Good Day, World Wide Web!
Sorry if last night's post was a little too abstract. I'll try to make this post a bit less wishy-washy.
Out of all the stories that I've written about up to this point, this one was the most emotionally affecting to me. I like to believe that people can change, especially for the better, and this piece really affirmed that in my mind.
Misunderstanding is a beast of a problem. Despite the fact that I can talk to someone on the other side of the world for fifty cents a minute, I don't really communicate that much. I've never been to a board meeting. I don't participate in panel discussions. I don't go to conventions, and I'm virtually clueless when it comes to local politics. The purpose of communication is so that I can convey some concept to you, and you will receive it, process it, and comprehend it.
Imagine working in a factory. Your job is to pick up a piece of cardboard as it comes down the conveyor belt (the cardboard being the analogy--vocab word--to the concept that is being communicated), fold it in half, and put it on a different conveyor belt, which carries it to another part of the factory. Simple communication. Receive, process, and reciprocate. Nothing too new.
But when there's a kerfuffle in some point of this process, communication fails. You don't get what I'm talking about. You're missing the point. You're not seeing my side of the problem. You just don't understand. That, my digital followers, is why Misunderstanding is such a beast. You don't understand me.
What happens in C. P. Ellis's life is that he is raised much as I am. No real local communication. Exclusion (His case is exponentially more extreme than mine, however), and eventually, desperation. When Ellis gets involved locally, he begins to communicate. He goes to board meetings. He goes to panel discussions. He makes himself heard, and he listens to other people. He hobnobs.
What he experiences is that the people who don't get around much, the people who are disgusted by shaking his hands, are the very people who are against making the community a better place for low-wage people. Those whose causes are parallel to his are the people that are honored to shake his hand. The people he speaks out against, hates, are some of the people who appreciate him the most. Because he gives his opinion. He isn't so incredibly ingrained in his views that he won't leave room for differences. And this is, in the end, what changes him.
Can we take this solution to a grand scale? Yes... and no. If every single person in America suddenly became as pro-active about co-mingling and being pro-active in bettering the groups they belong to (in this case, Ellis is pro-active for low-income citizens), then I believe that people would be forced to be more open minded. They'd meed people they never would have met. They would encounter viewpoints different from their own. They'd be forced to re-evaluate their own beliefs. Which is good.
The no part is in the practicality of this. First of all, there's no way to get three hundred million people to do this, at least, not all at once. And second, if everyone spoke out, no one would be able to hear each other. Some sort of middle ground would be nice, but I'm too tired to take the mental leap to figure out what that'd be.
Good night.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
The Stereotype Highway
Greetings, Internet!
I'm pleased to say that I haven't completely drowned in homework. At least, not yet. I'm also somewhat pleased to say that I've given up trying to fix my font problems and I'm just going to go with the default font.
Tonight's post is in response to this article that was written by Kenji Yoshino, and originally appeared in the NY Times in January, 2006.
By the way, I'm skipping about 98% of the content of the article because this post is in response to a prompt based on this essay.
In this article, Yoshino talks about covering. Covering is when someone doesn't necessarily hide the fact that they are different, or part of some minority group, but changes the way they act to better assimilate into the mainstream of their society. However, Yoshino points out that the phrase "Mainstream" is rather vague, and, while it may be usable when talking about large groups of people and society as a whole, it is almost never applicable to individuals.
According to Yoshino, the phrase mainstream doesn't work because it isn't specific enough. Each person has so many adjectives associated with her or him that there is no way to discern whether or not each and every one of those adjectives is "standard", or the norm. Yoshino says that "It's not normal to be completely normal."
The essay only devotes one small paragraph to this, but I would like to pontificate further. What image do you see in your head when you hear "mainstream"? I think of an image kind of like this one, or, actually, more like this one. Interestingly, the second image looks startlingly like what a shattered LCD display looks like. But that's beside the point. Take a look at that second image. Now, imagine that you are a member of some group. For the moment, let's call that group Yellow. Notice that, in the picture, yellow is definitly more concentrated in the upper left hand side of the image. But there's yellow scattered all around the image, just in smaller quantities. And what's more, there's yellow in green, and yellow in orange, and many other colors as well. If mainstream is yellow, you can say that there is a certain area of the image that is mainstream (the area of the highest concentration of yellow). But looking at individual colors, you can't say where "yellow" is, because it's all over the place.
