Share Your Thoughts...

Because we were not able to share our experiences of our group blogs with one another in class, I would love to give you the opportunity to do so here.  Which affected you, taught you the most? Why? Which of your postings meant the most to you?

Disability Discrimination

Ok, as you all know this is the last blog! Aren’t you guys excited? I am the semester is almost over! Last week we discussed social justice issues by reading Social Death by Lisa Cacho and “Biopower, Reproduction, and the Migrant Women’s Body written by Jonathan Inda. We also went to a workshop hosted by Eli Clare about the struggles of disable individuals. On this blog I would like to reflect on how stereotypes and discrimination is the root to social death. Prime example of how language can be defensive as well as stereotyping and discriminating was in Cacho chapter three that stated “Although Bush intended for the audience to equate “evildoers” with terrorists,” he did so with descriptors that could easily refer to gang members (‘people who strike and hide”), undocumented immigrants (‘people who know no border”), the disabled or mentally ill (“people who depend upon others”), and their allies (‘people who harbor them and finance them and feed them.”) (pg. 97, Cacho).

In this blog I would like to reflect more on Eli presentation because it was very interesting and relatively related to this weeks reading with social justice. If you missed Eli presentation I will summarize it briefly. Eli presentation discussed some cons of what disable individuals face around our campus and ways of bringing disability awareness and politics into work on-campus. The speaker spoke on identifying stereotypes of disability, better understanding of the medical/ social model of disability and how disability is a social justice issue. As the speaker spoke on stereotypes it made me think about what we have been learning this week on social death. Disable individuals suffer from negative stereotypes such as low-class, helpless, the belief of having a disability effecting your cognitive behavior, and how many people treat disabled individuals as if they had a disease so they do not want to touch them. All of these examples are examples of discrimination just like the immigration/civil issues or the discrimination towards others for not having “white privilege”.

Eli also talked about non-disable individual’s vocabulary and how it can grow to be very defensive. Lame, spaz, crazy, retard, pyscho, and other words are most commonly used in everyday life conversations that are defensive to people that are disabled. Another interesting stereotype many believe to have logic to is that children that are disable “deserve it” because their parents were unethical and this is punishment for them, which is really a horrible logic. Many disable individuals would like to be treated like everyone else but because of them having a disability many think they are all not capable of doing everyday things. During the presentation a disable woman expressed her fears of her drivers license or gun permit rights being taken away because of the stereotype of “not being able to handle it.”

Lastly, below I found a YouTube video that deals with discrimination. Throughout this class we have discussed discrimination from every aspect (race, gender, and class) but never from a person that is disabled standpoint. I chose this video because it helped me along with Eli presentation to be more aware of what people with disability go through. I hope you guys find this video interesting too, let me know what you think.

http://youtu.be/8fGz2vjj9No

Misconceptions of people

             This week we watched the film Babel and read part of the book Social Death by Lisa Cacho. The film Babel has a much deeper meaning than the plot that is trying to convey.  The meaning behind the films name is the story of Babel in Genesis recounting a man's effort to become equal with God and build a tower that reached to the heavens. So God angry at man's arrogance, confounded man's communication with different languages. This film however suggests that it is not that the barrier of languages that creates problem it is the barrier of not listening to one another. Each story line has characters that are behaving well in a sense however are given obstacles by the misconceptions that others have towards a race. Let us consider the Moroccan boy who was overcome by a higher power (the rifle) and in a game with his brother he accidentally shoots and american tourist and the act is AUTOMATICALLY seen as a terrorist act because of the culture, if it had been in another country like France per-say terrorism would more than likely would have never been brought up. Then there is Amelia who nannies the children of the women who was shot. Amelia wanting to attend he sons wedding is left with no option but to take the children with her because of the incident that has happened with the mother. On the way back home from Mexico, crossing the border she is questioned heavily and again AUTOMATICALLY seen as doing something wrong because of her race and the fact that she has two white children with her. No matter how much we wish this wasn't true our world is divided by race, language, culture and tradition leading to stereotypes among everyone. Stereotypes are degrading because they link race to other categories of devaluation (Cacho 3). This film however is able to bring everyone together despite their culture, the country they are from, religion, age, social class and ties them together with their inability to express themselves. The film made the audience view this characters as people not as Moroccans, Mexicans, or Americans because we all sympathized them and wanted to somehow help. The term Racial Realism that Cacho speaks of in Social Death is moving and how we begin battles we have already lost, that we acknowledge and accept that everything we do may not ever result in social change (32). Pertains to these characters in Babel because no matter how hard they try to get their message across if does not matter because they have basically already lost according to society due to the stereotypes that come along with their race and nothing can change that. All it takes is to listen which results in understanding and a deeper connection.

