blood ties with a mutual and continuing responsibility” to help one another prepare for hard times (Catch, 125). It was an approach intended to protect an oppressed people from terrible conditions for a long time.

But it's important to ask how this approach impacted individuals, especially those who wanted to better themselves or their families. As Goldberg notes in An Army of Women, German women sacrificed individual gains for collective good (Goldberg, 57). Their community survived while Ango communities did not, but many Anglo women were educated and had access to better jobs and lives, unlike German women. Interestingly, Brown also notes that many Black women saved money so that their children could be educated. She doesn't explain how this type of sacrifice for the betterment of an individual family member fit with the desire to support the collective over the individual. Brown suggests that Southern Blacks' desire to support the community might have come at the cost of individual initiative and advancement. She seems to think this is a good thing, given the pressures on Black Southerners, but it might not have seemed that way to young Black women and men, and their mothers, who wanted them to succeed.

© 2001 Michael Lewis Goldberg: intellectual property information

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