Franz Kafka s The Penal Colony Essay - 1835 Words

In Franz Kafka’s â€Å"In the Penal Colony,† there is no presumption of innocence whatsoever; there is only presumption. â€Å"Innocent until proven guilty.† This presumption of innocence is considered to be the foundation of a civilized criminal justice system, as well as within the fundamental rights of mankind. The Officer says that â€Å"guilt is never to be doubted,† and because he was ordained the judge of the penal colony, there is no proper trial or â€Å"due process† needed, as all are guilty in the eyes of the one who judges (Kafka, p.198). If the punishments delivered to the guilty were less severe, than there would perhaps be fewer qualms about the system, however the â€Å"justice† dispensed by the machine is nowhere near reasonable or humane, dispensing grievous punishments that far exceed most crimes to those who are condemned. However, it is important to remember that the apparatus and its function are simply an extension of t he ideology of the Old Commandant and the Officer who are the true punishers. The punishments the officer administers through the device to the condemned seem to be an example of just one of the two types of justice criticized in the text. The first type of â€Å"justice† is the excruciating suffering wrought by the officer and Old Commandant through the apparatus upon the â€Å"naturally† guilty, almost like divine punishment raining down from the heavens to strike down sinners. The other â€Å"justice† is the presumption of innocence and civilized law and order of liberalShow MoreRelatedThe Ideologies Of His Works Essay1551 Words   |  7 Pagesnot voice his ideologies on the Slavic culture, Jewish existence, and bureaucratic system ; however, he still managed to mirror his perceptions of his society in his works. Kafka was born on July 3,1883 and raised in Prague, Bohemia. In the 1900s, societies structured their family through the patriarchal system. Franz Kafka was the first born of six children, consequently, forcing him to shoulder most of the responsibilities and discipline that come with being an eldest child. Kafka’s father inRead MoreAnalysis Of Franz Kafka s Life1811 Words   |  8 Pagesphilosophy that is often analyzed through literature. Franz Kafka is a key example of the limitless nature of this theme as his many works are divisive in how they connect with existentialism. Kafka is a unique storyteller and his stories have captivated generations since their publications. His background is important in understanding his seeming detachment from his writing. Kafka’s life is described by Ritchie Robertson in â€Å"Biography of Franz Kafka† as â€Å"strikingly ordinary† with the only notable commentaryRead MoreFranz Kafka s Life And Work1738 Words   |  7 PagesAuthor Franz Kafka was born on the third of July, 1883, as the oldest child of Hermann Kafka and his wife Julie in Prague. His family from the fathers side was from Sà ¼dbà ¶hmen und moved later on to Prague. His mother was originally from a wealthy and popular german-jewish family. His father grew up in a part of the tschechisch-jewish part in Milieu, but the family was more orientated at the german speaking culture in Prague, like everyone else in this time at this place. Kafka had three youngerRead MoreExistentialism vs Essentialism23287 Words   |  94 PagesThe philosophy that encompasses the absurd is referred to as  absurdism. While absurdism may be considered a branch of existentialism, it is a specific idea that is not necessary to an existentialist view. * It s easy to highlight the absurdity of the human quest for purpose. It s common to assume that everything must have a purpose, a higher reason for existence. However, if one thing has a higher purpose, what is the reason for that purpose? Each new height must then be validated by a higherRead MoreThis Tournament Goes to Eleven4982 Words   |  20 Pagesforehead and has characters called The Traveler, The Solider, The Inscriber, and The Condemned. The latter endures a torture device that carves into the skin of prisoners before they die. In the Penal Colony was written by, For 10 points, what author of Amerika, The Trial, and The Metamorphosis. ANSWER: Franz Kafka 5. He composed the lines Youth will have needs dalliance / Of good or ill some pastance in the song Pastime with Good Company, and railed against Martin Luther in the treatise Assertio

Computer Ethics and Information Systems Free Essays

string(81) " to wait for your turn and generally be nice to other people in the environment\." â€Å"Computer Ethics and Information Security† a. Introduction The consideration of computer ethics fundamentally emerged with the birth of computers. There was concern right away that computers would be used inappropriately to the detriment of society compromising information security, or that they would replace humans in many jobs, resulting in widespread job loss. We will write a custom essay sample on Computer Ethics and Information Systems or any similar topic only for you Order Now Ethics- Guidelines or rules of conduct that govern our lives, work, behavior and communication in both public and private undertaking. Ethics are a set of moral principles that govern an individual or a group on what is acceptable behaviour while using a computer. Computer ethics is a set of moral principles that govern the usage of computers. One of the common issues of computer ethics is violation of copyright issues. Duplicating copyrighted content without the author’s approval, accessing personal information of others are some of the examples that violate ethical principles. Security – is the degree of protection to safeguard a nation, union of nations, persons or person against danger, damage, loss, and crime. Security as a form of protection are structures and processes that provide or improve security as a condition. Information security means protecting information and information systems from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, perusal, inspection, recording or destruction Computer Ethics- is a branch of practical philosophy which deals with how computing professionals should make decisions regarding professional and social conduct. b. Discussion Computer Ethics Ethics deals with placing a â€Å"value† on acts according to whether they are â€Å"good† or â€Å"bad†. Every society has its rules about whether certain acts are ethical or not. These rules have been established as a result of consensus in society and are often written into laws. When computers first began to be used in society at large, the absence of ethical standards about their use and related issues caused some problems. However, as their use became widespread in every facet of our lives, discussions in computer ethics resulted in some kind of a consensus. Today, many of these rules have been formulated as laws, either national or international. Computer crimes and computer fraud are now common terms. There are laws against them, and veryone is responsible for knowing what constitutes computer crime and computer fraud. The Ten Commandments of computer ethics have been defined by the Computer Ethics Institute. Here is our interpretation of them: 1) Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people: If it is unethical to harm people by making a bomb, for example, it is equally bad to write a program that handles the timing of the bomb. Or, to put it more simply, if it is bad to steal and destroy other people’s books and notebooks, it is equally bad to access and destroy their files. ) Thou shalt not interfere with other people’s computer work: Computer viruses are small programs that disrupt other people’s computer work by destroying their files, taking huge amounts of computer time or memory, or by simply displaying annoying messages. Generating and consciously spreading computer viruses is unethical. 