fix the shading on the children's faces!

This is truly a sad situation. People wanting the artist to change the shade of the child conflicts with so many of our so called freedoms. First it conflicts with the first amendment. The artist should be free to express himself however they want to. It shouldn’t have been a problem if he made the child as black as night or as white as a toilet; it’s their creation and I’m sure they were commissioned for a reason. In also should be free to be ourselves. This event is going to send a very strong message to the children of our nation. It’s already been proven that even small children think it’s better to be light skinned; I can’t begin to imagine how this is going to impact them.

we cannot but chuse to hear

The fact that this oil spill is still spilling is crazy. It's been months, why is this still occurring? What’s also crazy to me is that people are stilling buying BP gas. You would think they didn’t know anything about the oil spill. If we stop buying BP gas, then eventually they will go out of business. While I do feel bad for the people who are going to lose their jobs relating to the company, I don’t feel like this is the time to care. The company should’ve been more responsible. Now countless generations will have to pay for their mistake.

Quiz 10

Quiz 9

Reflection 16

Transsexuality is when someone feels that they were born in the wrong body; for instance a biological male may feel that he is indeed a women. Inter-sexuality is someone who is born with a mixture of male and female parts and there's three kinds; true hermaphrodite (a person with both a testis and an ovary), male pseudohermaphrodite (someone who has testis and female genitals but no ovaries), and female pseudohermaphrodite (someone with ovaries and male genitals but no testis). I don't think there necessarily more cases of people being transsexual or inter-sexual but I do believe that people are talking about it more. In older generations, subjects like this were avoided. If someone had a child who was born inter-sexual I strongly believe that child would have been disposed of right there in the delivery room and the parents wouldn't have felt any remorse. If a parent had a child who was transsexual, I doubt the child would come out for fear of being reprehended. I think the parents would sense that something is 'wrong' with their child and they would have tried to correct it or would have felt forced to put them in a mental institution. But in our day people are starting to become more aware of things like this and that can go either way; you have the people who say "oh okay, that's fine" and you have the people who will say that this is morally wrong and a sin. On talk shows you see young people who were transsexual but their parents felt the need to help to child become who they really felt they were. Like this one young lady who always complained to her parents about feeling wrong, "like she was born in the wrong body." Her parents sought a specialist in the field who evaluated their daughter and then with everyone involved go ahead, the daughter got hormone treatments and is now a son. Their new son is thrilled about the change and says he now feels normal. Now of course a lot of people criticized this mom for letting her child go through this before even hitting puberty. But for me the important thing is that the child is happy. This also says that people can sense these things at an early age. As time progresses, I think we're going to see more kids with similar stories; its important that as educator we are knowledgeable about the subject and can present this to our classes, bias free.

Reflection 15

I think that people are born homosexual. Sometimes when parents have a child who comes out as homosexual they say that they knew it all along. Even in cases where the parents say they didn’t know I think they’re just in denial. To be honest I think it’s more normal for a parent to be in denial about their child’s sexual orientation than to just accept it, especially with our parents and grandparents generation. They grew up in a time where people believe that anyone who wasn’t straight was mentally disabled. People who were gay were usually outcast of society and were sent to mental institutions. Normally the parents see signs that show their child aren’t behaving in accord with gender roles. If they see that their daughter, per se, is into sports and doesn’t like dolls and plays in dirt, they’re most likely going to reprimand that child. They will force their daughter to play with dolls, make sure she never gets a chance to dig in the sand box or play ball. They probably believe that if correct the behavior early on in the child’s development they can prevent that child from being gay. But the thing is, if people learned how to be gay they we would be able to correct their behavior. We could be able to send those children to ‘sexual orientation camps’ in order for them to learn how to be straight and function as society wants them to. But because that’s not possible I believe that people are born gay. The article also talks about either/or and all or nothing. Either you’re one thing or another. Most likely people are going to associate what you are with good or bad. The problem with that is it doesn’t work with most facets of society. People aren’t perfect angels or devil’s advocates. They’re usually mixed with traits of both and the mixture is evident on a spectrum. This is also true when it comes to sexual orientation. Most people aren’t all gay or straight but fall somewhere on the spectrum. You might have a day where as a female you find yourself looking extra hard at another female. But the important thing is that you realize that doesn’t make you gay nor does it make you a bad person. This article really cemented everything I previously believed about the subject at hand.

