Biography of Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam Leader

Minister  Louis Farrakhan (born May 11, 1933) is one of the most controversial public figures in the United States. While scandal has brought down a number of leaders, Farrakhan has managed to remain a somewhat influential force in American politics, race relations, and religion. Learn more about the life of the Nation of Islam leader and how he’s remained relevant in an increasingly divided America. Fast Facts: Louis Farrakhan Known For: Civil rights activist, minister, leader of the Nation of Islam (1977–present)Born: May 11, 1933 in the Bronx, New York CityParents: Sarah Mae Manning (Mae) and Percival ClarkeEducation: Winston-Salem State University, The English High SchoolPublished Works: A Torchlight for AmericaSpouse: KhadijahChildren: 9 Early Years Like so many notable Americans, Louis Farrakhan grew up in an immigrant family. He was born on May 11, 1933, in the Bronx, New York City.  Both of his parents immigrated to the United States from the Caribbean. His mother Sarah Mae Manning came from the island of St. Kitts, while his father Percival Clark was from Jamaica. In 1996, Farrakhan said his father, who reportedly had Portuguese heritage, may have been Jewish. Scholar and historian Henry Louis Gates called Farrakhan’s claim credible, since Iberians in Jamaica tend to have Sephardic Jewish ancestry. Because the Jewish community has often accused Farrakhan of being an anti-Semite, his claims about his father’s ancestry are remarkable, if true. Farrakhan’s birth name, Louis Eugene Walcott, reveals the discord in his parents’ relationship. Farrakhan said his father’s philandering had driven his mother into the arms of a man named Louis Wolcott, with whom she had a child and for whom she converted to Islam. She planned to start a new life with Wolcott, but briefly reconciled with Clark, resulting in an unplanned pregnancy. Manning repeatedly tried to abort the pregnancy, according to Farrakhan, but eventually gave up on termination. When the child arrived, with light skin and curly, auburn hair, Wolcott knew the baby wasn’t his and he left Manning. That didn’t stop her from naming the child â€Å"Louis† after him. But Farrakhan’s real father didn’t play an active role in his life either, he said. His mother remained a stable influence. A music lover, she exposed him to the violin. He didn’t immediately take interest in the instrument. â€Å"I [eventually] fell in love with the instrument,† he recalled, â€Å"and I was driving her crazy because now I would go in the bathroom to practice because it had a sound like you’re in a studio and so people couldn’t get in the bathroom because Louis was in the bathroom practicing.† He said that by age 12, he played well enough to perform  with the Boston civic symphony, the Boston College orchestra, and its glee club. In addition to playing the violin, Farrakhan sang well. In 1954, using the name â€Å"The Charmer,† he even recorded the hit single â€Å"Back to Back, Belly to Belly,† a cover of  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Jumbie Jamboree.† A year before the recording, Farrakhan married his wife Khadijah.  They went on to have nine children together. Nation of Islam The musically inclined Farrakhan managed to use his talents  in the service of Nation of Islam. While performing, he attended a meeting of the group, which Elijah Muhammad started in 1930 in Detroit. As a leader, Muhammad sought a separate state for African-Americans and endorsed racial segregation. Prominent NOI leader Malcolm X persuaded Farrakhan to join the group. Farrakhan did just that, only a year after recording his hit single. Initially, Farrakhan was known as Louis X and he wrote the song â€Å"A White Man’s Heaven Is a Black Man’s Hell† for the Nation. Eventually, Muhammad gave Farrakhan the surname he’s famous for today. Farrakhan rapidly rose through the ranks of the group. He assisted Malcolm X at the group’s Boston mosque and assumed his superior’s role when Malcolm left Boston to preach in Harlem. Malcolm X In 1964, ongoing tensions with Muhammad led Malcolm X to leave the Nation. After his departure, Farrakhan essentially took his place, deepening his relationship with Muhammad. In contrast, Farrakhan and Malcolm X’s relationship grew strained when the latter criticized the group and its leader. Specifically, Malcolm X told the world that Mohammad had fathered children with many of his teenage secretaries. Malcolm X considered him a hypocrite since NOI preached against extramarital sex.  But Farrakhan considered Malcolm X a traitor for divulging this news to the public. Two months before Malcolm’s assassination in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom on Feb. 21, 1965, Farrakhan said of him, â€Å"such a man is worthy of death.† When police arrested three NOI members for assassinating 39-year-old Malcolm X, many wondered if Farrakhan played a role in the murder. Farrakhan admitted that his harsh words about Malcolm X likely  Ã¢â‚¬Å"helped create the atmosphere† for the killing. â€Å"I may have been complicit in words that I spoke leading up to February 21,† Farrakhan told Malcolm X’s daughter Atallah Shabazz and  Ã¢â‚¬Å"60 Minutes† correspondent Mike Wallace in 2000. â€Å"I acknowledge that and regret that any word that I have said caused the loss of life of a human being.† A 6-year-old Shabazz saw the shooting, along with her siblings and mother. She thanked Farrakhan for taking some responsibility but said she did not forgive him. â€Å"He’s never admitted this before publicly,†Ã‚  she said.  