Locatons et formes de puissance

LOCATONS AND FORMS OF POWER

Before I begin, I'll define what Power is. There are different possible defintions for what Power is, but in the context of “Locations and forms of Power” : the power is the ability or official capacity to exercise control, authority, for example the State or the government. To illustrate this notion : in the first part of our development I will talk about segregation in the United States. Secondly I will talk about apartheid in South Africa.

Segregation is a moment in the history of the US when black and white people were not supposed to mix. After the civil war between the North and the South of the US about slavery new laws emerged. The Jim Crow's laws, their aim was to distinguish citizens according to their race while accepting their equal rights and leaving no judgment in all public places and services. Coloured people had humiliating daily life, black and white people were not allowed to share the same facilities, they couldn't go to same school, they must ride in a different car on the train as shown in a poem by Lanston Huges where he imagines the feeling of a black child from the South, who is confused by the difference between the North and the South. Of course, black people protested againste that forms of power, but in a non-violent way like sit-ins which emerged at the time. The first passive resistance took place in Greensboro in 1960. The staff refused to serve 4 Negro college students drinks and food. As a consequence, students refused to move from counters to protest against segregation and racism. Other forms of sit-ins appeared like wade-ins, read-ins and kneel-ins. At the time we saw the emergence of black American activists. One of them is Rosa Parks : she stood up against racism. She was arrested because she sat in the front of the bus. However it was forbiden for black people to sit in the front of the bus. That's why on december 5th in 1955, black people decided to boycott buses to protest aganst the laws which forbid black and white people to sit wherever they want, but also to protest against Rosa Parks arrest. It was a success because the laws for ridding buses were changed and segregation in buses was now illegal.

We talked about segregation in the US. Now we will talk about Apartheid in South Africa and we will saw that Apartheid is segregation.

Apartheid is an all-white government, where people were divided into racial groups and when everybody, exept white people, had no political rights. During this period, black people never admitted being oppresed by the white population, end then they rebelled. They were called “black-activists”. I'll just talk about the most famous of them, that is to say Nelson Mandela. He joined the African Nationa Congress in 1942 and got involved in the struggle against apartheid. He was arrested in 1964, convicted of sabotage. He was sentenced to lifeimprisonment. He helped the 7th President of South Africa, named Frederik de Klerk, who led the reforms that ended the policy of apartheid in 1991, and the constitutional negociations with the African National Congress when Nelson Mandela led the country's first multiracial government. And of course, before that, the majority of people couldn't vote to change their rights. But from april 27th in 1994 they can. It shows the force of counter-powers

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