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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

Porn

I totally agree with the message of Price of Pleasure, because I am really against pornography. I hate the way women are portrayed being the submissive person and the men as being the powerful person. I truly believe that pornography contributes to way men see women and also to the way men see women sexually. I remember at one point in the movie this guy was talking about buying a sex doll instead of being with a real woman. He listed all these negative things like “nagging, buying too much stuff, wanting food”, but he never mentioned anything positive like “someone to talk to, someone who loves you, someone who supports you”.

I was really disturbed by the ideas of violence in pornography because I think it furthers the ideas of misogyny and sexism. I really do not understand the idea of having sex with a woman and then putting her head in the toilet. What the hell is that? I am outraged that someone would even think about this idea let alone direct this “movie”! I do not think that any woman would like to experience that. Furthermore, I do not think many women in the pornography business actually like what they are doing. Pornography probably presents women in very degrading manners because of male privilege and the fact that our society views men as superior to females. The documentary mentioned the fact that pornography gives men power while women have to be submissive.

Young men who view this type of pornography or any pornography will get really twisted ideas about females and female sexuality. There is no way that people who watch porn will not be influenced by it in one way, shape, or form. This documentary mentioned some examples of break downs in relationships due to pornography. For example, a couple will divorce because he watches too much pornography, a couple will break up because he wants to re-enact the scene he saw from pornography, but she does not want to, a couple will break up because he is forcing her to watch porn with him when she does not want to. 

Transgender Women

Many people believe that transgender women are not real women because they were born with a male body instead of a female one. These people are creating a false hierarchy of “authentic” versus “fake” that only perpetuates cissexism and transphobia. In Trans Woman Manifesto, Julia Serano makes a great point when she brought up the fact that “we make assumptions every day about other people’s genders without ever seeing their birth certificates, their chromosomes, their genitals, their reproductive systems, their childhood socialization, or their legal sex” (442). 

Another harmful stereotype of transgender women is that they reject their maleness and masculinity when, in fact, they usually never had a male/masculine personality.  In Beautiful Daughters, the author of The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler, came to the realization after interviewing a lot of transgender women that they never knew what it was like to live as men because they have always lived as women. Because males are supposed to be better than females and masculinity is seen as being superior to femininity, transgender women are seen as a threat because they opted to be female instead of male and to embrace their femininity instead of their masculinity. Because of this, transgender women are faced with violence and “dismissal” of who they are.

Transgender people and non-transgender people can all act as allies in order to fight transphobia by fighting for all women’s rights regardless of what gender each woman was born into. Another thing would be to regard women and men as being more similar then different. According to Serano, “we must also stop pretending that there are essential differences between women and men”. 

Queer Streets

According to Queer Streets, 25 to 50 percent of 20,000 homeless people in New York City are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and/or Transgender (LGBT). Because of heterosexist oppression throughout the United States, many people who are LGBT move out to New York City because they here it is a tolerant place. What they do not hear is that it is a hard place to live and it is a hard place to make it. They have no other choice but to go to homeless shelters until they can survive on their own. There is only one homeless shelter named Sylvia’s Place that focuses on the LGBT community. People go there to get stabilized (get food, get medical care), and are allowed to stay there up to ninety days. Many times it takes so many years until they can fully escape the circle of homeless shelters. For one lesbian named J.D. it took her seven years until she bought her own apartment!

What was really interesting was the fact that the LGBT homeless are more likely to suffer from violence, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, sex work, and mental illness than the straight homeless. The only reason I can see for this is because of heterosexist oppression. In the United States, the LGBT community does not have very many civil rights. In practically every state, the LGBT community is still prohibited from legal marriages! One transgender named Isyss could not get a proper job because her legal sex is male even though she identifies as a female. Because of this set back and the fact that she desperately needed money, she became a prostitute. I do not believe this would have happened if she was given a fair chance at a job and not automatically disqualified because of her sexual identity.

