11-11-2011-RESPONSE

"So far I can find out what the classes are who are respectively endowed with the rights and duties of posing and solving social problems, they are as follows: Those who are bound to solve the problems are the rich, comfortable, prosperous, virtuous, respectable, educated, and healthy; those whose right it is to set the problems are those who have been less successful in the struggle for existence. The problem itself seems to be, how shall the latter be made as comfortable as the former? To solve this problem, and make us all equally well off, is assumed to be the duty of  the former class; the penalty, if they fail of this, is to be bloodshed and destruction. If they cannot make everybody else as well as themselves, they are to be brought down to the same misery as others." 

What Summers is implying in this passage is only the rich and prosperous can help the less prosperous become prosperous. It is the fault of the rich if they cannot make everyone else their equal and it leads to problems that cannot be solved. They may even fall into the same situation as the latter. The rich are only as powerful as they want to be and they can distribute that power to the lower classes if they feel they need to, but if they do not, they will obviously not move.

RESPONSE: 10-28-2011

In 1869, Fredrick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony debated women's rights. Douglass's argument was that black women needed to gain equal rights not because they are women, but because they are black. I find this true. Even though all women are not able to vote and whatnot, black women are oppressed more because they are black. Black people in general had no rights at all in the U.S., so even if women were to get the right to vote, it would probably only be for white women and not black women or black people in general. Anthony expressed some great points, but Douglass, as a black man, knows that if black men are not able to do as they wish, especially voting, black women will not even be in the discussion, because of the single fact that they are "Black Women".