                  Just a picture i thought was moving and had lots of meaning that ties in with the power of communicating. What does this picture mean to you and how does it tie in with Babel?

"To Black To Be Latino" in the US and Brazil

Hello everyone!!!

For my blog post I would like to reflect on Hernandez's piece "Too Black to be Latino." I always knew there was a difference between the perception of a mestiza latino and a Afro-Latino, but Sra. Hernandez really summed up a great explanation into why the latinos think this way. She states that the Afro-Latinos are visually viewed  as Anlgo-Blacks so they are not "authentic" Latinos (153). This is very hard for me to accept because how can your own people just discredit your nationality because of your skin color? This problem is happening in many countries with black people like the United States, claiming African-Americans as being "un-American," but back to the Latinos. This mindset of seeing the Afro-Latinos as "foreign" and being less than a mestiza stems from colonialism. Since the European nations projected their ideologies of black being inferior and white being superior, anyone that achieves whiteness or is closer to whiteness than blackness is seen to be as better. So in the case of a mestiza, they are a hybrid mix of European, indigonous, and black, so they are not fully black so thier achievement of whiteness is greater. This mindset does not just affect the Afro-Latinos in spanish speaking countries, it happens in many other countries like the Unites States and Brazil.

In my hometown, we have a big population of Latinos, but we have a smaller population of Afro-Latinos, so when one comes along, the Latino community treats them differently.  Back when I was in middle school, a new girl came to my school and she was of Jamaican and Colombian decent, her mother was Jamaican and her father was Afro-Colombian. Although she embraced both of her nationalities, she openly represented being Jamaican more than being Colombian because people accepted her blackness as a Jamiacan more than a Colombian. I remember one day in spanish class she told the class she was Colombian and everybody didn't beleive her. Everyone just discredited her nationality because of the color of her skin, and the crazy thing about it was that it wasn't just the Latinos shunning her nationality, it was the black, white, and Asian students who also discredited where her family comes from. When she tried to make friends with the latinos in my school, all of the shunned her and claimed that she was lying and she was just trying to be like them. This story goes back to Hernandez's story because she was seen as "foreign" to the Latinos and even though she is Colombian, she is still seen as less than or "trying to be mestiza" because the color of her skin.

In Brazil, there are many colorism issues in Brazil. In Brazil there are more than 100 ways to describe the color of their skin and the whiter it is the better. Attached is a video that was a part of a series broadcasted on PBS. "Black in Brazil" breaks down the racial issues in Brazil even though they claim their society is a racial democracy, meaning that racial issues do not exist because everyone comes from the same lineage of ancestry. I know its really long but the parts I would like you all to watch and reflect on is the first 5 minutes and from 26 minutes to 28. Hope you all enjoy.

Haiti and Structural Violence

Hey again everyone! So my last blog post for this class will focus on this week’s topic of structural violence and its effect on individuals, specifically Haitians. As we discussed in class, structural violence can be defined as the various social structures that limit individuals’ choices as well as force them to have to take more risks. These structures can limit individuals in the political and economic arenas of society. Furthermore, societal values concerning gender, race, and class serve as mechanisms of structural violence. With these major factors having such a profound impact on how individuals operate within a society, their agency becomes increasingly limited.

In Haiti, structural violence is both widespread and visible and increasingly so after the devastating earthquake drew international attention. However, the narrative of Haitians is warped by the lingering ideals and tensions from periods of colonialism. When reading Gina Ulysse’s piece she reveals how Haiti as a nation has fallen victim to “Othering”. This idea of “Othering” takes place when people especially in the West, ignore or distance themselves from the structural violence-taking place in Haiti through various means. As a result Haiti becomes symbolically linked to human suffering, as if it is an irrevocable condition. Furthermore, this justifies Westerners ignorance towards Haiti and leaves them unaccountable for the colonial legacies that certainly contribute to such mass suffering.