What I noticed in this video and other LGBT-related material is that the LGBT community seems to focus more on the G part and not so much on the LBT part. This short film was a little different because it focused on three transgender, but only male to female transgender. There was not a single female to male in the whole short film! Another thing that stuck out to me was the fact that there was only one lesbian and no bisexuals (male or female). I just wish that the LGBT community was more represented in this video. I mean, what happened to the Q (questioning) part of LGBT? In my opinion, instead of LGBT it should be LGBTQ! I think Q should be included as well because they go through a lot of emotional turmoil as well. Also, I think they are discriminated against because they do not go along with the status qua. Even if they eventually decided that they are not lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender they still questioned their sexual identity. Because of heterosexist oppression that shows they are somehow not “normal” and will be looked at differently. 

Classism

1. Describe an experience where you were privileged or advantaged due to your class/socio-economic status.

         I’ve been thinking about this a lot, but I can’t really come up with an idea. I haven’t really found any instances where I was privileged because of my socio-economic status. I know that one time my family had to use the Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program (WIC) when I was younger. I do not know if this would be considered a privilege because my family was a low-income one, but it allowed my family to buy food.

2. Describe an experience where you were oppressed or disadvantaged due to your class/socio-economic status.

         One time during the summer my family and I were driving around Rhode Island. We went to Providence for the day, but as we don’t know the area very well we couldn’t really find a good restaurant. We passed by a couple of them, but they were very fancy ones. We didn’t try to go in since we didn’t think we could afford the food. Plus, we weren’t dressed in any nice clothes and we noticed that everyone going inside the restaurant were wearing formal clothes.

3. Write about an experience where you witnessed an incident of classism (remark, behavior, attitude) and your reaction to it.

         When I was in high school we had some other students from a neighboring town, but this town had a very bad reputation for being a poor one. I know that a lot of students talked about how “ghetto” these students were or how trashy the town was. Even other students from that town would talk about how trashy it was or how the people were ghetto. I would usually join in as well even though I had friends from the town, and I knew not everyone was like that. 

Whip My Hair

I first heard this song on the radio a couple of weeks ago, and I thought this was the most annoying song in the world! I whip my hair back and worth....seriously? I can't believe someone decided to produce this!


Anyway, I think the lyrics aren't so bad....I didn't see anything so concerning except perhaps kids could grow up with ideas like "pay no attention to them haters cuz we whip em off/and we ain't doing nothing wrong/so don't tell me nothing/i'm just tryna have fun/so keep the party jumping". Perhaps children will think that they can do whatever they like since it isn't "so" bad. Thus, they won't listen to their parents or older people unless they feel like it. I tried to find some sexual undertones in the lyrics, but I didn't see anything that really stuck out for me. Hmmm, actually, perhaps when she says "I wish my hair back and forth" she is talking about dancing in a sexy way. I figured it was dancing, but like innocent dancing, but now I'm not so sure. 


I liked her lyrics: "don't let haters keep me off my grind/keep my head up i know I'll be fine/keep fighting until i get there/when i'm down and i feel like giving up i think again" because it shows that you shouldn't give up on things that you believe in and that perhaps you will have to fight for what you want. 


I noticed in the video that Willow Smith is acting a little older than what she really is. I think she is just like 10 or 12 years old, but it seems like she is somewhat older. Actually, her lyrics like "haters" and "swagger" -- what 10 year old has serious "haters" and a "swagger". I don't even think I have those things and I'm way older than she is!


I also noticed that Willow Smith does some things during the video where she looks like an idiot. Like she would have her hand to her face and look up.....perhaps that is suggesting that little girls aren't too smart. Willow Smith and some other women (they were dancers) also danced in some provocative ways....like with their legs open and wearing tight clothes (like that one dancer in red). 


To be honest, I'm not sure how race intersects with this. If you guys have an idea I would love to hear it. Do you think that African-American women are sexualized more than other women? That's sorta the only idea I could come up with.....