Apply the same lesson to "groups", and there you have Yoshino's point.
Flackle.
I'm pleased to say that I haven't completely drowned in homework. At least, not yet. I'm also somewhat pleased to say that I've given up trying to fix my font problems and I'm just going to go with the default font.
Tonight's post is in response to this article that was written by Kenji Yoshino, and originally appeared in the NY Times in January, 2006.
By the way, I'm skipping about 98% of the content of the article because this post is in response to a prompt based on this essay.
In this article, Yoshino talks about covering. Covering is when someone doesn't necessarily hide the fact that they are different, or part of some minority group, but changes the way they act to better assimilate into the mainstream of their society. However, Yoshino points out that the phrase "Mainstream" is rather vague, and, while it may be usable when talking about large groups of people and society as a whole, it is almost never applicable to individuals.
According to Yoshino, the phrase mainstream doesn't work because it isn't specific enough. Each person has so many adjectives associated with her or him that there is no way to discern whether or not each and every one of those adjectives is "standard", or the norm. Yoshino says that "It's not normal to be completely normal."
The essay only devotes one small paragraph to this, but I would like to pontificate further. What image do you see in your head when you hear "mainstream"? I think of an image kind of like this one, or, actually, more like this one. Interestingly, the second image looks startlingly like what a shattered LCD display looks like. But that's beside the point. Take a look at that second image. Now, imagine that you are a member of some group. For the moment, let's call that group Yellow. Notice that, in the picture, yellow is definitly more concentrated in the upper left hand side of the image. But there's yellow scattered all around the image, just in smaller quantities. And what's more, there's yellow in green, and yellow in orange, and many other colors as well. If mainstream is yellow, you can say that there is a certain area of the image that is mainstream (the area of the highest concentration of yellow). But looking at individual colors, you can't say where "yellow" is, because it's all over the place.
Apply the same lesson to "groups", and there you have Yoshino's point.
Flackle.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Playing with your mind?
"The graveyard was in the woods and twilight was coming on. Nothing broke the death like stillness except the occasional twitter of a bird. My spirit was overawed by the solemnity of the scene. For more than ten years I had frequented this spot, but never had it seemed to me so sacred as now. A black stump, at the head of my mother's grave, was all that remained of a tree my father had planted. His grave was marked by a small wooden board, bearing his name, the letters of which were nearly obliterated. I knelt down and kissed them, and poured forth a prayer to God for guidance and support in the perilous step I was about to take. As I passed the wreck of the old meeting house, where, before Nat Turner's time, the slaves had been allowed to meet for worship, I seemed to hear my father's voice come from it, bidding me not to tarry till I reached freedom or the grave. I rushed on with renovated hopes. My trust in God had been strengthened by that prayer among the graves."
-Harriet Jacobs,
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
As I've said before, the mind is very pliable. And, as I've said before,
Welcome back. So what's going on in this little excerpt (reproduced from here)? Well, the first sixty or so pages of this book are devoted to painting the picture of the bear-trap slavery is. Linda is so totally stuck in slavery that there is no out. We even see her trying, piece by piece, to get out, and we see the evil Dr. Flint cut each and every one of those attempts out from under her. It's like the child-on-an-electric-carpet experiment (don't try this at home), when you put a four or five year old on an electric carpet. Obviously, the child will jump off. Now, put the child + carpet in a class cage, so the child can't jump off. Inevitably, the kid will give up, and lay on the carpet, being shocked.
The same thing happens to Linda. She is laying on the floor of slavery, loosing her will to carry on, and can't find a way out. For me, at least, this moment at the graveyard is when she figures out that, whether or not there is a way out, she's going to keep on fighting to get out. She's going to either win or die.
But that doesn't really answer the question of why I like this piece so much. Or does it? Good writing does three things.
1.
