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I think people should be educated about how everyone is affected by oppression and discrimination even when it seems like they are not. People should be taught that they can and should do things in order to fight injustice in the world, and that if they are not apart of the solution they are apart of the problem. People should see how their privilege does not excuse them from the problems (i.e. avoid responsibility for them) but instead it just helps create them. People should not be afraid to have tough conversations and should not shy away from tackling these problems.  People should also not feel discouraged to fight for the right thing even if they do not get the desired outcome right away. Change usually comes with time and hard work…people have to fight a lot in order to make the world a better place.

At first, it will be really hard to speak up when I see an injustice because I usually do not do that. I know it is the right thing to do, but I sometimes get scared and do not want to get involved in other’s problems since I have enough of my own. In order for this to work I will have to go outside of my comfort zone. I am not sure if that will be a hard thing to do since I view these problems as being my own now (before I did not think like that). I will try to speak up and defend people that are being treated unfairly based on racist, sexist, classist, heterosexist, ageist, abelist, and any other “-ist” ideas/thoughts. 

Activism

I think a good activist would be someone who is willing to fight for what they believe in no matter what. Ideally the activist should really believe in what he/she is fighting for because that way the activist fights with all his/her heart and soul. An activist should be someone who is not afraid to get “dirty” for the cause they are fighting. For example, there could be a chance of going to jail for protesting or a chance of getting killed for speaking out against the majority, but I think if the activist really wants a change in the world they would be willing to go to jail and willing to die for that change. A good activist does not always have to join protests or go to jail or die for a cause, but instead he/she should always be willing to fight for justice wherever he/she finds injustice. Activists should also be willing to do all the things mentioned in the video Visionary: bell hooks like acknowledging people, having tough conversations, talking about taboo issues like sexuality and race, and treating yourself and others with compassion.

 Although I do not admire any one specific activist I try to admire every day people that have done something to create more equality in the world. I admire those people because they are doing something that a lot of other people do not do. People like Shirley Chisholm and Naomi Klein are just a couple of activists among tons that should be admired for their fight towards more equality. I really liked that Naomi Klein said “it was no longer possible to be neutral” in the video Naomi Klein on Becoming an Activist because so many people avoid taking responsibility for making changes in the world yet activists do not. Instead they fully embrace their responsibility and use it in order to make the world a better place. 

Quick Blog 6 (Part 2)

Opps, I just answered the first question :(

2. I guess our society is segregated based on age because we are always trying to find ways to separate people from each other. This is just another way to make some people superior and others inferior. Young people are stereotyped as being too young to do things and older people are stereotypes as being too old to do things. I'm not really sure why young adults and middle-age adults get the privilege, but I suppose since they are seen as old enough to make their own decisions and they can still take care of themselves without assistance. 

3. Everyone could stop thinking about stereotypes of younger/older people based on their age For example, we could stop thinking that older people are helpless and younger people can't make proper decisions because of their ages. Maybe if we integrated people with different ages with each other we could grow to respect each other - not based on our ages, but based on our personalities. I'm not really sure how we could do that......I suppose by not ostracizing younger/older people from society and instead viewing them as being just as equal as a young adult/middle-age adult. 

Quick Blog 6

I would say that my social sphere is mostly centered around people my own age. I mean I live with my family where my parents are older than me, but I think that is always a given in that situation....haha. Furthermore, my two sisters are around my age, and most of my friends are around my age as well. I guess this is the case since I meet people in an area surrounded by people my age (university) so it is no wonder that I would have a lot of friends my own age.


But I do work with people with a variety of ages. I get along with pretty much everyone I work with. I just talk about different things with each person, but that is not just because of their ages. I mean, people do have their own interests and each person is an individual. I have never felt that  my co-workers have thought badly of me based on my age, but it would be nice to interact with a more diverse group of ages because I do not really interact with young people too much. I do not babysit or work where a lot of young people would be so I do not really get the chance to interact with them. Interacting with a lot of different people would be a good idea because that way I would really understand what these people go through (like ageism).

Ageism

I am not sure if I am ageist all the time, but I know I have thought ageist thoughts without realizing I was doing so. For example, I have dreaded having to raise teenagers because of all the bad stereotypes related to that age period, and I have thought that most older people do not really know that much about computers (not like I know that much myself, but I sort of followed the crowd in thinking this way). At the time, I did not really know this was ageist thinking or that I was being ageist. I did not really think about it, but I guess I just thought that is way the world is/was. Reading the list of examples of ageism I have really realized how much ageism there is that I did not really think about. For example, cosmetics that advertize anti-aging, an absence of older people in advertisement, and seating older people in inactive parts of restaurants. I never really noticed that older people were not in advertisements, but now that I think about it I have only seem old people in advertisements for things that are specific for them like a specific devise designed for older people (for example, Life Alert).  