The video below is the personal story of a Haitian sex worker. In the video Evelyne Pierre describes her current lifestyle and the conditions she and her child have had to endure due to multiple factors out of her control. She also describes the past circumstances that have forced her to resort to prostitution as a means for providing for her child. Her story is both eye opening and heartbreaking and really exemplifies a life impacted by structural violence. 1:40 is particularly frustrating when she talks about how others “blame” her for her situation, which seems to be a common reaction. I hope you guys find the video meaningful and consider/ discuss the structures that created the conditions that led to Evelyne Pierre’s becoming a victim of structural violence.

 

 

Hey yall! I've been thinking all week about what I wanted to blog about this week and I have finally come up with something. In class we talk a lot about the boot strap myth. You know, basically if you work hard enough you to could become wealthy. Well as we discussed in class some people have fewer resources and just can't achieve that high of a standard. After researching the boot scrap myth I found this picture which in my mind is a great example. Everyone got to where they are or is able to stay where they are because of someone else. Sure that someone isn't the only factor but is in fact in the equation. 

Thoughts?

http://shine.forharriet.com/2014/03/anyone-who-wants-to-call-themselves.html

Beauty and Blackness

Oscar Winner Lupita on Beauty

Classism and Poverty in America's Schools

Hey Everyone ! As we all know this week's discussion was about different Immigration laws and Classism in America. In class on Thursday the we mainly discussed low class or rather I say working class. Throughout class we discussed the underlining issues American's in poverty have with many things such as better job opportunities, education and better resources to be able to provide a better life for their family. We also discussed how middle and high class have better access to receive better opportunities, resources and education for their kids. In chapter two of bell hooks she explains how she is coming to realize class consciousness when preparing to attend college for the first time.



 "When I was choosing a college to attend, the issue of money surfaced and had to be talked about. While I would seek loans and scholarships, even if everything related to school was paid for, there would still be transportation to pay for, books, and a host of other hidden costs. Letting me know that there was no extra money to be had, mama urged me to attend any college nearby that would offer financial aid. My first year of college I went to a school close to home. A plain-looking white woman recruiter had sat in our living room and explained to my parents that everything would be taken care of, that I would be awarded a full academic scholarship, that they would have to pay nothing. They knew better. They knew there was still transportation, clothes, all the hidden costs. Still they found this school acceptable. They could drive me there and pick me up. I would not need to come home for holidays. I could make do."(bell hooks, pg. 25)



I decided to rewrite this part of the book in the blog to state that although bell hooks and her parents were aware of all the hidden cost, the white-women recruiter may have been oblivious to the hidden fees, transportation costs, books and other host hidden fees. Just like in America today many kids who live in low poverty areas are in dyer need of help as far as transportation cost, new books and other hidden fees it takes to make a school in a poverty area run successfully. When a child is living in a low class area it is very hard to have self motivation to get out of poverty when they are older because they have little or no resources to educate them on how to better themselves for the future. Poor or old resources go to low class areas because this is all these areas can afford causing thousands of kids to get behind or no education at all. Many people in high and middle class think negatively about low class people. Terms such as "welfare-queen", irresponsible, stupid and other low terms are tied with low class people but most of the low class people work three to four jobs and still struggle to make ends meet.



Due to living in a toxic environment it plays a big role in kids living in poverty. Kids in poverty are less likely to be develop high self esteem and never truly receive attention from their parents because they need to work to provide.Here above is a video I found on YouTube that really discuss the importance of bettering schools in low poverty areas. Although America would like to believe that everyone has the same opportunities at life it is pretty clear in this video that, that is impossible. I believe low class children do not, but after watching this video what do you think ? Does everyone have a fair opportunity to succeed in life ?