Killing Us Softly 3

In the words of Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly 3, “to a great extent advertising tells us who we are and who we should be”. Advertising shows an ideal feminine body that is flawless, and it is also unattainable because it does not really exist. But ads are not only selling the products they advertize, they are also selling ideas and perceptions about what is truly beautiful. According to Kilbourne, there is an American belief that all women can look like the models in magazines if they try hard enough. If they do not look like these fictional women then they just are not trying hard enough and they need to try harder. Women put all their time, energy, and money into “trying harder” when they will never reach these outrageous expectations because the model body type is very rare. According to Kilbourne, advertising tells us, just like 10 and 20 and 30 years ago, that “what is most important about women is how we look”.

Advertising not only lowers the self-esteem of women but of men as well. Ads put pressure on women to be “perfect”, and they put pressure on men to be with the “perfect” woman. Many times women’s bodies are objectified which sends the idea that women are not fully human. In addition, women of color are often portrayed as being half-animal, half-human which also furthers the idea that women are not fully human. Because women are being dehumanized, men are more likely to feel justified when they resort to violence in order to get their way. After all, they did not really hit a person, only half a person, right?

The relationships between females and males in ads are all about power. Usually the males have power over the females but, when it is about race, the white people have power over people of color. When women do have power it is always masculine power – for example, “women with balls” will buy this product. In pretty much every ad, the women are always passive and the males are always active. The body language of women in ads is one of vulnerability and passiveness – women are told to say things with their body and not with their mouth or they have their hand over their mouths so they cannot even talk.

While thinking about any recent examples of media images that portray a more realistic idea about women I could not think of anything for a few minutes. Eventually, I came up with the Dove commercials I remember seeing a while ago that show regular women. Dove also has these self-esteem workshops that work towards helping you girls feel about who they are. While looking up some Dove commercials to include in this blog I found some Lane Bryant commercials which focuses on plus size clothing. Furthermore, I found some commercials by Playtex that also show regular women. Although, I did not come across that many commercials that used regular-looking women unless the product the companies were advertising was specifically targeted for plus sizes.

Dove: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbb8D-u8ues

Dove: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8Mn6g7bC4c

LB: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMxyZQfMmM4

CBS News about this LB commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_i-RIQnuhk

LB: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4n7xxvBfrE&feature=related

Bravissimo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygjLqheHiDQ

Playtex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-QCNT_qUcc

Playtex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8-wO-npSq0

Playtex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mMq9Vk4hio&feature=related

Christian Privilege or Christian Oppression?

My own spiritual/religious identity is a bit complicated. I am not really too sure where I stand in regards to religion and God. At one time, I used to be non-religious then I became a Christian, and then I switched back to non-religious. I was actually leaning more towards Atheism/Agnosticism, but I never really delved into that area too much. Right now, I am leaning more towards Christianity again (I still have some doubts though), but I am also open to learning about other religions like Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. I have been on this spiritual path for a little over six months, but I would say that I still have a long way to go before I fully commit to one. Then again, I might not become religious and instead just be non-religious. I am sort of wrestling with the idea that God does not even exist so all religions are false. Anyway, regardless of what my personal opinions are about religion I understand that some people believe in God/Gods and some people do not. Because of this, I think we should be tolerant of all types of ideas – regardless if they fit with our own. I know that ideas about our spiritual selves is a hard one to be tolerant about (since everyone thinks their religion is the “true” religion), but I think that might be the only way to find true peace (it seems that a lot of wars are started for religious reasons and/or have some kind of religious connection).

I am not so sure if I agree with number 7 [I can be sure that when my children make holiday crafts, they will bring home artistic symbols of the Christian religion (e.g. Easter bunny, Christmas tree)] from Lewis Z. Schlosser’s article Christian Privilege: Breaking a Sacred Taboo because I do not think that the Easter bunny nor a Christmas tree really represent Christianity anymore. Maybe at one time they did, but I do not see that connection anymore. I do not think that the Easter bunny and the Christmas tree are really Christian symbols anymore because I think they have changed into “holiday” symbols. I see Easter and Christmas as being more commercial holidays than religious ones. Sure, there are people out there that want Christ put back in Christmas, but for the majority of people it is all about the presents and Santa Claus. That is the same with Easter. Instead of being about the Resurrection of Jesus, it is more about the bunnies and chocolate. Because these holidays have somehow lost some of their religious connection I think it should be fine for everyone to celebrate them and not feel oppressed by Christianity. 