Reflection 14

Sometimes I think the United States just doesn’t care; The Tale of Two Islands clearly shows us that. How can you write into law that because this person is colored differently from the other we’ll listen to their case and decide if they can stay and the other needs to go back? I am a firm believer that if you’re going to say something applies to one group that it needs to apply to all groups. No one deserves a special law giving them special privileges. I can’t imagine what that session in congress was like. “Okay today we’re trying to establish a law that will allow all white Cubans who are middle class to enter our country but the black Haitians must be sent back to Haiti, no matter how bad their conditions are.” Who do these lawmakers think they are saying that Haitians just want to come here for economic reasons only? None of the politicians have been in Haiti and walked in those peoples shoes. It’s really funny to me that President Bush is the one who suspended Haitian political asylum screening requirements. After the earthquake in Haiti in January, we quickly saw former presidents Bush and Clinton trying to get up to donate money to their cause.[ I have to say though that Bush didn’t seem sincere in his asking for support; he was fidgety, spacey, and obviously reading from a teleprompter. It just didn’t seem real; especially consider Katrina] I guess he forgot about Executive Order 12807. I personally believe that in order for someone to seriously leave their home country, something must be terribly wrong. No one wants to leave the country they consider home [except some Americans after Bush was given a second term]. No matter what someone says, their reasons for leaving can almost always be traced backed to economics. When there’s no money, there’s no food. When there’s no money, there’s no decent shelter. When there’s no money, it’s extremely hard to meet any of your basic needs, let alone anyone else’s. When people flee to America, it’s mainly because there are trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. This can even be said for the Mexicans who cross the border to sell drugs; they’re trying to make money to support their families. This country has problems and letting people come over here to better themselves isn’t going to make anything worse.

Reflection 13

While it is important for people to categorize and make things different in order to survive, I don't think race is the smartest of the categories. No one can choose what race they are apart of so if there was a such thing as a superior race, I'm sure everyone would choose to be apart of that race. I can't imagine at conception being asked "hey, I know you're just a bunch of cells right now but do you know what race you want to be?" That's just plain silly. I loved the film that we watched in class that explained how skin color was an adaptation and this article seems to reinstate that. Your skin color is in correlation with where you are on the map; the farther you were from the equator, the less color you skin could have in order for UV absorption which controls vitamin D3 production. It seems as if people are always trying to divide us; especially in the cases of phenotype and genotype race groups. But in fact DNA mitochondria shows us that we modern humans all come from one women in Africa. I can understand though how this fact can be hard for people to swallow, mainly those who are in the denial stage of multicultural awareness. Some people, even those with black friends, will deny until the bitter end that they are the same as someone who has a different skin color than them. The classifications of race helped the Europeans deal with the immorality of the slave trade. When they started to assert that the African were somehow subhuman and different, their conscious became clear; they no long felt bad about what they were doing and they also felt that they had God on their side. After my readings I still feel that the idea of race is stupid; it only separates us as people. Its impossible to saying anything about a person if you don't get to knew them, separate of their man made race. Its sad that some children learn to look at a person's skin color to determine if they are a good person or not. It is my hope that a generation is being brought up that see's the value in each person as an individual.

hb2281

With all the racial profiling that's going on in Arizona, i thinks its inevitable that the spanish speaking people will soon loose their language. language is something that must constantly be practiced; if you stop speaking eventually you will forget it. The Mexicans will be afraid to speak spanish in public and it won't be long before they start forgetting their language and their culture. But the thing is even if they do try to conform to mainstream society they will always stand out. You can't be anything you're not.

si m mouri, ou pral mouri!” (if i die, you die!)