3) Thou shalt not snoop around in other people’s files: Reading other people’s e-mail messages is as bad as opening and reading their letters: This is invading their privacy. Obtaining other people’s non-public files should be judged the same way as breaking into their rooms and stealing their documents. Text documents on the Internet may be protected by encryption. 4) Thou shalt not use a computer to steal: Using a computer to break into the accounts of a company or a bank and transferring money should be judged the same way as robbery. It is illegal and there are strict laws against it. 5) Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness: The Internet can spread untruth as fast as it can spread truth. Putting out false â€Å"information† to the world is bad. For instance, spreading false rumors about a person or false propaganda about historical events is wrong. ) Thou shalt not use or copy software for which you have not paid: Software is an intellectual product. In that way, it is like a book: Obtaining illegal copies of copyrighted software is as bad as photocopying a copyrighted book. There are laws against both. Information about the copyright owner can be embedded by a process called watermarking into pictures in the digital format. 7) Thou shalt not use other peopl e’s computer resources without authorization: Multiuser systems use user id’s and passwords to enforce their memory and time allocations, and to safeguard information. You should not try to bypass this authorization system. Hacking a system to break and bypass the authorization is unethical. 8) Thou shalt not appropriate other people’s intellectual output: For example, the programs you write for the projects assigned in this course are your own intellectual output. Copying somebody else’s program without proper authorization is software piracy and is unethical. Intellectual property is a form of ownership, and may be protected by copyright laws. ) Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you write: You have to think about computer issues in a more general social framework: Can the program you write be used in a way that is harmful to society? For example, if you are working for an animation house, and are producing animated films for children, you are responsible for their contents. Do the animations include scenes that can be harmful to children? In the United States, the Communications Decency Act was an attempt by lawmakers to ban certain types of content from Internet websites to protect young children from harmful material. That law was struck down because it violated the free speech principles in that country’s constitution. The discussion, of course, is going on. 10) Thou shalt use a computer in ways that show consideration and respect: Just like public buses or banks, people using computer communications systems may find themselves in situations where there is some form of queuing and you have to wait for your turn and generally be nice to other people in the environment. You read "Computer Ethics and Information Systems" in category "Essay examples" The fact that you cannot see the people you are interacting with does not mean that you can be rude to them. Ethical Issues :- †¢Computers in the Workplace Computer Crime †¢ Privacy and Anonymity †¢ Intellectual Property †¢Professional Responsibility †¢Globalization Computers in the Workplace. Computers can pose a threat to jobs as people feel they may be replaced by them. However, the computer industry already has generat ed a wide variety of new jobs. When computers do not eliminate a job, they can radically alter it. In addition to job security concerns, another workplace concern is health and safety. It is a computer ethics issue to consider how computers impact health and job satisfaction when information technology is introduced into a workplace. Computer Crime. With the proliferation of computer viruses, spyware, phishing and fraud schemes, and hacking activity from every location in the world, computer crime and security are certainly topics of concern when discussing computer ethics. Besides outsiders, or hackers, many computer crimes, such as embezzlement or planting of logic bombs, are committed by trusted personnel who have authorization to use company computer systems. Privacy and Anonymity. One of the earliest computer ethics topics to arouse public interest was privacy. The ease and efficiency with which computers and networks can be used to gather, store, search, compare, retrieve, and share personal information make computer technology especially threatening to anyone who wishes to keep personal information out of the public domain or out of the hands of those who are perceived as potential threats. The variety of privacy-related issues generated by computer technology has led to reexamination of the concept of privacy itself. Intellectual Property. One of the more controversial areas of computer ethics concerns the intellectual property rights connected with software ownership. Some people, like Richard Stallman, who started the Free Software Foundation, believe that software ownership should not be allowed at all. He claims that all information should be free, and all programs should be available for copying, studying, and modifying by anyone who wishes to do so. Others, such as Deborah Johnson, argue that software companies or programmers would not invest weeks and months of work and significant funds in the development of software if they could not get the investment back in the form of license fees or sales. Professional Responsibility and Globalization. Global networks such as the Internet and conglomerates of business-to-business network connections are connecting people and information worldwide. Such globalization issues that include ethics considerations include: †¢Global laws †¢Global business †¢Global education †¢Global information flows †¢Information-rich and information-poor nations †¢Information interpretation The gap between rich and poor nations, and between rich and poor citizens in industrialized countries, is very wide. As educational opportunities, business and employment opportunities, medical services, and many other necessities of life move more and more into cyberspace, gaps between the rich and the poor may become even worse, leading to new ethical considerations. Common Computer Ethics Fallacies Although computer education is starting to be incorporated in lower grades in elementary schools, the lack of early computer education for most current adults led to several documented generally accepted fallacies that apply to nearly all computer users. As technology advances, these fallacies will change; new ones will arise, and some of the original fallacies will no longer exist as children learn at an earlier age about computer use, risks, security, and other associated information. There are more than described here, but Peter S. Tippett identified the following computer ethics fallacies, which have been widely discussed and generally accepted as being representative of the most common. The Computer Game Fallacy. Computer users tend to think that computers will generally prevent them from cheating and doing wrong. Programmers particularly believe that an error in programming syntax will prevent it from working, so that if a software program does indeed work, then it must be working correctly and preventing bad things or mistakes from happening. Even computer users in general have gotten the