This “-ism” is probably avoided in our society because we do not want to deal with it. We are trying to avoid reasonability for it since we think older people are taken care of with social security when sometimes they are not. We do not want to think of those older people who do not have their pensions or who are living in poverty because those are not nice thoughts. One of the videos for today, Who Took Your Pension?, was very emotional because I really felt for those people who had worked for many years and put money into social security, but when the time came for them to collect that money back they could not do that. In the end, they would receive only about 1/5 of what they should have received based on their paychecks. Anther video, Once We Were Young, was also very emotional because it showed what older people have to go through when they do not get the correct support. I am really glad to know that there is an organization like Age Concern that helps older people manage in a world that is ageist. 

Disability

The article about Ashley and Deborah called How to Curse in Sign Language was very informative. I learned some new things about how people think and act towards people with disabilities. What really saddened me was that fact that a lot of churches were not very supportive of Ashley and Deborah. I would think that the church would be the one place that people could go to and they would be accepted no matter what but, unfortunately, this not the case. According to the article, “most of the major religions of the world have a long history of associating disability with sin, evil, or the devil. The Church has often been one of the leading institutions to dehumanize people on the wrong side of normal” (502).

Another thing that was very troubling was that Ashley’s school district decided to abolish sign language instruction in favor of speech instruction by way of cochlear implants. Teachers were even told to cover their mouths so the students could not lip read. It is really horrible that people with disabilities are forced to conform to hearing/speaking society instead of being able to be who they are. I do not think that people should be forced to use cochlear implants if they do not want to because they should decide if they want to learn to “hear” or if they want to sign or read lips.

I suppose Gimp changed my notion of the human body because it does not really matter if I have two arms or one – I still have a body. The movements of everyone in the video seemed very graceful, and sometimes I could not tell who was dancing. All the participants in the video pretty much danced the same. I did not notice anything different between the dancers so I suppose this could address the fact that everyone (disabled or not) can do the same stuff. Also, I think this video showed disabled people as doing something when a lot of non-disabled people think they cannot do anything at all. It seemed very empowering of disabled people. 

Process Piece

I thought that doing this video project about the Arizona Immigration Law would be a good idea since it is a fairly recent issue that also taps into the overall issue of illegal immigration. I started out by looking up information about this law. I tried to get both perspectives on this issue, but it was a little hard to get information against the law while it was really easy to get information for the law. I found some news articles that mentioned other states like Florida would like to adopt a similar law so it seems that a lot of political figures have decided that this is a good and useful law. I also found articles that mention the lawmakers changed the rhetoric of the law in order to avoid racial profiling and discrimination. Other people stated that they did not think the police could effectively administer this law without being racist because they have no been taught how to do that. I do not really know if this is true or not since I do not know any police officers nor am I a police officer myself. I just used news articles because that is where all the information about this issue is coming from. I tired to incorporate all this information into my video project.

I decided to make both the characters females because I wanted to. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I am a female as well, I am not sure. I picked two females that looked different so it would not be hard to determine who was who. I wanted women that were white since one was racist against Latinos/as and the other was not Latina. I thought making them as much the same would be the best. Also, I did not want to do male/female since I did not want to say anything bad about either gender. For example, I pick the male character to say racist stuff which, in turn, means I am saying that men are more racist than females or something like that. Maybe I over thought this…..I wrote the way I usually write. I did not try and make them sound “dumb” or anything like that. I think because the Xtranormal site uses robot voices the way the characters spoke was a little strange. Sometimes they would say the words I typed in a different way than the way I heard them in my head. When I previewed the video I tried to fix any mistakes and make the characters sound the way I sounded in my head. Sometimes it worked, but sometimes it did not. 

I started off the conversation as a general one, but that brought up the topic of the law pretty early on because I wanted to get into the meat and potatoes of the conversation. It was a little hard to make the conversation flow and make it not feel forced. I am not sure if it does feel forced, but I tried to make it as casual as possible. Towards the end I needed to wrap it up and I kind of ended it abruptly, but I was not sure of a good way to end it. It was sort of hard to mix racism with the law. I think I wanted to do two things….like general racism towards Latinos/as and racism of the Arizona Immigration Law. I think I was not really prepared to write about racism of the Arizona Immigration Law because a lot of the articles I read did not really touch upon that topic too much. I suppose I could have done more research, but I think I have a lot of information, maybe just not very good information.

Resources:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/01/nation/la-na-arizona-immigration-20100501

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/letters-to-the-editor/2010/8/23/the-arizona-immigration-law-good-policy

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/carefully-crafted-immigration-law-arizona

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-04-23/politics/immigration.faq_1_arizona-immigration-law-reform-sb1070?_s=PM:POLITICS

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40572312/ns/world_news-americas/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/us/politics/24immig.html?_r=1

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/10/the-arizona-immigration-law-racial-discrimination-prohibited

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/what-does-arizonas-immigration-law-actually-say

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/04/23/20100423arizona-immigration-law-passed.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36735281/ns/politics-more_politics/

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/03/nation/la-na-arizona-crime-20100503

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/us/politics/24immig.html