Historical lenses and history's value

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HIS 100 Multimedia Presentation Planning Worksheet

Part 1: Brainstorming

Instructions: Brainstorm your thoughts on each question in preparation for creating an outline of your multimedia presentation, including specific examples as appropriate.

State three historical lenses that could be applied to your topic and explain how each lens can be applied.

Describe how one of the lenses you just identified might change how the Historical Context and Introduction you previously submitted in Project 2 were written.

Discuss the conclusions you can draw from thinking about how history is told. Consider how historians are persuaded by their own biases, motivations, and influences of their time.

Describe how your research of a historical topic can help you understand contemporary issues, and try to list at least two related contemporary issues

After taking this course, what do you think about the statement “history repeats itself”? Do you think this is accurate? What information from the course guides you to this conclusion?

Discuss your obligation as a citizen of your society to understand the history behind issues that impact you every day.

1. Social lens-Since apartheid was created on the basis of race and social class where the 1950 Act of populations registration categorized South Africans according to race with the aim of a making other races superior, a social lens can be applied. Population registration according to race and consequently class led to a social structure that disadvantages blacks in social programs.

2. Political lens- To create a social structure that disadvantaged blacks the apartheid government depended on their state legislation powers in politics. As Orten(2015) points out to assist the enforcement of apartheid, government reinforced the subsisting pass law that require blacks to carry documentation authorizing their documentation within restricted areas. A political lens unearths the role of politics in allowing a minority to subject a majority.

3. Economic lens- An economic lens could be applied to the topic where one could associate the need for race as one based on economic reasons. By restricting African from jobs, educational standards and national administration whites would be able to advance their economic interests without competition.

Taking an Economic lens on the introduction In provided in the submitted project two would change the context of the paper with evidence applied remaining the same. An Economic lens, would bring out the whites in south Africa as a people driven by the selfish interest of wealth accommodation. To advance their economic interest and maintain them the whites needed to hijack South Africa political systems thereby using legislation to create social segregation basedon race, thereby using legislative restrictions to establish differences in class that would maintain their wealthy positions. In this lens, strong economic positions do not come after race and class segregation but before where economic interest of the power of wealth drove whites into ideologies of racism and class.

Environmental influence, motivation or even personal biases may affect how individuals interpret history at a given point in time. For instance environmental circumstance, say of the audience, can influence and motivate one to interpret history from the social, economic or political perspectives. Additionally, factors in the personal life of a historian may affect his point of view making it bias. For instance a historian in a society comfortable with racial oppression may fail to see the dark side of apartheid

Research on the historical matters provides a view of human pattern of all humanity during different times. Learning such patterns provides reasons for current patterns while still providing evidence of past human patterns that led to mistakes. As result historical research opens the contemporary world to the common mistakes and weaknesses of man, his illusions like that of power allowing them to develop better patterns based on informed decisions, in a bid to change outcomes.For instance, from the apartheid, it is evident that the ethnic division between black and whites could be based on the fact that blacks remain uneducated.

From the readings o the course and exploration ofmy topic on apartheid I believe the statement history repeats itself is accurate. The course emphasizes the fact that exploration of historicalevents allows as to examine modern society’s problems by making an evidence-based comparison to the past thereby proposing informed logical solutions. The notion is true since analysis of apartheid unearths similar patterns of oppression for Black Americans in the US. The fact thatprice for education is as high for the whites as for blacks who and economically disadvantagedstart due to slavery, shows that the system is restricting blacks from an education that will improve their social, political and economic positions.

I believe it is my obligation as a citizen of my society to understand historical patterns on issues that impact you every day. Understanding of historical patterns of issues within my society will allow me to educate others through text, howcertain societal patterns have an already established outcome. In this way, societal members world be able to make decisions proven to make the society better or rather abandon issues that have historically proven detrimental to society.

Reference

Orten, J. D. (2015). Similarities and Difference in the US and South Africa Civil Rights Struggles. Journal of Social Work.

Part 2: Outline

Slide Title

Slide Text

Slide Visuals and Audio Ideas

Historical Lenses and History’s Value

· Historical lenses and the types of historical lenses i.e.:

· Social Lens

· Political lens

· Economic lens

· Value of historical lenses:

· How historians could interpret texts in different perspective based on lenses.

· How the current environment could shape a historians interpretation by influencing the lens or motivating bias

A picture that present he idea of illusion depending on the angle one choses to view it, or the position he is in when viewing.

My Topic

Apartheid

After the world War 2 apartheid was introduced by National party in South Africa as an extension of policy of racial segregation. Apartheid was based on a social structure meat to disadvantage blacks by hijacking of state legislatures to enact laws that strengthened black oppression through restrictions.

Political cartoon mocking how social restrictions such as education meant damnation of blacks from national administration.