message that computers work with exacting accuracy and will not allow actions that should not occur. Of course, what computer users often do not consider is that although the computer operates under very strict rules, the software programs are written by humans and are just as susceptible to allowing bad things to happen as people often are in their own lives. Along with this, there is also the perception that a person can do something with a computer without being caught, so that if what is being done is not permissible, the computer should somehow prevent them from doing it. The Law-Abiding Citizen Fallacy. Laws provide guidance for many things, including computer use. Sometimes users confuse what is legal with regard to computer use with what is reasonable behavior for using computers. Laws basically define the minimum standard about which actions can be reasonably judged, but such laws also call for individual judgment. Computer users often do not realize they also have a responsibility to consider the ramifications of their actions and to behave accordingly. The Shatterproof Fallacy. Many, if not most, computer users believe that they can do little harm accidentally with a computer beyond perhaps erasing or messing up a file. However, computers are tools that can harm, even if computer users are unaware of the fact that their computer actions have actually hurt someone else in some way. For example, sending an email flame to a large group of recipients is the same as publicly humiliating them. Most people realize that they could be sued for libel for making such statements in a physical public forum, but may not realize they are also responsible for what they communicate and for their words and accusations on the Internet. As another example, forwarding e-mail without permission of the author can lead to harm or embarrassment if the original sender was communicating privately without expectation of his message being seen by any others. Also, using e-mail to stalk someone, to send spam, and to harass or offend the recipient in some way also are harmful uses of computers. Software piracy is yet another example of using computers to, in effect, hurt others. Generally, the shatterproof fallacy is the belief that what a person does with a computer can do minimal harm, and only affects perhaps a few files on the computer itself; it is not considering the impact of actions before doing them. The Candy-from-a-Baby Fallacy. Illegal and unethical activity, such as software piracy and plagiarism, are very easy to do with a computer. However, just because it is easy does not mean that it is right. Because of the ease with which computers can make copies, it is likely almost every computer user has committed software piracy of one form or another. The Software Publisher’s Association (SPA) and Business Software Alliance (BSA) studies reveal software piracy costs companies multibillions of dollars. Copying a retail software package without paying for it is theft. Just because doing something wrong with a computer is easy does not mean it is ethical, legal, or acceptable. The Hacker’s Fallacy. Numerous reports and publications of the commonly accepted hacker belief is that it is acceptable to do anything with a computer as long as the motivation is to learn and not to gain or make a profit from such activities. This so-called hacker ethic is explored in more depth in the following section. The Free Information Fallacy. A somewhat curious opinion of many is the notion that information â€Å"wants to be free,† as mentioned earlier. It is suggested that this fallacy emerged from the fact that it is so easy to copy digital information and to distribute it widely. However, this line of thinking completely ignores the fact the copying and distribution of data is completely under the control and whim of the people who do it, and to a great extent, the people who allow it to happen. Hacking and Hacktivism Hacking is an ambivalent term, most commonly perceived as being part of criminal activities. However, hacking has been used to describe the work of individuals who have been associated with the open-source movement. Many of the developments in information technology have resulted from what has typically been considered as hacking activities. Manuel Castells considers hacker culture as the â€Å"informationalism† that incubates technological breakthrough, identifying hackers as the actors in the transition from an academically and institutionally constructed milieu of innovation to the emergence of self-organizing networks transcending organizational control. A hacker was originally a person who sought to understand computers as thoroughly as possible. Soon hacking came to be associated with phreaking, breaking into phone networks to make free phone calls, which is clearly illegal. The Hacker Ethic. The idea of a hacker ethic originates in the activities of the original hackers at MIT and Stanford in the 1950s and 1960s. Stephen Levy outlined the so-called hacker ethic as follows: 1. Access to computers should be unlimited and total. 2. All information should be free. 3. Authority should be mistrusted and decentralization promoted. 4. Hackers should be judged solely by their skills at hacking, rather than by race, class, age, gender, or position. 5. Computers can be used to create art and beauty. . Computers can change your life for the better. The hacker ethic has three main functions: 1. It promotes the belief of individual activity over any form of corporate authority or system of ideals. 2. It supports a completely free-market approach to the exchange of and access to information. 3. It promotes the belief that computers can have a beneficial and life-changing effect. Such ideas are in conflict with a wide range of computer professionals’ various cod es of ethics. Ethics Codes of Conduct and Resources Several organizations and groups have defined the computer ethics their members should observe and practice. In fact, most professional organizations have adopted a code of ethics, a large percentage of which address how to handle information. To provide the ethics of all professional organizations related to computer use would fill a large book. The following are provided to give you an opportunity to compare similarities between the codes and, most interestingly, to note the differences and sometimes contradictions in the codes followed by the various diverse groups. Information Security Information security means protecting information and information systems from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, perusal, inspection, recording or destruction Information Security Attributes: or qualities, i. e. , Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA). Information Systems are decomposed in three main portions, hardware, software and communications with the purpose to help identify and apply information security industry standards, as mechanisms of protection and prevention, at three levels or layers: physical, personal and organizational. Essentially, procedures or policies are implemented to tell people (administrators, users and operators)how to use products to ensure information security within the organizations. Confidentiality Confidentiality is the term used to prevent the disclosure of information to unauthorized individuals or systems. For example, a credit card transaction on the Internet requires the credit card number to be transmitted from the buyer to the merchant and from the merchant to a transaction processing network. The system attempts to enforce confidentiality by encrypting the card number during transmission, by limiting the places where it