Since I suppose I am more confused than I am Christian, I do not know if I really experience privilege or oppression. I suppose it is privilege since I am leaning more towards Christianity, but it could quickly turn the other way based on a quick change of ideas. Because the United States has a lot of Christian followers I suppose I have just grown up thinking the way Christians do. Things like Sundays are the days when places close earlier (although, I think this might be changing…Wal-Mart is open until midnight on Sundays…just like every other day of the week) than the rest of the days of the week, saying things like Merry Christmas when it is Christmas time, not needing to worry about what Christians eat (I think they can eat anything…so…), and not wondering what God people are talking about when they say God. 

Video Treatment

1.     Topic: My short video will address the issue of racism because everyone is affected by it no matter what. I just think it would be fun to do this project on racism since I really like the idea I came up with. 

2.   

            Story: I want this to be a dialogue about the Arizona Law between two people. I want one person to be in favor of the law because of racism – like they hate immigrants because they are Latinos/as. I want the other person to be against it because of the fact that it is a racist law – like they are defending immigrants. I want the non-racist person to stand up and challenge the racist person’s ideas. I want the racist person to ask why the non-racist person even cares since that person (the non-racist person) is not a Latino/a, and the non-racist person will say that it is his or her problem as well since everyone needs to stand up for justice.

3.     

      Software: I want to use Xtranormal in order to make a “movie in text”. I have never used this before. Actually, I never knew this existed until this class. Because of that I might need help, but I am not sure. I was going to use the links that JRR gave us and, if I needed, I was going to look for more information on how to use this program.

4.     

      Research: I will find news articles about illegal immigration to Arizona from Latinos/as, and I will find information about the Arizona Law.  I want to find the pros and cons of this issue and from these stances I will start the conversation. I think this will be helpful, especially in the United States, because immigration is a really hot topic. A few months ago, the Arizona Law was a very huge topic, and I think racism plays a role in people’s ideas about immigration.  

5.     

      Timeline: I will look up information about illegal immigration/the Arizona Law. I will also take notes and get an understanding of both sides of the argument. I will write the script based on the information I found. I will explore Xtranormal and figure out how to use it. I might make a little video about something random to see if it works. I will use my script and put it into Xtranormal. I will preview the video I made and make sure it fulfills all the requirements and has all the information I need. I will upload it to SlideShare or Youtube – I am not sure which one yet (I was going to pick the easiest one). I will share the uploaded video with the class.

6.    

      Message: I want people to take away that in order to stop racism others need to stand up and make it their problem. 

Why Can't Everybody Fear Me Like That?

What I found really interesting about Saint’s article Why Can’t Everyone Fear Me Like That? was that his life is/was so drastically different from mine. For as long as I can remember I have lived in New England. My family first lived in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maine before finally settling in New Hampshire. I have lived in New Hampshire for pretty much my whole life – I think we moved here when I was about 6 or 7 and I’m 21 now…so, that was about 14 or 15 years ago. I have never lived in a big city let alone New York (Brooklyn, Crown Heights to be exact) before so I did not really know what to expect of Saint’s life.

At first it seemed pretty normal – living with family and having a nice childhood and getting everything you wanted, but soon it changes to something pretty scary. On page 205 he describes how his neighborhood “was known for shootouts and a lot of gang activity and stuff like that”.  I was pretty shocking to hear that right outside his house he could hear gunshots all the time. They were so close that he had to get down on the ground or risk getting shot himself. I have never had to experience that before. In fact, I have never even heard a gunshot in my life. I cannot imagine living in that type of situation. But like what Saint wrote on page 206, “after seeing the same thing every day, you see a kid get stabbed every day, see a kid get shot every day, it’s just another part of life”.   