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Until now, he’s never caressed my father’s children. I thank him for acknowledging his culpability and I wish him peace.† Malcolm X’s widow, the late Betty Shabazz, had accused Farrakhan of having a hand in the assassination. She seemingly made amends with him in 1994, when her daughter Qubilah faced charges, later dropped, for an alleged plot to kill him. NOI Splinter Group Eleven years after Malcolm X’s killing, Elijah Muhammad died. It was 1975, and the group’s future appeared uncertain. Muhammad had left his son Warith Deen Mohammad in charge. The younger Muhammad wanted to turn NOI into a more conventionally Muslim group called the American Muslim Mission. (Malcolm X had also embraced traditional Islam after leaving the NOI.) Warith  Deen Mohammad  also rejected his father’s separatist teachings. But Farrakhan disagreed with this vision and left the group to start a version of NOI that aligned with Elijah Muhammad’s philosophy. He also started The Final Call newspaper to publicize his group’s beliefs. Farrakhan got involved with politics as well. Previously, NOI told members to refrain from political involvement, but Farrakhan decided to endorse the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 bid for president. Both the NOI and Jackson’s civil rights group, Operation PUSH, were based on Chicago’s South Side. Fruit of Islam, part  of NOI,  even guarded Jackson during his campaign. Jesse Jackson â€Å"I believe that Rev. Jackson’s candidacy has lifted the seal forever from the thinking of black people, particularly black youth,† Farrakhan said. â€Å"Never again will our youth think that all they can be is singers and dancers, musicians and football players and sportsmen. But through Reverend Jackson, we see that we can be theoreticians, scientists, and whatnot. For that one thing he did alone, he would have my vote. Jackson, however, didn’t win his presidential bid in 1984 or in 1988. He  derailed his  first campaign when he referred to Jews as â€Å"Hymies† and New York City as â€Å"Hymietown,† both anti-Semitic terms, during an interview with a black Washington Post reporter. A wave of protests ensued. Initially, Jackson denied the remarks. Then he changed his tune and accused Jews of trying to sink his campaign. He later admitted making the comments and asked the Jewish community to forgive him. But he refused to part ways with Farrakhan. Farrakhan tried to defend his friend by going on the radio and threatening both the Post reporter, Milton Coleman, and Jews about their treatment of Jackson. â€Å"If you harm this brother [Jackson], it will be the last one you harm,† he said. Farrakhan reportedly called Coleman a traitor and told the African-American community to shun him. The NOI leader also faced accusations of threatening Coleman’s life. â€Å"One day soon we will punish you with death,† Farrakhan remarked. Afterward, he denied threatening Coleman. Million Man March Although Farrakhan has long faced accusations of anti-Semitism and has criticized black civic groups such as the NAACP, he’s managed to stay relevant in a changing America. On Oct. 16, 1995, for example, he organized the historic Million Man March on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Civil rights leaders, including Rosa Parks, Jackson, and Shabazz, gathered at the event designed for young African-American men to ponder the pressing issues affecting the black community. According to some estimates, about a half-million people turned out for the march. Other estimates report a crowd as large as 2 million. In any case, there’s no doubt that a massive crowd gathered for the occasion, an impressive achievement for any organizer. The Nation of Islam’s website points out that the march challenged stereotypes of African-American men: â€Å"The world did not see thieves, criminals, and savages as usually portrayed through mainstream music, movies and other forms of media; on that day, the world saw a vastly different picture of the Black man in America. The world saw Black men demonstrating the willingness to shoulder the responsibility of improving themselves and the community. There was neither one fight nor one arrest that day. There was no smoking or drinking. The Washington Mall, where the March was held, was left as clean as it was found.† Farrakhan later organized the 2000 Million Family March. And 20 years after the Million Man March, he commemorated the landmark event. Later Years Farrakhan earned praise for the Million Man March, but just a year later he sparked controversy again. In 1996, he visited  Libya. The Libyan ruler at the time, Muammar al-Qaddafi, made a donation  to the Nation of Islam, but the federal government didn’t let Farrakhan accept the gift. Despite such incidents and a long list of inflammatory remarks, Farrakhan has won the support of  people in and outside of the black community. They applaud  NOI  for fighting against social injustice, advocating for education, and pushing back against gang violence, among other issues. The Rev. Michael L. Pfleger, a white Roman Catholic priest with a parish on Chicagos South Side, is an example. He called Farrakhan his closest adviser. â€Å"I’ve lost friends and I’ve lost support—I’ve been disinvited from places—because of my relationship with Farrakhan,† the priest told the New Yorker in 2016. But he added, I’d take a bullet for  [him and others] any day of the week.† Meanwhile, Farrakhan  continues to generate publicity for his cutting comments. Shortly after President Donald Trumps inauguration,  he called the United States  the most rotten nation on Earth. On May 2, 2019, Farrakhan was banned from Facebook and Instagram for violations of Facebook’s policies against hate speech. Sources Blow, Charles M. Million Man March, 20 Years On. New York Times, Oct. 11, 2015Bromwich, Jonah Engel. Why Louis Farrakhan Is Back in the News. New York Times, March 9, 2018.  Farrakhan, Louis, and Henry Louis Gates. Farrakhan Speaks. Transition.70 (1996): 140–67. Print.Gardell, Mattias. In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1996.Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. Nation of Islam.  Louis Farrakhan banned from Facebook over policies on violence, hate. Chicago Sun Times May 2, 2019.McPhail, Mark Lawrence. Passionate Intensity: Louis Farrakhan and the Fallacies of Racial Reasoning. Quarterly Journal of Speech 84.4 (1998): 416–29.