might appear (in databases, log files, backups, printed receipts, and so on), and by restricting access to the places where it is stored. If an unauthorized party obtains the card number in any way, a breach of confidentiality has occurred. Confidentiality is necessary (but not sufficient) for maintaining the privacy of the people whose personal information a system holds. [citation needed] Integrity In information security, integrity means that data cannot be modified undetectably. [citation needed] This is not the same thing as referential integrity in databases, although it can be viewed as a special case of Consistency as understood in the classic ACID model of transaction processing. Integrity is violated when a message is actively modified in transit. Information security systems typically provide message integrity in addition to data confidentiality. Accessibility For any information system to serve its purpose, the information must be available when it is needed. This means that the computing systems used to store and process the information, the security controls used to protect it, and the communication channels used to access it must be functioning correctly. High availability systems aim to remain available at all times, preventing service disruptions due to power outages, hardware failures, and system upgrades. Ensuring availability also involves preventing denial-of-service attacks. Authenticity In computing, e-Business, and information security, it is necessary to ensure that the data, transactions, communications or documents (electronic or physical) are genuine. It is also important for authenticity to validate that both parties involved are who they claim they are. Non-repudiation In law, non-repudiation implies one’s intention to fulfill their obligations to a contract. It also implies that one party of a transaction cannot deny having received a transaction nor can the other party deny having sent a transaction. Electronic commerce uses technology such as digital signatures and public key encryption to establish authenticity and non-repudiation. c. Conclusion Impact of Computer Ethics on Information Security The relationship between information security and computer ethics does not look, on the surface, readily obvious, and even appears remote. It is, however, credible. Culture, customs, trust and privacy that characterize security fall within the realm of ethics. Computer ethics alert information security management to ethical considerations and warn potential offenders of ethical consequences in situations where the technical tools or the legal measures fail. In these cases, an ethical decision may be helpful in bringing about a solution. Furthermore, this conclusion is consistent with the following premises with respect to technical controls, computer laws and computer ethics: †¢Premise 1: The information security management community has applied control tools to meet the information security objectives of safeguarding confidentiality against unauthorized access, upholding integrity and maintaining availability. However, detecting computer crime is difficult, because the act is either traceless or difficult to trace. Quantifying the damage is problematic since the victims all too often withhold reporting the crime for reasons including fear of recrimination and bad publicity. 8 Therefore, the technical control tools are ineffective, with respect to legal issues. †¢Premise 2: Computer laws have been enacted in various nations at an ever-increasing rate since the late 1980s, when business and the society at large were forced to face the magnitude and severity of damage not experienced prior to computer crimes. There has been a dramatic increase in specialized legislation to combat criminal behaviors related to computer crime, which include traditional crimes committed with the use of a computer and a variety of new, technologyspecific criminal behaviors spawned by the rapid emergence of computer technologies and the exponential expansion of the Internet. 10 However, despite the additional new laws, prosecution is deterred because the legal proceeding is a tardy, time-consuming and expensive pr ocess, even when there are well-justified intentions to proceed with legal action. Also, legislation always lags behind the event such that either no appropriate laws are found or the new law is too late for the case in hand. Hence, computer laws are at best a deterrent to computer crime, not a guardian of information. †¢Premise 3: Computer ethicists assert, on the one hand, that special ethical issues are raised because computers are special technology, and query, on the other hand, why there should be computer ethics since, for example, there is no such thing as telephone ethics even though the telephone is a special technology that makes a profound change on the way individuals communicate with others. 1 However, information security is worthy of ethical consideration as many decisions in information technology affect a wide range of stakeholders. National and international computer societies have promoted codes of ethical practice and even written these codes into their constitutions. As technology advances, computers continue to have a greater impact on s ociety. Therefore, computer ethics promotes the discussion of how much influence computers should have in areas such as information security, artificial intelligence and human communication. As the world of computers evolves, computer ethics continues to create ethical standards that address new issues raised by new technologies. Reference http://www. isaca. org/Journal http://plato. stanford. edu/entries/ethics-computer/ http://www. cmpe. boun. edu. tr/~say/c150/intro/lit10. html How to cite Computer Ethics and Information Systems, Essay examples

Constructing My Cultural Identity free essay sample

This article provides a critical reflective analysis of my life growing up in Jamaica where I attended colonial school, to making the transition to high school in the Canadian context. I examine the elements that have influenced my cultural/racial identity as a person of African ancestry living in the diaspora. I ask questions such as how has colonial education influenced my cultural identity and how I see myself? I address the complexity of my racial and gender identity drawing on a Black feminist theoretical framework and anticolonial thought to inform this work. Cet article presente une analyse critique et reflechie de mon enfance en Jamaique, ou j’ai etudie a une ecole coloniale, et de ma transition vers l’ecole secondaire au Canada. Je me penche sur les elements qui ont influence mon identite culturelle/raciale comme personne d’ascendance africaine vivant dans la diaspora. Je pose des questions portant sur l’influence de l’education coloniale sur mon identite culturelle et ma facon de me voir. Ce travail repose sur le cadre theorique du feminisme noir, ainsi que sur la pensee anticoloniale. Introduction The purpose of this article is to examine the forces that have shaped my identity as a child of the African diaspora, first growing up in the Caribbean and then the encounter between my Jamaican culture and the Canadian cultural context. I attempt to address the following questions: How has my identity been formed? What parts of my life have been honored, and what parts are excluded and why? How does society view me versus my own definition of myself? And more important, how can I salvage and maintain my identity? I critically draw on the reality, dilemmas, and contradictions of life that show my struggle to negotiate my identity and self-awareness as an individual of African ancestry in the Jamaican