I think this poem holds true for many third world countries; their resources are being depleted. It seems like the people aren’t looking at the big picture. They see that they need something, they find it out in nature, but they don’t replace it. Its okay to cut down trees but the important thing is that you replace those trees because not replacing them is detrimental to the land. They’re just thinking in the short term; instead they should start looking at the long term. The problem is they don’t have a real government in place. It seems like they need someone to make some environmental regulations for the people to stick to. If not, there possibly won’t be a future for countries in these situations.

reflection 12

I find it baffling that someone could honestly believe that they should hold the power of a group of people. Sometimes people just get really full of themselves and whatever theories they believe to be true. No man deserves the position to essential play God and decide who stays and who goes. In fact, it is as if people feel that God has somehow made a mistake and placed people on His earth that shouldn't be here and it's their job to correct it. In my eyes genocide and ethnic cleansing are blasphemy. According to an article though genocide is the systematic killing of a group of people and ethnic cleansing is the removal of an unwanted group from the society. The situations in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur are similar because in Darfur the government had mass killings against all non-Arabs in the Western Sudan, in Bosnia the Muslim population was killed because they were not liked by the military in charge, and the Tusti population was wiped out completely in Rwanda. Prior to my readings I didn't really know anything about these situations; I had only hear about them in passing. Its strange because you would think that massing killings, whether you want to call them genocides or ethnic cleansing, would make the news. I would expect something on this level to be included in all faucets of society. I know this isn't politically correct but I do feel like the reason those situations didn't receive a great deal of media coverage is because the occurred in Africa. I believe if we educate the world about occurrences like the ones that happened in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur then the likelihood of them happening again would be greatly reduced. Its impossible to turn a blind eye to anything and expect it to go away, especially when innocent human lives are at stake. Education is the only solution. Its sad but I feel that, even in the twenty-first century, people need education in how to successfully deal with others. Its not fair that only those who are interested in teaching as a career get to be taught human diversity. Accepting diversity is not something that comes natural and apparently its not being taught inside people's homes. Hopefully something is done so a situation like genocide or ethnic cleansing is stopped in Arizona.

Quiz 7

Quiz 8

Reflection 11

The same way I feel about slavery, genocides, and such is the same way I feel about the Holocaust; its is one is the world's darkest times. I will forever be spellbound at the fact that it only takes one person with uncheck ethnocentrism to poison a whole nation. I do feel that it was perfect timing on Hitler's behalf though; Germany was in shambles. World War I basically killed them politically and financially. In a sense we can look at Hitler as the anti-Obama; he made promises that things would get better and he, in a wicked way, delivered on them, the difference is Obama is actually helping a desolate situation and I can't honestly say Hitler inspired any type of positive change on his behalf. Yes its great that he was able to unite his whole country but it was totally wrong that he did so against a group a people that made up less than one percent of the population of the entire country. The people of Germany were desperate and when this guy came in telling them it wasn't their fault and instead the 'inferior' races fault, I'm sure the people didn't require much convincing, just a few bogus studies. The Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and the handicapped were just the scapegoats. When I see videos of Nazi Germany I am in awe. I always think to myself how if people could get that fired up about human rights, or multicultural awareness, or anything else for that matter our world would be unbelievably awesome. We could solve so many problems and I probably wouldn't be writing this reflection cause there would have been an extermination of a group of innocent peoples. For someone to deny that the Holocaust occurred would be downright stupid. How much evidence does one need? Are the letters from those who perished in the concentration camps not enough? Is listening to the stories of those who survived not enough? What about visiting the actual grounds of the actual concentration camps where people never came out, is that inadequate? There are countless documentaries on the subject and you would think its impossible not to acknowledge this time in history. But people are only going to see what they want to see. Some people would rather be left to their bliss.