Another interesting thing that Saint touched upon was the reason to join a gang. He mentioned all the benefits like money, girls, respect, fear, but he never really talked about all the bad things that come with joining a gang apart from hurting his mother, all the work he had to go through to get respect, and going to jail for the crimes he committed. He was not very specific about what sort of “work” he had to do in order to become a respected gangster and it would have been interesting to know what exactly he meant. I would guess something like killing people, but I do not know if that is all he means. 

The Arab Woman and I

Mona Fayad’s The Arab Woman and I is a very interesting article because it explores outside perceptions from society of who you are supposed to be. These outside perceptions use stereotypes of peoples/cultures in order to categorize how everyone should be/act. For example, Fayad, a native of Syria, feels weighed down by ideas of how Arab women are. Either they are Faceless Veiled Women or they are Belly Dancers. There really is not that much room for an in-between or for a woman who does not fit these specific roles. Fayad feels obliged to slip into a stereotyped “Arab woman” persona because “to talk about an ordinary Arab woman, one who wears pants or plain dress or a suit and walks around looking like everyone else is uninteresting, to say the least. I feel pressured to produce something special, something different” (112).

This way of thinking does not take into account that everyone is an individual with his or her own personality. Also, not everyone wants or does fit into these specific ideas of how people should be. I really like what Fayad wrote on page 112: “each Arab woman must represent herself, with the range of identities that include Syrian or Saudi Arabian, Berber or Copt, Bedouin or society woman from Beirut, Druze or Alawite, villager in the Upper Nile or Minister of Culture from Damascus”. This quote shows that everyone is his or her own person. Also, there are so many people in the world that if we use just one person (or a small handful of people) for a base line of how everyone else is we are committing a serious injustice to our society. When people do that they lose out on really getting to know other people. The beauty of the world is its diversity, which means everyone is a little bit different compared to everyone else.  If everyone were all the same life would just be so boring!

The Arab Woman and I

Mona Fayad’s The Arab Woman and I is a very interesting article because it explores outside perceptions from society of who you are supposed to be. These outside perceptions use stereotypes of peoples/cultures in order to categorize how everyone should be/act. For example, Fayad, a native of Syria, feels weighed down by ideas of how Arab women are. Either they are Faceless Veiled Women or they are Belly Dancers. There really is not that much room for an in-between or for a woman who does not fit these specific roles. Fayad feels obliged to slip into a stereotyped “Arab woman” persona because “to talk about an ordinary Arab woman, one who wears pants or plain dress or a suit and walks around looking like everyone else is uninteresting, to say the least. I feel pressured to produce something special, something different” (112).

This way of thinking does not take into account that everyone is an individual with his or her own personality. Also, not everyone wants or does fit into these specific ideas of how people should be. I really like what Fayad wrote on page 112: “each Arab woman must represent herself, with the range of identities that include Syrian or Saudi Arabian, Berber or Copt, Bedouin or society woman from Beirut, Druze or Alawite, villager in the Upper Nile or Minister of Culture from Damascus”. This quote shows that everyone is his or her own person. Also, there are so many people in the world that if we use just one person (or a small handful of people) for a base line of how everyone else is we are committing a serious injustice to our society. When people do that they lose out on really getting to know other people. The beauty of the world is its diversity, which means everyone is a little bit different compared to everyone else.  If everyone were all the same life would just be so boring!

Post 5

There are many different ways that dominant group members deny, minimize, and erase the oppression of certain other groups in the United States. Probably the most obvious would be that they say that racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, and any other “ism” just simply does not exist anymore. They use such evidence as “the American Dream” or “affirmative action” in order to back up their minimization of the problem. Usually the dominant group members tell the other groups how their experiences are – something along the lines of “not as bad as you think”. As Allan G. Johnson wrote on page 108 it is “perhaps the easiest way to get off the hook”. Another way would be for the dominant group members to actually blame the certain groups for the “ism”. This comes in the form of something like – “if blacks had more education they could get a better job and get out of the ghettos”.