and later the Canadian education system. The discussion in this article is informed by a Black feminist standpoint. I believe that theorizing from a Black feminist discursive framework helps me to tell my story and rethink my experiences in a paradigm that takes into account the social dimensions of race, class, gender, sexuality, and other forms of domination. In addition, I employ an anticolonial framework, as this emphasizes the potency of racism, colonization, and imperialism on diasporic peoples and their identity (Dei, 2002). My Discursive Framework As mentioned above, this article takes a Black feminist standpoint in accordance with the perspective of a Black heterosexual woman living in Canada. It is an approach—a framework—from which one can challenge systems of Erica Neegan is a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto. Her research interest includes Indigenous Knowledges, Black feminist thought and anti-colonial and decolonizing pedagogy. Constructing My Cultural Identity domination in society. A Black feminist discourse helps me to tell my story and reclaim my identity as a Black woman. As Wane (2002) notes in her definition of Black feminist thought, Black feminist thought is a theoretical tool meant to elucidate and analyze the historical, social and economic relationships of women of African descent as the basis for development of a liberatory praxis †¦ It can be applied to situate Black women’s past and present experiences that are grounded in their multiple oppressions. (p. 38) Black feminism has provided a space and a framework for the expression of Black women’s diverse identities. I believe that Black Canadian feminist thought is informed by practice and vice versa. In other words, my lived realities inform theory and help me to make sense of what is going on around me. Black Canadian feminist theory, then, becomes a practical way for me to make sense of my experiences in a Canadian context vis-a-vis Black women in the United States context. This makes it especially significant to tell my story as a Black woman experiencing life in Canada. However, sharing one’s story can be painful. Yet it can also be a liberating and transformatory experience. hooks (1993) writes, â€Å"Telling the truth about one’s life is not simply about naming the bad things, like exposing horrors. It is also about being able to speak openly and honestly about feelings and experiences† (p. 27). At the same time, it must be noted that Black women’s experiences are not homogeneous, but they do share a distinct form of oppression. By using a Black feminist framework, racialized and gendered individuals can collectively mark their presence in the world where Black women have for so long been denied the privilege of speaking (Mirza, 1997). Furthermore, Parmar (1987) points out that being cast in the role of the Other—marginalized and discriminated against not only in everyday discourse, but also in the grand narratives of European thought—Black women have fought to assert privately and publicly their sense of self, a self rooted in particular history cultures and languages. Thus the experiences of women of African descent are crucial to Black feminist thought. In turn, Black feminist theory captures our experiences and helps us to reconstruct our lives in a positive form. In conjunction with Black feminist theory, I also take on an anticolonial, discursive framework because it challenges systems of domination and subordination and their continuing effects on Indigenous peoples across the world. Furthermore, because anticolonial discourse is about the absence of colonial imposition, colonialism must be seen not from the perspective of being foreign, but rather as a system of domination and conquest (Dei, 2002). This type of discourse allows one to challenge institutionalized systems of domination. Reflections of my Lived Reality I speak from the perspective of a person who is colonized. As a result of my experiences, I have a keen knowledge of imperialism, and its effect is central to the decolonization process, which in turn is at the core of reclaiming my identity. Before this can be done, I need to know who I am. After listening to a lecture on race and representation by Hall (1997), I concluded that I was a cultural hybrid. That is, my identity is not fixed, but changes depending on where I am. As Hall asserts, cultural identity comes  273 E. Neegan from somewhere and has a history. However, cultural identity is not static and is subject to the continual play of history, power, and culture. Similarly, TwoTrees (1993) describes herself: â€Å"I see myself as a multi-dimensional: faceted being, one facet being woman, one artist, one African American, one Native American. To speak of any one facet more than another dulls the beauty of the whole thing reflecting light† (p. 14). I remember when I was a youngster staring at myself in the mirror and asking myself the question â€Å"Who are you? † Years later, I imagine looking through a cracked mirror and seeing figments: a distorted, fragmented image of myself. I am still searching for the real me. First of all, am I from Africa? Growing up in Jamaica and in Canada, it was extremely difficult to associate myself with being from Africa. For me Africa was a dirty word. I literally thought that Africans were like monkeys, swinging from vines and in need of being â€Å"civilized. † So I absolutely refused to be labeled African. Yet one cannot run from who one is. Being African is deeply engrained in me despite the fact that I tried to negate my African identity. I became conscious that I was Black, and therefore deemed to be ugly, at an early age. I remember that it was always the lighter-skinned people in my junior school in Jamaica who were considered academically bright and who were the teachers’ favorite students. Sometimes it did not matter how hard you tried; darker-skinned students were deemed inferior and were treated as such. So I learned to negate my Blackness at an early age, and schooling helped create in me a marginalized identity. With few exceptions, darker-skinned students like myself were deemed intellectually inferior. I continually asked myself as a child, â€Å"Why did my mother have to make me Black with hair like coconut husk when she was light-skinned with long hair? † When I lived in Jamaica, I was Black and considered ugly. Some family members treated me as inferior vis-a-vis lighter skinned relatives. For example, during an overnight visit with a close relative, I was given old, torn clothes to sleep in and a sheet to cover myself with, whereas my lighter-skinned relative was given brand new clothes and sheet. Other times, relatives would openly ridicule my short, tightly curled hair. Everything around me including people’s attitudes indicated to me that I was lesser than lighter-skinned persons. Years later when I went back for a visit, people noticed that my hair had grown longer and that my skin tone had become brown, or lighter. I was now brown and pretty. Ironically, not until my second year in a Canadian university did I start feeling good about myself as an individual of African ancestry. My perception of myself had been negative despite what I used to hear about Black being beautiful, for I lived in a world where to be Black produced feelings of shame, worthlessness, and anger. Although Jamaican society is predominantly made up of people of African ancestry, the reality in the schools and at home did not necessarily reflect the view that Black was beautiful. As Young (2006) asserts, To be Black is to have accrued a subjectivity haunted by the spectral traces of a social, political and ideological