Hope through Submission and Revolution in Anna Julia Cooper and Cochise - Essay Example

? Hope through and Revolution in Anna Julia Cooper and Cochise Number Number Teacher’s Due Hope throughSubmission and Revolution in Anna Julia Cooper and Cochise Hope is the one sustaining element that keeps mankind moving through a life that many philosophers have described as dreary and without meaning (Camus, 11). It makes people want to forget the social and economic problems that they are faced with on a daily level and also the discriminations that they have to face from others because of various factors. Hope is the messiah for many, who also want to change the conditions of their existence and improve the quality of their life and seek for a deeper meaning in it. Two ways of doing so are revolution and submission. Leaders in the past have practised both and both have led to varying degrees of success for different parties. This paper shall analyze two passages- one by Julia Anna Cooper and the other one by Cochise. The address by Cochise to his people describes the condition of the Apache community following the battering that they had to face at the hands of the Americans who belonged to the white races. The leader talks of submission in a battle-wearied tone of defeat. His submission, however, holds promise for the future. In a similar way, the descriptions of the conditions of women that we find in the essay by Julia Anna Cooper is also something that promises a future that is better than the one that women had during her times. The purpose of literature, in these cases, is to serve as a vehicle of hope for a better future. In his address to the members of the Apache tribe who had participated with him in the battles against the people of white races in America, Cochise explains his reasons for submitting to the people who had settled in America at their expense. He posits submission as the key to a peaceful existence. The need for submission is an acknowledgement of the superiority of the whites in as much as their modes of warfare are concerned. The indictment of the white man is something that is unadulterated, though. The leader of the Indian tribe talks of the ways and means through which a peaceful coexistence could be made possible between the Indians and the whites. This, he believed was through understanding the needs of others and acting accordingly. All Cochise asks for his people are the basic necessities of life, amenities that they were able to produce for themselves but were taken away from them by people he considers to be essentially invaders. He comments upon the deaths of the natives as the death of a way of living. His address is also thus a lament about a mode of living that was bygone and could not be retrieved. His address, however, is not a part of narratives that look backward. His ideas take a progressive view of history and insist upon a peaceful ending to the whole saga. He never for an instant talks about condoning the acts of the whites; however, what he does talk about is the inculcation of an attitude that would enable the Indians to forget and forgive and thus, begin life anew. Cochise refrains from using any framework of the whites to justify his actions or the actions of the whites. With his speech, all he wishes to do is to make sure that he has conveyed his message to the white man about his submission. Despite being one of the most feared and respected leaders of his tribe and amongst all the Indian tribes in America (Sweeney, 6), Cochise submits to the whites in return for nothing but land where he and his people may be able to live and follow their own ways of living. If from his abundance he will give food for my women and children, whose protectors his soldiers have killed, with blankets to cover their nakedness, I will receive them with gratitude. If not, I will do my best to feed and clothe them, in peace with the white man. I have spoken (Cochise). In this passage, the claims of the Apache chief are evident and if accounts of people like L.E. Dudley are to believed, one can safely assume that the leader was not amongst those who would not keep a promise (Dudley). These attitudes of the leader make it safe for one to assume that peace was a possibility when he was at the helm of affairs. The stable situation that is found in the United States of America between the different races can be attributed, to a certain extent, to statesmen such as these. The role of Cochise in creating the future that he did not see, thus, provides one with hope for the future, a future that people of the present may not even see. Julia Anna Cooper talks of her times when racism was rampant and people had to always live in the fear of being discriminated against. Even when people would be able to look at people of marginalized races with a certain degree of affection and fellow feeling, it was always contaminated with a great amount of condescension. This condescension is something that Cooper feels cannot be a condition that precedes the establishment of equality. She talks of how people who are polite to the people of the African American community were so only because it suited the image that they had created for themselves and not because they actually felt that they were equal to the whites. She sums it up in a witty statement that indicts the hypocritical stance that is taken by many white men and women who feel that they are progressive- “The man who is courteous to her (the black woman) is so, not because of anything he hopes or fears or sees, but because he is a gentleman.” (Cooper, 94). Such attitudes when taken in isolation do not provide a lot of hope for an egalitarian and peaceful future. However, Cooper’s account of the race-relations in America is not a gloomy and pessimistic narrative. Instead, she makes use of certain frameworks that exist in society to make her point clear and establish the fact that her hopes for a harmonious future were not baseless. The main framework that Cooper uses is the one of religion where she talks of the need to be nice to one’s neighbour. In the scriptures, this neighbour’s race is not specified and thus, through the very frameworks that in perverted ways, sanctioned a certain kind of racism, Cooper is able to deny the divine sanctity that was often ascribed to it. In another work of hers, she talks of this importance of religion in improving the relations between man and man at length. In her essay, “Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race”, she says, “The two sources from which, perhaps, modern civilization has derived its noble and ennobling ideal of woman are Christianity and the Feudal system” (Cooper, 9). She thus, talks of a system where the women of a nation or a community would be able to improve the overall quality of man if they are looked upon with lesser distinctions than they are. She calls for an abolition of the ways in which people thought during her times, in the 1800s. She feels that a change and a new future would be possible only if people were ready and willing to change the ways in which they thought about the important things in life. Such things included the dignity of man. This would not be possible to defend if discrimination was practised in the way that it was. Cooper talks about a future where people would be able to fulfil the dictates of the scriptures that asked man to treat everybody equally. The scriptures referred to the other man as the neighbour. According to Cooper, if people were able to treat the neighbour as equal to the self, then many of the problems of race would be solved in the United States of America. Her confidence in a new and improved future is something that can be considered to be an offshoot of a very powerful hope. Even though this hope is engendered by the metaphysical element f religious faith, one can safely say that it has the ability to translate itself into a social force that would be able to change the society for the better, into one that would be able to accommodate people of all races. Both the texts that have been discussed in this paper talk of the future. In hoping for a better future, these texts do not disregard the past. However, they adopt an attitude of forgiveness towards the people who had wronged them. In attempting to right the historical wrongs that were done to the Indians and the African American women, the texts talk of new beginnings. These new beginnings, while not condoning the wrongs of the past, seek to establish a future that is free of prejudices. To establish such a future, both the texts posit hope as the first step. Works Cited Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. New York: Penguin, 2000. Pp 11. Cochise. I Am Alone. http://lfkkb.tripod.com/engr/iamalone.html Accessed on 19th April, 2012. Cooper, Julia Ann. “Woman Versus the Indian”. The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper. Eds. Lemert, Charles; Bhan, Esme. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. Pp 94. Cooper, Julia Ann. “Womanhood A Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race”. A Voice From The South. New York: Oxford U P, 1988. Pp 9. Dudley, L.E. “Cochise, The Apache Chief, and Peace”. The American Advocate of Peace and Arbitration 53 (6). http://www.jstor.org/stable/27898544 Accessed on 19th April, 2012. Sweeney, Edwin R. Cochise: Chiricahua Apache Chief. Oklahoma: U of Oklahoma P, 1991. Pp 6 Read More