Debunking Myths

An Economist debunks 3 Anti-Immigration Myths

A Girl Like Me--Video Clip

I was unable to show this in class...during our discussion of Privilege and Microaggressions
A Girl Like Me

The harshness against immigrants

       So this week in class we focused on undocumented immigrants and societal groups that formed against them. Groups such as The Minutemen Project, Vigilante groups, Exceptionalism groups, Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, Mothers Against Illegal Aliens and so many more that have formed against immigrants. Whenever societal groups perceive a threat to their security a sense of emergency is generated and with it a willingness to take extraordinary emergency measures (Doty 13). I want to focus on Mothers Against Illegal Aliens and on the goal they set out to achieve because it was the group that caught my attention the most. MAIA is a group that claims "the enemy" not only includes the illegal alien themselves but also the children of undocumented migrants, regardless of the fact that the children are born right U.S citizens (Doty 39). It appalls me how a group like this could exist, the founder of the organization describes immigrants as a mass invasion of unintelligent, disrespectful, criminals while targeting her message to women and families. She focuses on immigration as a threat to american children and denigrates the values of immigrant families, branding immigrant children as "dumb". This group seems as though it traces back to that deeply rooted love that they have for their country that they express that love in forms of hate (Ahmed 42). These groups see immigration as a growing crisis that has to be stopped and feel they need to take matters into their own hands.
       Even though more groups form around states that border Mexico, many groups are forming in states that don't like Arizona. More laws are also being placed in states to make the lives of immigrants difficult at all cost, for example HB 56 bill that was attempted to being enforced in Alabama in 2011 scared the lives of many immigrants because it was set out to be the strictest immigration law. The bill would block many things not allowing immigrants to do anything. Here is a link speaking further on the bill two years after it was made and some of the things it would have blocked if it would have been enforced.
http://blog.al.com/wire/2013/11/hb56_two_years_later_constitut.html
I want to share with you guys a documentary of two undocumented immigrants sharing their background stories and how they felt in regard to the HB56 bill. The documentary was made by my brother, a film major, because he wanted to give an inside scoop to those who had never tried to put themselves in the shoes of an undocumented immigrant. This goes hand in hand with the group MAIA because everything this group is against, the children of undocumented immigrants, is everything immigrants strive for which is a better life for their children.

http://vimeo.com/80023503

Hope this moves you as much as it does me! Enjoy!
           

Hey you guys I know I'm late with this post but obviously as you guys seen in class my philosophy is better late than never. Lol. Any-who the readings we had last week were great picks. Because only white privilege was discussed in the readings (although that may over-shadow any other privilege) it left me wondering why. Or lead me to think about if there were any other races that experience privilege. When I thought about this I thought about the infamous light skin vs. dark skin battle among blacks.

After watching the video above it really made me think tons of things. If light skin African Americans receive privilege aren't they just as guilty as whit people or is this something they learned that just makes living better for them? Are they(light skinned A. Americans) oblivious like whites to their privilege? Just like race, gender, and class, privilege cannot be contained cause it seems just as complex.

Hello everyone, hope you all enjoyed your weekend.

This past week, we started off with Peggy MacIntosh introducing us to white privilege. When we think of a privilege, it is something that is unearned and is an advantage given by birth or being apart of a specific group. In her article, she gives us many daily examples of how her whiteness gives her an advantage in life. Other than giving the many examples, the most important statement she made to credit to white privilege is that she "was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on [her] group." This statement is why white privilege still exist today. White people do not believe they are apart of the racist problem because they do not act out extreme racist behavior. Although acting racist adds to racism, white privilege and the nonrecognition of its existence adds to it to. Because whites do not know they are actively participating in the dominance of whiteness, by microaggressive behavior, racism on the non-systematic level continues to flourish.

Microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color. These acts occur on a daily basis because whites do not identify these acts as being racist because white americans think of themselves as good, moral human beings that believe in equality. Thus, it's hard for them to believe they have biased racial attitudes and may participate in discriminatory behaviors ("Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life"). These aggressions contribute to the white dominance because these insults make minorities feel less than and it separates whites from the other races.