history. Blackness is historically and culturally specific embodied discourse constituted in and through a discursive tradition mobilized by the reconstituted figure of Africa and brutal systems of oppression such as slavery and imperialism. (p. 25) 274 Constructing My Cultural Identity Furthermore, my skin was not the only signifier of inferiority. Indeed, hair texture was also a mark of status. The closer one’s hair was to Anglo-Saxon texture, the better treated the individual might be. Growing up in Jamaica, my hair was detrimental to my identity. If only my texture was silky like that of my mother, grandmother, and sister, who were amicably referred to as Dougla (half Indian) by family and community members. When I was younger, my mother would pull and tug at my hair to comb through it. I remember once the comb broke in half. I was the one with the bad hair. Lighter-skinned people always seemed to be better off than the darkerskinned ones. Yet money for food had to be prioritized. I borrowed a hot comb from a friend and decided to straighten my hair. Many times I would parade around with burned skin from the hot comb, but my thoughts at the time were that it was worth it. Similarly, TwoTrees (1993) notes, Since I was a child my hair has been the plague of my life. I longed for the silken braids of my father’s mother but what I beheld in the mirror was hair made of iron, curved and twisted like mountain snake back roads and wild stubborn as kudzu, a weed that grows like an unchecked brush fire.  (p. 17) Such feelings continue today. Recently a close family member told me that my 5-year-old niece was asked at school why her hair was not like her sister’s. In other words, she has â€Å"bad hair† whereas her little sister has â€Å"good hair. † Unfortunately, at the young age of 5, my niece has already learned t o hate and to question her African identity. By the time I was 8 years old, I believed I had to get rid of my hair texture by whatever means necessary. I pressured my mother to send me to the hairdresser. I saw the privileges bestowed on those whose physical features more closely resembled those of people with AngloSaxon ancestry, and I craved it. hooks (1993) discusses the politics of hair and its effect on the Black female identity. She asks an important question: How is it that little Black girls learn even before they know anything about racism that their hair is a problem? In her examination of the politics of skin color, she argues that without a doubt, dark-skinned Black females suffer the most abuse when Black people internalize white supremacist notions of beauty. As she argues, we live in a white supremacist culture where aspects of Blackness are highly devalued. â€Å"Blacks are wounded by forces of domination regardless of our access to material privilege. We are all wounded by white supremacy† (p. 87). Unfortunately, this experience is also common with other groups who have been colonized: â€Å"Right through high school and even university I wanted to be white† (Yee, 1993, p. 23). This experience mirrors my own as I too negated my Blackness until adulthood and spent almost all my life yearning to be white. Similarly, First Nations writer Harp (1998) recounts: To be me required the examination of who I was. In the quiet of my solitude, I began to assess my faculties I was able to ascertain the following: I had been thinking like a European. I had been feeling like a European. I had been acting like a good European. (p. 67) So colonialism has not only destroyed and displaced peoples, but has also left many of them psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually wounded. Similarly, Jegede (1995) notes, 275 E. Neegan I was a self-hater. I despised myself because of the colour of my skin. I wanted to kill those of lighter complexion. And do you know why? because people love the children with the light skin and the long hair. â€Å"Oh what a pretty child, she got good hair. † I was the one people called dark Vaida or Kizzy from roots. I used to get both Black and White dolls, and I would only play with the White ones, they were the prettiest with long luxurious hair. And, I too wanted the prettiest of long blond hair and blue eyes. (p. 116) Colonial Educational Experiences When I came to Canada and started high school, not much changed. I would skip swimming classes and often end up in the principal’s office for doing so. How could I tell them that I did not wish to get my hair wet because it would be too arduous to comb? How could I say I was different, but it did not make me inferior? After my senior high school years, I began to perm my hair less. Nonetheless, I believe in my undergraduate university years that some transformation away from a colonial mentality was occurring. Sewell (1997) writes: Historically, Black people’s hair has been devalued along with the colour of their skin. In the context of the new world, plantation societies, hair remained a powerful symbolic currency that indicated one’s place in the racial hierarchy. Under this system, the African attributes were devalued and the European elements could facilitate upward social mobility. (pp. 24-25) In my Canadian high school, people from the dominant group in society openly made fun of the physical features of people of African ancestry. It was shameful to be Black even in the best of times. It did not matter that my mother loved me. It did not matter that I had friends who supported me. Nothing can prepare the Black person for the tremendous assault on his or her African identity. Mervyn (2002) argues that even in contemporary Jamaica a manifest series of beliefs and attitudes perpetuate the pathologies of slavery. She adds, â€Å"pictures that represent a person as too Black are regularly discarded. And there is current obsessive focus on mitigating Blackness of the skin tone by bleaching. The goal is to achieve a more brown tone† (p. 18). Yet in the face of colonization and domination, there is also resistance. Some resistance can be heard in the music, which promotes the beauty of having an African identity. Hair is a major area of contestation. By straightening my hair I had a clear desire to modify my African texture, thereby bringing it closer to a European norm. â€Å"In a colonized world, hair is a feature of salience and of equal value to skin colour in the construction of social value so that straight hair can compensate for Black skin and reward the person with higher social status† (Marvyn, 2002, p. 44). Interestingly enough, there are parallels in the education systems of colonial Jamaica and Canada. As in Jamaica, there is the assault on the Black child’s self-identity in the Canadian education system. For example, Maylor (1995) notes, â€Å"The contrast between my dark skin and white teeth provided a source of derision for one of my teachers †¦ If we turn the lights out we will be able to see Uvanney’s teeth† (p. 43). As McCarthy (1997) suggests, â€Å"Historically, education has been a principal site for the reproduction and elaboration of racial meaning and racial identities† (p. 544). My life as an undergraduate university student was not always what I had expected. In one of my political science classes, I and two other Black students 276 Constructing My Cultural Identity were the only students of color. On the first day of class, the professor, who was from the dominant culture and female, passed the attendance sheet around for us to ensure our that names were listed. I was utterly shocked to see that the word Black was written next to my name. I glanced at the names on the list and saw Black written next to the names of the other two Black students. I felt