Analysis Of Snow s Midsummer By Guan Hanqing

Michel de Polignac ANALYSIS PAPER 1: Retributive justice is a very common element found not only in literature but in almost all text that tries to evoke moral values. A nemetic ending is often used to provide the reader or spectator the satisfaction of seeing the hero be rewarded for his or her virtuous actions. Alternatively, the evil or malicious characters are usually punished thanks to the hero s actions and thus brings a somewhat â€Å"happy ending† to the conflict. Many authors and playwrights would mostly hesitate to bring an unpleasant end to their stories so that the audience may leave their seats with a more positive outlook on the play. Nevertheless, it might be debatable if a standardized nemetic ending would transmit a more poignant message to the spectators, numerous plays that do not follow this norm are well known to have a very similar, if not equal, impact. To illustrate this tactic, we will mostly focus on the ending of â€Å"Snow in Midsummer† by Guan Hanqing that ma y end in a slightly ambiguous note rather than directly rewarding our hero Dou Er. Henceforth, we will also look over the case of Oedipus the King by Sophocles, that challenges the ideal retributive justice at the end of the play. We, as spectators, have a desire to connect with the characters and the issues they try to get through, as long as the heroes remain praiseworthy and villains fall and get defeated. In the case of â€Å"Snow in Midsummer† we may notice a somewhat paradoxical view on

Managing a Business Free Essays

Management is an art or practice of managing (especially a business or money. According to behavioral theories of management the traditional notion of Management is planing, organizing, leading and controlling. We have chosen Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) to explain these management concepts. We will write a custom essay sample on Managing a Business or any similar topic only for you Order Now PLANNING: Planning is an important management function that has to be carried out in an organization as it helps in determining the organizational goals and to create an action plan to carry it out. PLANNING PROCESS: Every department’s manager is responsible for preparing its own plans of action to carry out their tasks in the most efficient manner. These plans of action can also be termed as tactical plans as they are designed to help execute major strategic plans along with helping the organization to achieve its overall goals. SHORT-TERM AND LONG-TERM PLANNING: The manager undertakes both short-term planning as well as long-term planning. The bank stresses on the departments to lay greater emphasis on short-term goals so that the bank sees at least the short-term results of each department and, therefore, the progress of the departments. While preparing its plans, each department takes into consideration the resources, capital and human both, available to the department and the budget that is available to the department for each of the products. The manager also plans for the existing product line as well as the new products that are recently launched in the market. Lastly, the manager also plans for the targeted volume of each product. After the plan has been devised taking into account all the above factors, the plan is sent to the Central Planning Department, which is centralized. The Central Planning Department is a group of planning specialists who then prepares the overall future plan for the bank and submits it to the Finance Department. At the same time, monthly meetings are held in which all the heads of various departments and the Board of Directors get together to review budget vs. variances, profit and loss accounts, cash flows, inventory level, etc. of each department and then the marketing department, for example, will have to come up with a new plan to overcame the shortcomings as pointed out by the Board of Directors. STRATEGIES Strategy formulation is an important part of planning which the department also undertakes. There are various strategies and methods used by the departments to undertake their plans. PRICING STRATEGY: One of the strategies that it uses is the Pricing Strategy. In this strategy, they look at the current prices in the market and then plan accordingly and then project the new prices which will prove to be more profitable than the old prices. Note: While we are talking about the pricing then we mean the prices of the products that the banks are offering and the price itself is the interest rate being offered.   