Although this university is making many strides to better diversity and to accept their past and role in race relations, I have been a victim to many microaggressions done by people here. For example, I work for Crimson Tide Productions, which is in the football stadium. One day I was walking to work and a white male came up to me and asked if I was a kitchen worker and could he have access into the kitchen. I felt very disrespected, but I nicely replied to him," I work in the media center, not in the kitchen." Even though I work hard and attend this university, I am still assumed to need money and work in the kitchen. His act of microaggression put me at an inferior status as a worker to his superior white status as a food sales rep.

Now that we know that white privilege and microaggressions exist, how can we change that and make people aware of what they are doing. Although it is very hard to change something that is "invisible," the first step is to make whiteness and white privilege visible. One person who works to help whites understand racism, how they contribute to racism individually, and help whites understand what minorities feel like is Jane Elliott. Elliott is known for doing her brown eyes vs. blue eyes experiment to give people the opportunity to find out how it feels to be something other than white in this society. In the attached video is one of her many experiments. I want to know what you feel about the experiment and do you think it is effective? Can you spot out how privilege may hinder the blue eyed people from understanding what Elliott is trying to prove?

White Privilege

Hey guys!
Seems like this is the only we can communicate since class has been canceled and we haven't seen each other! This past week we learned about white privilege and the power it has within white people. Everyday, unconsciously, white people express their power in daily activities because unconsciously they know they are the supreme race. But, who can really blame them when their background history showed nothing but dominance over other races. It is as if whites see their privilege as something invisible that they are never really supposed to know they do have dominance still in today's time period. Tim Wise who wrote of the articles we read last week "A look at the Myth of reverse racism" does many speeches on racism and inequality. Here is a clip from one of his speeches on white privilege and how it came to be, you are more than welcome to watch the entire hour of his speech. The link to hour long speech is available underneath the video clip once on the page. He is very moving and very into his speeches which automatically makes you want to listen up and hear what he has to say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-eNS_UCh9A

Why is it though that white people still feel this privilege today? Aren't we supposed to have already been past this racism issue today in the 21st century? So many questions that are so hard to answer. It is as if racism will never end until people find racism in their consciousness instead of always having it in their unconscious state. Some people think if you are even slightly aware of someones skin color you are automatically racist. That is not the issue here of course we notice skin color! It is being unaware of what a certain race can bring to society and thinking negatively of their race that is the issue here. We need to learn to love other races and their culture to rid of racism and until then it will always exist. However it is hard to think that racism wont exist one day because it has always been an issue. Do you think racism will one day be gone?

Here is another clip, this one is a little more fun because it is a song my Macklemore a very popular white artist in today's music industry. The song is called White Privilege, enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdVRlM-kSx8

Privilege and Microaggressions

Hey again everyone! This week’s readings on privilege and microaggressions really revealed just how many everyday advantages white Americans are afforded in contrast to people of color. I found Peggy McIntosh’s use of male privilege to identify and criticize her own white privilege particularly interesting (1). It becomes clear as the list of privileges goes on and on, that our culture is still very much damaged by racism, and these daily advantages predisposed to whites perpetuate those ideas. Similarly, whites’ (as a whole) failure to recognize their own privilege serves to create a further hostile environment in American society.

Aside from the daily effects of white privilege, microaggressions aid in the oppression of many individuals due to race. Like the article on microaggressions explains, these instances of racism tend to be subtle, and therefore difficult to eradicate from our culture, but still remain highly dehumanizing to members of different racial backgrounds. I think microaggressions, and the generally more elusive nature of racism in modern society is very damaging to social progress and equality. One of the most important ideas I gained from the McIntosh article is that in order to create social change, be it against sexism, racism, etc. an awareness of one’s own privilege and an active effort to lessen it are crucial to social change efforts because these systems of oppression are so intricately related.

The link posted below is to a French video (with English subtitles) I stumbled upon about a week ago on the topic of sexism.  The video is a hypercritical commentary on how women are oppressed in society, presented in an unusual way by flipping gender roles. While sexism is the central issue of the short film, the video also revealed some racial and cultural microaggressions, such as the main characters’ interaction with Nissar (1:54 in to the video) by asserting that he must feel “more trapped” by cultural dress customs. Additionally, the video criticizes the justice system similarly to #11 on the list of “Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors” (3).  While the video is technically a commentary on sexism, other forms of privilege not related to gender become very clear in the film.