angered, but also powerless. The three of us tried to make sense of the situation, yet it was difficult to rationalize. This was only a few years ago. We talked about the consequences of taking a complaint to the university’s administration. Eventually, because of concerns that they might be graded lower by this professor, the other two students dropped out of the class. One could argue that they were forced out. Although I was determined to stay, after the third class I kept feeling more and more invisible. Then I too dropped out of the course. To this day I wonder what more I could have done to address this action that marginalized us. McCarthy (1997) asserts that inequality exists in school settings and that various groups based on their race, class, and gender have qualitatively variable experiences in schools. She says that the groups exist in constitutive tension and often compete with each other where each student receives varying forms of rewards and evaluations. This has serious implications for students who are perceived as inferior. The question, then, is how can we decolonize education practices in Canada or in Jamaica and make education holistic? Whether yesterday or today, the fact still remains that as people of African ancestry, we still live on the fringes of society. My ancestors have added depth and personality to my life on a personal level. The places I speak from are multifaceted. My identity has so many aspects. Many Jamaicans, including me, were always proud to say that we had some Scottish ancestry. It is often echoed with pride and dignity. Yet although we know that we have African blood in our veins, we are proud of the non-African blood as if it made us better and more human. Earlier I would be quick to say that I had nothing in common with African people. I am Jamaican. Yet to consider myself Jamaican is to ignore the existence of the Indigenous peoples of Jamaica who were not African Blacks, but rather the Taino, the true Jamaicans to put it bluntly. How can I ignore their presence? Whenever I visit the Island, I can feel their presence/spirit around me. We learned through history that the Indigenous population was virtually wiped out. But although I know that many have suffered death and genocide, I believe that many of we African peoples in the diaspora have Indigenous blood in our veins. Why does my maternal grandmother resemble the Indigenous peoples, and how do I reclaim this part of my own identity? What about their contribution to the construction of Jamaican national identity, which has been largely ignored? I recently asked a friend how could I know what country in Africa my ancestors were from. He replied, â€Å"It does not matter. You are from Africa. † I agree. Gone are the days when I found it necessary not to equate myself with people of African ancestry. I know that my ancestors are speaking to me. They guide me through the struggles of everyday life, and I have so much to thank them for. I find myself being drawn closer to my ancestors. My multifaceted 277 E. Neegan identity symbolizes the nature of the diaspora. There need be no state of confusion. For example, I was looked down on for speaking the rich Jamaican language by school personnel both in Canada and in Jamaica as well as in the family. It was and still is associated with underachievement. Although we had a deep-seated knowledge that the language was part of the heritage of our African ancestors, it became easy to negate it. It was not until I was working on my master’s thesis that I realized that the words were a form of resistance and one of the languages that emerged from the imposition and dislocation caused by slavery. Still today, I am scolded for speaking the language I know by the education system, family, and society. Yet another essential part of my identity is silenced. I was taught that it was an obstacle to any form of achievement. Nonetheless, I consider it to be a confirmation of my true identity as an African woman. Like many other Black students, I know English. Yet we choose to speak our language, which is viewed as a deficit by the school system in Canada and in Jamaica. I speak from personal experience. Blacks who speak our language, referred to as patois, are often placed in applied-level streams in high school, and they often become working-class poor as a result. Solomon and Brown (1998) assert that Black students are three times more likely to be in special education classes than in gifted classes. I always wondered why so many of us were in special education classes. Like many other Black students, I was stereotyped as uneducated and backward and lacking the desire to speak â€Å"proper† English. This was yet another attack on the identity of Black children. Identity and Representation Can I truly consider myself Canadian? How can I fit into the traditional definition of what constitutes a Canadian when some people of African ancestry who have been in Canada for several generations are still asked where they are from? Or even worse, First Peoples are continually asked what country they are from. Yee (1993) speaks of never being Canadian although she grew up in Canada. As she puts it, â€Å"I am constantly separated from-by the forces of racism that always keep me asking questions of identity, belonging, place and voice† (p. 4). At the same time as knowing the truth of how Canada came to be, I have to ask myself, is it really that bad not to be considered Canadian? Perhaps not at all. My hair, a physical marker, is now a public and political statement of my Black African identity. I also sit in a privileged position as a doctoral student. Nonetheless, being Black in Canada is a liability, and the greater civil society is not always kind to the Other. People of African ancestry are systematically marginalized in Canadian society. The proof of this is evident. Some diseases are specific to Blacks because of our low economic status in society. We are popular in the criminal justice system, and we suffer high levels of both unemployment and underemployment. Many images in society reinforce our Otherness. All these factors limit our life chances. I can only imagine what my ancestors went through to carve even this space for me today. Much of my existence in this society has been a lonely journey. Although I lived in a predominantly Black country during my childhood, colonial attitudes die hard. I became aware of being the Other at an early age. Ironically, because of the psychological injury I faced in my everyday life, I woke up from a state of  278 Constructing My Cultural Identity unconscious existence to consciousness of my gender, racial, and class position in society. The oppression and marginalization I have endured and the challenges I have overcome in my life have helped me to feel that I can do whatever I wish regardless of the obstacles. As peoples whose identity and culture has been stolen, destroyed, distorted , and omitted from knowledge production we must—for our ancestors, ourselves, and most of all for our children so that they can have a strong sense of cultural identity and self—strive to manage the claws of colonization. I too have passively accepted the notion that people of African ancestry are lazy. Often I wondered why and how they had never contributed to anything. I thought that we deserved to be treated as a subjugated race because of our inadequacies. Yet it was later as an adult that I realized that we have indeed contributed to society, but these contributions have been omitted from the history books. Growing up in contemporary Jamaica, I recall that anything European was regarded in high esteem. As Blacks we were