COST BASED PRICING STRATEGY: The other strategy used by the departments is Cost Based Pricing Strategy. The department’s sets the products prices by looking at the components those make up their price, that is, its imagery, cost and profit. The department always tries to set the price, which is lower than the competitors and brings in positive cash flow. So, it tries to produce the products at the lowest possible cost by investing more money into RD so that it could increase its profit margin further. OTHER STRATEGIES: Other strategies used are market research, which is conducted on a small basis but is very important for the Marketing Department. And as their focus is on corporate clients, the carry out corporate surveys and interviews with their customers, which adds a personal touch and results in, increased sales. Focus groups and questionnaires are also sometimes distributed to get responses from the customers. Sampling is another strategy used by the department in which they give sample products to various houses which they choose randomly and the results are then verified by the sales and marketing team carrying out the research. ORGANIZING: Organizing is the next important function of management which is the assignment of resources available to the company to different tasks in order to achieve the strategic goals. ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE: Like every other company HSBC has also been established as a separate legal entity having its own managing director and a team of professionals to head each department. As evident from the organizational structure of the company, the company has a formal structure i.e. it is official and planned and has deliberately planned structure of roles within the organization. It follows the organic style of management where authority is based on expertise rather than hierarchy and, therefore, believes in participative decision making in which employees working in all levels of the company are involved. Decision making power is delegated up to the level of middle management. The company believes in the philosophy that â€Å"To get the job done most efficiently, people doing the job should essentially be indecision making†.  All the decisions, whether small or minor, are made at the top levels in the company’s hierarchy. Therefore, HSBC is a centralized company in the sense that only the department heads and the managing director is involved in decision making. MARKETING DEPARTMENT’S STRUCTURE: In the Marketing Department, the authority to make decisions is vested in the Marketing Director, who makes all the decisions for his department and then delegate’s authority and responsibility to their subordinates. The sales team collects information like the sales figure currently in the market, information about the competitors, etc. and is handed over to the Marketing Director who then makes the final decision based on the available information. There are assistant brand managers working under the brand managers who are sometimes asked to give suggestions if a decision requires information related to a task which is directly handled by them. HSBC follows the concept of line authority as the people in the management positions such as the research division manager has the power to control and direct the immediate employees which in this case are the field investigators. LEADING: HSBC believes that leadership is an art or process of influencing people so that they perform assigned tasks willingly and in an efficient and effective manner. The marketing director, therefore, thinks that leadership is crucial in motivating and inspiring the workforce. MOTIVATORS: The company uses only two ways of regarding the employees: either by increasing the salary or prompting the employees if possible. The company strictly adheres to the policy of promotion from within. Job enrichment provided by HSBC is almost negligible which limits the scope of jobs for the employees because of which employees leave the company for better job offers elsewhere. HSBC does provide a good working environment to its employees and there are large numbers of female employees working in the company. There is high employee turnover in HSBC because of the few opportunities of progressing that the company provides to their employees because of which none of the employees stay with the company for a long time. CONTROLLING: Controlling which is the fourth function of management is effectively practiced in HSBC. The director of the Human Resource Department monitors employees’ activities, keeps the departments on track towards achieving the goals and makes corrections as needed. These are the basic functions of controlling which are used in this department. CONTROL METHODS: Regular meetings are held to check the progress of the employees and then make amendments as needed. Marketing and sales teams are sent for national visits to places and when they come back, they have to report to the marketing director in way of both formal and informal reports The director then sees the results of the visit whether there was an increase in sales or not and therefore, make corrections like to change the sales team in the next visit, etc. These, therefore, train the employees in the practical aspects of the job which prove to be beneficial for the company. Reference Courtland L. Bovee, John Thill, (2004), Business in Action, 3rd Ed. Christopher Kingsley (1993), A trainer’s primer: Advice to the novice trainer about the basics of organizing, planning, and leading an effective training seminar (Technical assistance training publication series) Sandy Schuman (2005), The IAF Handbook of Group Facilitation: Best Practices from the Leading Organization Luis Martin Diaz (2006), Evaluation of Cooperative Planning in Supply Chains David A. Baldwin, Frances C. Wilkinson, and Daniel C. Barkley (2000), Effective Management of Student Employment. Rohan Wickremasinghe – (Daily News May 3, 2001), Management Consultant,  Ã‚   President of Institute of Development How to cite Managing a Business, Essay examples