Three Historical Lenses

The three lenses to view how apartheid was achieved from many complimentary angles:

· Social lens,

· Political lens

· Economic lens

· Social lens- picture showing the restriction of black from essential public life

· Political lens- picture showing legislatures approval of racially restrictive laws.

· Economic lens- picture showing the immense wealth gap between whites and blacks.

Lens 1

Social lens

· Laws encompassed geographical segregation of residential areas, schools, public parks, jails and cemeteries (Orten, 2015).

· Introduced distinct educational standards

· Limited form of jobs

· Pictures of blacks segregated in residential areas, work places and school.

Lens 2

Political lens

· To enforce apartheid, the governmentreinforced the subsisting laws passing that required blacks to carry documentation to authorizing access to restricted areas (Orten, 2015).

· Whites used strong state and national legislature positions to enforce ideologies of race and class towards blacks.

· Similar to the US, racial segregation was made official through Black codes(Serdar Onek).

YouTube video showing comparison of Apartheid legislature an American black code legislature to enforce racial segregation.

Lens 3

Economic lens

· Apartheid may be argued to be motivated by economic interests rather than color prejudice.

· Unskilled labor attracting less wages

· As Lowenberg (2014) points out the enforcement of apartheid was responsive to changes in exogenous variables such as defense costs, the gold price and reservation wage of black unskilled labor.

· A picture of the residential areas of whites compared to that of blacks.

· A picture of blacks working in Gold mines

Historical Narrative

· How World war 2 highlighted issues of racism, which resulted in the world calling for the decolonization and turning away of such regulations (Lucas, 2018)

· How the National party in South Africa followed that call by extension of policies of racial segregation.

· How apartheid compares to racial segregation of US through use of legislature to restrict blacks (Serdar Ornek).

· Segregation from residential areas, schools, public parks, jails and cemeteries (Orten, 2015).

Short YouTube video on the history of Apartheid in South Africa

Our Lives

The marks drawn by apartheid are still visible on the “free” South African society and it is important the he government and its people work towards elimination of thesemarks. From the social, political and economic lens, apartheid was unjust to the people of South Africa, but the current society should not allow that unjustness to persist beyond its time:

· Xenophobia is such a fruit of the tree of apartheid and South African should use historical lessons to confront it.

· Are or fellow Africa really the source of our troubles? Should we look further within ourselves to create a new world?

Pictures of South Africans protesting against fellow African as those who have caused their suffering.

History’s Value

The history of South Africa and Apartheid provides South African people with the opportunity of self-reflection to ensure that they do not make the mistakes they were forced to make by apartheid when they are free. Therefore history has the value of providing solution modern issues as people learn from the outcome of previous experiences.

· For instance, Since Apartheid stopped South Africans from economic and political development by restricting them from education, is education the solution?

“The complaint of Africans ... is not only that they are poor and the whites are rich, but that the laws which are made by the whites are designed to preserve this situation. There are two ways to break out of poverty. The first is by formal education, and the second is by the worker acquiring a greater skill at his work and thus higher wages.” Nelson Mandela

Does History Repeat Itself? My Opinion

From the onset, a comparison of apartheid events and current event show that history has a way of repeating itself when a community fails to implement lessons from similar historical patterns.

· For instance, Xenophobic attacks show that South Africans economically disadvantaged in their own country thus restriction from life some public life.

· Is the economic restriction of apartheid similar to the current one due to a lack of education?

Current Pictures of parents subjecting children to manual labor rather than sending them to school for better education.

Does History Repeat Itself? Evidence From the Course

Evidence from the course:

· In 1865 the South part of America uses Black codes (legislature) to segregate Blacks from public life thus subjecting them to ideologies of race and class.

· After World War 2, South Africa National Party enforces legislature to reinforce racial segregation.

· In the current world, strict tuition laws including that on studentloans, means the Blacks who have an economically disadvantaged start point cannot afford school, leading to them lagging behind in terms of class.

YouTube Video of Hasan Minhaj calling out US congress on student loans.

Are Citizens Obligated to Know History?

· Since history ensures that the human race learns from its mistakes, it is essential for every citizen to learn history to educate themselves and others on the importance of breaking the history repeats itself tag.

· Learning and education others about history will ensure ethnical coexistence where every human is subject to equality.

· Failure of using history to inform their decisions could lead to another World War

· Political statements of People believing that Trump’s irrational foreign policy could till the balance of world’s peace.

References

Lowenberg, A. D. (2014). An economic model of the apartheid state. Economic History of Developing Regions, 29(2), 146-169. Lucas, E. T. (2018). Apartheid. Salem Press Encyclopedia. Orten, J. D. (2015). Similarities and Difference in the US and South Africa Civil Rights Struggles. Journal of Social Work. Serdar Ornek, F. K. (n.d.). A Comparison between The Segregation Policy against African Americans and the Apartheid Poicy. 2014.https://www.history.com/topics/africa/apartheid

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