taught to despise anything that was reminiscent of our African heritage. The placing of Europeans at the center of civilization in the education system also enabled me to reject my own identity. As a people, we are in denial of ourselves, our history, and the history of racism. I received many contradictory messages from society. Yet gaining access to higher education has helped me in the process of immersing myself in my Blackness. I have exposed my inner self through reflecting on my experiences like a lost child suffering from withdrawal from its mother. I feel the need to reconnect and reclaim my identity and embrace myself. Slavery, conquest, and colonialism created dominant and subjugated peoples. It also meant the representation of the dominant people as superior beings vis- a-vis the Other. Wangoola (2000) notes how Africans in their new environment used whatever resources they had to shield their traditions, which were continually under attack. The ancestors sacrificed greatly to bring our sacred knowledge to us. How, then, can I not honor sacred ancestral spiritual healing traditions such as Pochomania, Kunina, and Obeah. How can I continue to negate such African spirituality? During slavery these Indigenous forms of spirituality were perceived as pagan. The masters wanted us to believe that as African peoples our intellectuality never rose above magic and superstition (Mervyn, 2002). Yet is this any different from Catholic rituals that are deemed normal? Do we not as African peoples have the right to have our knowledge taught in schools as are the dominant traditions? Graveline (1998), in Circle Works, remarks how she draws on traditional Aboriginal knowing to assist her in surviving the nightmares of contemporary society. I often go to Jamaica and partake in the healing offered by these ceremonies. These are symbols of the resistance and survival of my ancestors. As African Indigenous ways of knowing survive, or the ways that we as African peoples have reinvented in order to hang onto our identity, I too am drawn back to my roots almost as a form of self-representation. Living in North America, sometimes it is a struggle as a Black female for me to make it through each day. These Indigenous ways of knowing keep me going. I think about the drums I hear beating, the chanting and singing, forbidden to partake fully in such sacred ceremonies because even my own  279 E. Neegan family, who are part of the colonial project, see them as backward. Yet the sound of the drums keeps me alive. Colonialism succeeded on one hand, but once one starts to view the world from another lens, colonialism becomes a failure. Colonial education alienated the local people from their environment and denigrated local culture and traditional values and norms (Ellis, 1988). Everything about my Blackness t hat was negated is now at the center of my inner being. Wangoola (2000) notes how African values, ceremonies, and festivals were undermined. To keep our traditions alive, our ancestors had to blend and create spiritual systems. Like Graveline (1998), I too reach out to the knowledge passed down from the ancestors for spiritual healing whenever my identity is wounded by assaults from Eurocentric-dominated institutions. These ways are deeply embedded in African peoples. Wangoola (2000) asserts that in matters of modernization and progress, there was only one knowledge, Western knowledge. Other knowledges were branded as inferior or pure ignorance. Thus African medicine became witchcraft. When I am among some people from the dominant group, as a racialzed person I continually find myself rejecting my race when it collides with the dominant group’s perceptions. I find myself having to reject my identity according to the space in which I find myself. Colonialism was designed deliberately to breed self-hate among the colonized so as to legitimize its subordination of other people. As a racialized individual, I am perceived as different. When people see me, they often ascribe the stereotypical elements by which most Black women are portrayed. For example, there is often an underlying assumption that I am a loud, boisterous, single mother with no formal education. People are often shocked to discover that I am a doctoral student. I believe that in order to create more inclusive education curricula, that is, less Eurocentric, people’s attitudes must change. In other words, how people think and the ideologies with which so many individuals have been indoctrinated need to be altered. Second, individuals will have to be willing to learn more diverse perspectives on what we have come to know as the norm. Furthermore, educators in the system will need to implicate their teaching practices as well as their perceptions of the students they teach. Textbooks written by nonEuropeans and the world views of people other than Europeans need to be voiced in educational institutions to create balance and a welcoming learning environment for all children. Discussion and Conclusion As mentioned above, I carry colonization within me. I believe that we all do. What is more, we have been indoctrinated to think that Eurocentrism is superior. As Wane (2002) noted in a recent lecture, â€Å"the decolonisation process starts within oneself† (Lecture notes: Wk.  5). Furthermore, as anticolonial thinkers, we must deconstruct and demystify what we have come to know as truths in order to reclaim who we truly are and thereby find inner peace. As a teacher and a learner, it is my responsibility to create a space where other forms of knowing can be considered valid. I must share my knowledge with othe rs to help them develop a consciousness of historical and ever-present oppression. As colonized peoples, we all need to gather our resources. We must also create allies with those who can relate to our experiences. We need to tell our stories 280 Constructing My Cultural Identity and rewrite our history from our own perspective. Most important, we need to be community-driven and challenge contemporary colonization by privileging all sorts of knowledges. As mentioned above, there are many examples in society of violence toward the Black African identity and other marginalized groups. And we know that the education system omits the contributions of people of African ancestry, and even worse, denigrates many children of African ancestry. Blacks have been subjugated and forced to accept colonial views through a Eurocentric education. Such institutions are a reflection of the larger society and vice versa. I believe that it is important to reject my old identity, shaped to a large extent by White Eurocentrism, and to create a new one shaped by us. We have suffered loss of identity and fragmentation. We have been denied our true origin, and we in turn have denied ourselves our true African identity and internalized racism and oppression. I believe that it is important for us, we who are aware of race, class, gender, and other forms of oppression, to strategize on how we can build and foster positive cultural identity in our children. We have an obligation to put our energy into serving as mentors for the younger generation. We need to reclaim our heritage. It must not fade away or be forgotten. As the late reggae singer Garnett Silk echoed in the lyrics of his song, â€Å"Hello mamma Africa how are you? I am feeling fine and I hope you are fine too. Mamma Africa, yes I am coming home. † For me, this is a powerful symbol of who I am, and it shows the discontinuous history of Blacks in the diaspora. I can hear the voices of those ancestors calling me. As Talbot (1984) notes, â€Å"Our race memory must be with spirit of those of the cr