The dominant groups members could also just rename some “isms” to something that sounds nicer and detracts from the actual meaning of the word. For example, instead of sexism, they would change it to “battle of the sexes”. Another way would be fore them to say that it is “better the way it is” – something to the effect that all blacks or all latinos like to live with other blacks/latinos because they like to be “around their own kind”. And yet another way would be for them to say/do very racist, sexist, ableist, heterosexist, and any other “ist” things, and then later say it does not count since they did not really mean what they said/did. And finally, they could say that they are the “good guys” and have never said/done things that were racist, sexist, abelist, heterosexist, etc. which leads them to not take responsibility for what is happening in the world because they are not actually saying/doing the injustice directly.

In order to eliminate this injustice people need to stop ignoring that it exists and that it is still going on. People need to start standing up and challenging what is going on in the word regarding this type of injustice because everyone is affected by it regardless of race, sex, or anything else.  Johnson puts it best on page 124 when he wrote, “Being “involved” makes me part of something larger, and I can’t stand alone as an isolated individual. Being “obliged” means more than just being burdened, because it also connects me to people and makes me aware of how I affect them. And being “committed” to something focuses my potential to make a difference and bonds me to those who feel the same way”. 

Interesting Things

I found some more interesting things about race that I thought you guys would like to know about:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/us/politics/16poll.html?_r=1&ref=politics

http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/About/publications/working%2Dpapers/pdf/wp_08_13.pdf

Another episode of ABC 20/20: What Would You Do?

Hey all!

I was looking at some other clips of "ABC 20/20 What Would You Do?", and I came across this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZvwHsShpFQ&feature=related

We watched a lot of clips about African-Americans and the racism they have to deal with everyday, but we did not see anything about other minority groups. This one is about hate crimes towards Latinos/Latinas in the United States, and I just thought it would be interesting to take a look at it as well.

Also, I found this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwpO-nnFY9g

I liked this clip because it showed a European side to racism -- we should not forget that racism exists everywhere in the world and everyone (no matter what country they come from) get affected by it daily.

And this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glOv4MIyNSE&feature=channel

This clip is supposed to be funny, but I think it does a great job of showing what I was talking about with someone else in the class -- that minority groups sometimes belittle others in their own group. I wasn't quite sure why they did that -- what do you guys think?

And finally:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wqJgo5o188

I just thought this clip was interesting, and I liked that he mentioned that racism is just a mentality of "Us vs. Them" which extends to religion, political ideologies, nationality, ideals, etc. The beginning of the video reminded me of what Johnson said on page 62-63: "You can see the race troubles for whites in the toll it takes on moral integrity, because racism require hypocrisy toward deeply held cultural values of fairness, decency, and justice. You can see it in the angry, wishful naïveté of "I don't see color. I don't see race.""

Stanford Prison experiment

If I remember correctly the first time I heard about the Stanford Prison experiment was when I was a freshman at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia. I was taking an Introduction to Psychology class my first semester, and we studied this experiment for a little while along with the Milgram one. From what I remember we never talked about this experiment within the contexts of race, but instead about how it relates to human behavior.

What I found really interesting was that the documentary mentioned that this experiment was conducted with a backdrop of Civil Rights activism, and then during the experiment the prisoners (like these activists) were rebelling against the notion of being anonymous. In the same way as the privileged people, the guards were trying to keep the rebellion (or prison liberation) down in order to quench any sort of community the prisoners were trying to build for themselves. I think Dave Eshleman, one of the experiment guards, summed up the findings of the experiment the best when he said “the study showed that power corrupts and how difficult it is for people who are the victims of abuse to stand up and defend themselves”.

Another thing I found really interesting was that none of the guards did anything to stop that one guard (I think his nickname was John Wayne) when he started to get out of control with the prisoners. There was even that one guard who would rather leave and get food for the participants instead of be in the “prison” since he did not want to face the problem. Professor Philip Zimbardo, the prison superintendent and the psychologist who was running the experiment, said that “nobody has the right, the power, the privilege to do that to other people”, but in order to stop these things from happening to people we all have to realize that if we are not stopping it from happening we are helping it instead.