Required Assignment 1

One of the things I noticed off the bat when I walked into my service learning classroom was respect; the respect coming from both the teacher and the students. The classes she had were rather small, no more than twenty students, and were all approximately a nice mixed bag of black and hispanic students. The teacher at no point while I've been there has shown any preference for any particular group. In her eighth period class, for example, there were mostly hispanics and although the teacher was black, at no point did she try to leave the hispanics out or make them feel inferior. Some of the black students actually were 'interested' in one of the hispanic students; he has migrated from Texas by way of Georgia. The students questioned the boy about whether he had his papers and if he was running from the police or anything else that could have been deemed funny. This could have been the perfect storm. But the teacher interjected "instead of trying to judge him, while do you let him answer some of your so called questions." The hispanic boy told everyone his story and how while he was in the country legally, his parents weren't, so they moved down here because he said the green card process was easier. The teacher then used that as a bridge to talk about the current situation in Arizona and how similar it is to what went on in our country during the early 1900's. Now because she teaches reading and language arts, she has to use a specific curriculum that is state mandated and must stay on task. But I did find it interesting how although she was limited to only one text book, she infused modern day issues and things the book left out to educate her students. The class sat in groups of no more than three on average and there was six groups. The periods started with looking at the agenda on the smart-board. The students then engaged in independent work but after a certain amount of time were allowed to collaborate with their group members. For the remainder of the class they had open discussion where students were allowed to raise their hand to speak about various topic, which was a group of poems this week. I believe I very lucky to be allow in this classroom to observe. In a private conversation with the teacher she shared to me that one of her greatest things to overcome was the fear of not being able to manage a classroom. But once someone explained to her that it was all about respect, not just getting the students to respect you but also respecting them and having them respect each other. It is my greatest hope that I too will be able to manage a classroom the same way she does.

Reflection 10

Dr. Cole is so on point when he say's that we need to stop focusing on the victims of prejudice. Never before have I looked at prejudice in this manner. Honestly this is really messing with my head; it kind of makes the Southern Poverty Law Center seem unimportant and worthless. Instead we should be using our resources trying to rehabilitate the people who demonstrate prejudices because in all actuality, they are the ones with a problem. It would be pointless to say "okay people, you know 'this group' hates you so we're going to need you to change.'" Number one, its been tried before and it failed miserably. Before the Civil Rights Movement, blacks did everything the whites wanted them to. The drank from crappy water fountains, they jumped off sidewalks when they saw whites coming, they basically did everything but give them blood and their first born (which can be argued). To understand how prejudices work we first must understand the different processes; unintentional and intentional prejudices. Unintentional prejudice stems from early learning. Its able to manifest itself because its mostly information we received in passive learning that we didn't care to examine. Everyone has their unintentional prejudices that they're most likely unaware of and when they're brought to light, can be readily denied because they make us uncomfortable. A common example is when a white person is accused of being racist or prejudice and they scream "no I'm not! I have black friends!" Now most of us know that having 'friends' of a different group does not assure multicultural awareness, but for the person in denial, it does. Intentional prejudices, however, comes from later learning and is an active learning process. While its uncommon, people with this type of prejudice have a strong motivation for their beliefs and mainly use them when they feel threatened. This form of prejudice is more so like a personality disorder and because it's deeply rooted in them, can be hard to change. Amazingly they do respond to those they see to be in authority. This leads me to wonder about the racism and prejudices the existed openly in our country a few decades ago. We all know that children aren't born with hatred, that its a learned trait. So basically someone's parents began being prejudice towards people because they were scared of them, intentional prejudice. But their children saw their prejudices was and internalized them as unintentional prejudices. But I am confused as to how the cycle continued. Is this unchecked ethnocentrism or something else?

emmett till: the shaping of the people's dream

People are always going to see what they want to see and for that all white male jury the truth was plain and simple, not guilty. Not because the state wasn’t able to prove guilt, not because they really thought their ancestors would really turn over in their graves, but because they wanted to save their own behinds. Just think, it’s the 1950’s and two white men are on trial for killing a black boy. Can you imagine what would have happened if that jury would’ve convicted those white men? That jury would’ve been shunned out of the white community! They would’ve been just like Willie; sneaking out the court room to leave the state. Even though it’s the right thing to do, it wouldn’t have been the logical thing to do at time for those white men. I’m not condoning what they did but I do understand why they did it. I’m convinced that no matter how much evidence they gave in support of the state; if God Himself would’ve walked in that court room and said “yes, they did it, they killed Emmett,” those med would’ve went against God because they have to live with the white men on earth.