Bonjour à tous et toutes,
Comme tous les terminales, j'ai mon oral d'anglais pour le bac dans quelques jours. J'ai rédigé ma notion Lieux et formes de pouvoir. Pourriez-vous, s'il-vous plaît (et si vous avez un très bon niveau en anglais bien sûr!) me corriger ce texte . De plus, je ne sais comment conclure, alors si vous pouviez m'aider, ça serait vraiment très aimable. Merci à ceux qui prendront le temps de tout lire (car je sais que c'est un travail très long!)


Places and forms of power

I am going to talk about places and forms of power. First of all, I want to give a definition of this notion:  Places could be important buildings or institutions that represent a certain form of power. Power is the ability to control others, events, or resources; the ability to make things happen despite obstacles. This of course leads to conflict between those who have power and those who don’t.
To what extent can power be misused? This is the question we must answer. Firstly, we shall raise the case of eugenics. Then we will talk about Africans- Americans.

First, let’s talk about eugenics. In the 30’s to 50’s, that was the heyday of the eugenics movement in the USA, there was a forced sterilization movement. For instance, October 22 1968 Charles Holt was 19 at the time living in North Carolina when his life was drastically changed without his consent. What they have done was surgery: a vasectomy to make him sterile. From 1907 through the 1970’s, more than 60000 Americans were sterilized. 32 states had eugenics program but California was in a league of its own. The aim of this movement was to rid the country of the feeble-minded and mentally defectives people. Even the Supreme Court approved it. Thus, the judicial power orders doctors to sterilize people who had “unfit humans traits”. There are here excesses of eugenics.
Secondly, we can talk about the Nazis. Indeed, the Nazis took inspiration from eugenics and killed people who weren’t perfect since they didn’t fit in with the racial purity of the aryan race, with blue eyes and blond hair. There is again an excesses of eugenics. Indeed, Nazis used it to exterminate supposedly inferior population such as the Jews, the Gipsies and the homosexuals. Their aim was to create perfect human beings, by their standards. Hitler abused of his power because he deleted populations who weren’t perfect according to him.
Wether in Germany or in USA, power was misused with scientific progress such as eugenics. However, it’s not the only field where power is abused.

Now, let’s talk about power that Africans-Americans had to put up with. First, we are going to talk about slavery. First let's talk about slavery: it is the excessive power that white people exercised over black people from Africa. This excessive power was especially exercised in America until the end of the civil war in 1865.The Americans needed strong labor for agriculture such as cotton, tobacco and rice planting. During the period of slavery, the African people were enslaved and deprived of all their rights as human beings because the US and European companies were deeply racist and were prejudiced against blacks. We saw with the text "The Slave Trade" that the living conditions on the slave-ships were terrible: slaves were packed very tight and chained. They were treated like livestock. Thus, I think that white people had abuse their power on blacks populations.
Besides, we can talk about segregation. Although slavery was abolished in 1865 thanks to the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, segregation went on, and the Black people were denied equal rights with their White counterparts. They couldn't  share the same restaurants, or the same public toilets and even had separate entrances to shared facilities. Afros-Americans were largely discriminated against in the South because of the segregation, which was implemented by Jim Crow laws.