Bonjour,
Je passe mes oraux d'anglais mercredi et j'aimerais s'avoir si quelqu'un pouvait corriger mes synthèses et me donner son avis?
Merci d'avance.

The idea of progress


I’m going to talk about the notion of “idea of progress”. I decided to approach the notion from a social point of view, because in the context of my English classes we have focused on blacks in diverse period of the history.
Thus, I have raised the following question: What has been the evolution of the Black man in the history of United States?


First things first, let’s talk about slavery. Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. In fact, in the early 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants. Black slaves worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast. As we can see in the movie “12 years a slave” that I’ve seen last year, slaves were treated like beasts. They were bought by owners who did not hesitate to beat them sometimes until their death. At the time, people did not consider black men as humans. It will be necessary to await the arrival to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln so that finally the slavery is abolished with the 13th amendment in 1865.

However, Blacks were far from victory. Indeed, a group met in 1865 to form a secret society of white men, dedicated to resisting laws giving blacks the same rights as white; called Ku Klux Klan. Members wore white robes with hoods to hide their faces. The Klan, used terrorist tactics, as coming out at night in their white robes and sometimes carrying fiery torches. Klan members beat and murdered people whom they opposed, hanging by the neck from a tree was a common method of lynching opponents. This method inspired the poem Strange Fruit de Abel Meeropol in 1937, which is transformed into song by Billie Holliday in 1939. Moreover, 11 years later the South introduced Jim Crow’s laws. These laws were aimed at recreating a system in which the black man would no longer be free, but again inferior to the white man. It was the birth of segregation and in the South, lynching became a real tradition for Blacks. Nonetheless, thanks to some people like Rosa Parks who is known because she refused to give up her seat as Jim Crow’s laws demanded or Martin Luther King who is known for his famous speech “I have a dream” in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the condition of Blacks has evolved. They achieve their missions because in 1964, the president Johnson signed the Civil Right Act which gives to Blacks same rights as Whites.

Finally, and it's quite ironic given the history of the US with blacks, but on November 4, 2008, Barack Obama, a black man, is elected president of the USA. However, in his speech on race that we have listen in class, he is aware that it is not because he is elected president that America has completely changed. It reminds us that racism and discrimination, although less visible than before, still exist.


To conclude, I will say, that today, many people think that the world had involved enough in social terms, and that the only progress to do is in sciences. But they are wrong, they are again social progress to make. Indeed in 2017, there are still 19 unarmed black men killed by police in the USA.