Lady Gaga Post

Before reading Lily Rowen’s article GaGa and Ke$ha Champion New Feminism I never really considered Lady Gaga as a feminist per say. Like I said in one of my older posts I feel that all women are feminists and that would include her as well, but if someone specifically asked me if I thought Lady Gaga was a feminist (before reading the article) I would have probably said not really. What I mean to say is that I never realized how her songs actually bring up feminist issues (like in her songs “Video Phone” and “Poker Face”) or how she is trying to work towards equality between the two sexes. I really liked what she said in the article: "I find that men get away with saying a lot in this business, and that women get away with saying very little” because it really shows that she acknowledges there is a problem (like male privilege) that needs to be addressed and dealt with. 

Blog Post #3

I have not read John Gray’s Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, but I do know the basic idea of it – that men and women are just two different types of people, and it is this difference that impedes effective communication between them. The book has a catchy title, but I do not honestly think that a huge difference between men and women really exist. Fundamentally, I think that both sexes are pretty much the same deep down as they both want “to be seen, included, and accepted by other people” (Johnson, 55). I do; however, believe that there exists a difference between each human being because everyone has their own interests and their own tastes. I know that my experience as a white woman is different than that of a black woman, but I firmly believe that we both just want the same things in life.

Ever since I was little I have always been taught that pink was a color for girls and blue was a color for boys, Barbies were toys for girls and trucks were toys for boys, ballet was a sport for girls and football was a sport for boys, crying was for girls and “sucking-it-up” was for boys, etc. Our society likes to put separations between what is considered all right for each gender and what is not. Instead of their being an actual difference between the two sexes we are just taught that there is one, thus, we eventually start to believe it. 

Blog Post #2

My personal definition of feminism is closely related to the definition of Professor Marylou Ruud’s from the University of West Florida. We, and many other women and men, believe in equality between the two sexes which extends to the work place, the justice system, and pretty much everything else (for example, the same kind of resources). As a human and especially as a woman, of course, I define myself as a feminist. I honestly believe that all women are feminists because everyone wants to be treated the same as everyone else. It does not make sense that anyone would want to be paid less than someone else when they both have the same qualifications and do the same type of work just because they were born into different bodies. I really liked what Jessica Valenti said when she said “most young women have feminist values. Most young women are feminist, but they just don’t quite know it yet” because I totally believe that as well.

Throughout The F Word lots of females and males gave their own definitions about what feminism means, but each one was slightly different than the previous one. Granted, many of the definitions had the same common themes such as the myths associated with feminism. Some common myths among the interviewees were that feminism is about hating men (the most common one), feminists are lesbians, feminists want to be treated better than men, feminists think alike, feminists just like to complain about stuff, feminists are hippies who like to burn bras and not shave their underarms/legs, and feminists are too aggressive. I do not really know if feminism is on the decline in today’s society or not because I never really hear anything about it. I had never heard of the organization “Global Fund for Women” or the group “Guerrilla Girls” before watching this documentary. I would probably guess that feminism is still going strong, but it just seems that it is a little more under the radar than it was in the 60s/70s.

WS Post 1

I agree with bell hooks’ example that some rap music is used to further misogyny in the media because most of the lyrics of this type of music talk about having sex with women, talk about certain women’s body parts, or talk about women in degrading ways. Furthermore, the music videos for these rap songs almost always feature really attractive looking females dancing in very provocative ways with little to no clothes on. In Part 8 of bell hooks’ Cultural Criticism and Transformation where she discusses the topic of rap music, some clips of music videos are shown. In these clips, I do not think I ever saw a woman’s face up close, but I do remember seeing a lot of different women’s butts up close. In addition, I do not listen to a lot of rap music, but I do not think I have ever heard a mainstream song that talks about how the guy actually loves the woman for who she is or how much the guy enjoys her company or how it does not matter what she looks like because he will still love her anyway. The message that I get from watching these music videos and listening to these songs is that females are prized not for who they are but for how they look. The media is using “male privilege” in order to say that males are more valuable than females because throughout those clips the faces of the rap artists were clearly present whereas the camera just focused on one aspect of females – usually the butt. Also, most of these songs are sung from the perspective of the males and not from the females because most of the famous rap artists are males – not females.