honors class

Today’s lecture was really interesting to me because I have been thinking a lot about housing developments, land, space, who can live who, and who gets to decided who can live were. Let’s blame all of this thoughts on my civilizations class. In my civilizations class our focus is Utopian societies, and we have read novels such as Moore’s Utopia, Machiavelli’s The Prince, and Hobbs Leviathan. All of them pointing this central idea that the distribution of land is the most portent subject of Utopia. Maybe it is because I have been studying for finals and Utopia is all that I can think about, but I truly believe that “Raisin in the Sun,” would be a Utopian based play.
For starters there is the historical context of the play. It specifically takes place on the Southside of Chicago during 1959. This was a time period with high racial discrimination, and what was the chief concern? You guessed it property. The people were worried about who lived were, how many people could live were, and the stinging issue what race could live were. According to the presenter about 60% of the Chicago’s population was black. The slide depicting the locations that blacks were able to live showed that legally blacks could live in what I would say was less than 5% of the available space. It was really pathetically small. Besides the obvious racial discrimination this is I want to focus on how this relates to Utopia. Like I mentioned earlier one of the primary concerns in a Utopian society is determining property. Are we going to live in common houses? Does everyone have their own home? How many people can live in one home? The questions go on, but in the play “Raisin in the Sun,” I think that the primary concern race determining who owned property.
It seems like an obvious statement, because frankly this is what the lecture was about. The play “Raisin in the Sun," and how it related to the housing in Chicago. What I observed was that Lorraine Hansberry, the author, was purposing a Utopia herself. In her Utopia the distribution of property is not determined by race, but other elements such as hard work, determination, or family values. I really do want to read the play now, and see what elements Lorraine Hansberry believes should be included in Utopia.