Reality check. When you read, your eye moves across the page, and interprets individual glyphs as phonetic sounds. Somehow, all those sounds get put together to form something extremely close to reality. For example, I'll bet that while you read these very words you're not totally aware of your surroundings, because your reality has become the reality of someone explaining to you why he liked a paragraph in a book. Not the reality of you sitting at your desk looking at a LCD display while someone in the other room is making a racket. In significantly less words, good writing pulls you in. This piece did a fantastic job at that for me. I could see this scene as I was reading it.
2.
Go back and re-read the excerpt at the beginning of this post. Doesn't it make you sad, yet hopeful? Like I said before, this is a major turning point in the evolution of the main character. I don't think I need to go much further into this one, or
3.
this one, because I've already explained how this moves the story forward.
Hopefully you got a little insight into how I read. I'm sorry if this post seemed discordant or discon junctant, but I'm a wee bit frazzled. Keep your head in the game!
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girlis all the more emotionally affecting because it's non-fiction. It actually happened. So why is this passage worth my special attention? Stick around after the break, and you'll find out.
Welcome back. So what's going on in this little excerpt (reproduced from here)? Well, the first sixty or so pages of this book are devoted to painting the picture of the bear-trap slavery is. Linda is so totally stuck in slavery that there is no out. We even see her trying, piece by piece, to get out, and we see the evil Dr. Flint cut each and every one of those attempts out from under her. It's like the child-on-an-electric-carpet experiment (don't try this at home), when you put a four or five year old on an electric carpet. Obviously, the child will jump off. Now, put the child + carpet in a class cage, so the child can't jump off. Inevitably, the kid will give up, and lay on the carpet, being shocked.
The same thing happens to Linda. She is laying on the floor of slavery, loosing her will to carry on, and can't find a way out. For me, at least, this moment at the graveyard is when she figures out that, whether or not there is a way out, she's going to keep on fighting to get out. She's going to either win or die.
But that doesn't really answer the question of why I like this piece so much. Or does it? Good writing does three things.
- It convinces the reader that what they are reading is reality.
- It creates an emotional connection between the reader and the object of the story, most often referred to as the main character.
- It moves the story forward.
1.
Reality check. When you read, your eye moves across the page, and interprets individual glyphs as phonetic sounds. Somehow, all those sounds get put together to form something extremely close to reality. For example, I'll bet that while you read these very words you're not totally aware of your surroundings, because your reality has become the reality of someone explaining to you why he liked a paragraph in a book. Not the reality of you sitting at your desk looking at a LCD display while someone in the other room is making a racket. In significantly less words, good writing pulls you in. This piece did a fantastic job at that for me. I could see this scene as I was reading it.
2.
Go back and re-read the excerpt at the beginning of this post. Doesn't it make you sad, yet hopeful? Like I said before, this is a major turning point in the evolution of the main character. I don't think I need to go much further into this one, or
3.
this one, because I've already explained how this moves the story forward.
Hopefully you got a little insight into how I read. I'm sorry if this post seemed discordant or discon junctant, but I'm a wee bit frazzled. Keep your head in the game!
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Incidents in the Life of a Blogger
Hello, Internet!
Please take a moment to locate the exit nearest your seat, keeping in mind the nearest exit may be behind you, and take note of your emotions as you read the following two quibs. (Quib: noun a short vignette intended to convey a fact or lesson)
A hypothetical situation: A made up man named Henson V. Benson is hatching chickens for his science class. While Mr. Benson is getting ice cream out of the refridgerator, the chickens escape, and he has to run all over his appartment to find them. He hears a peeping coming out of the sink, but he can't see anything, so he hits the switch for the light above the sink. Except he hits the wrong switch, and activates the garbage disposal. Chicken smoothie, anyone?
Pretty sad, huh? OK, here's another one. This one really happened to me, though.
I was in fourth grade, and we had "class hamsters". There were two of them, Susie and Buckster. Each weekend, one student would have the responsibility of taking the two hamsters home and taking care of them. I was so excited, as any fourth-grader would be, when my turn came around. That weekend, a big storm blew through. I
used to
still love big storms, and this one was a monster. So I'm laying in bed, 9:30-ish, and I hear this completely helpless squealing coming from the cage laying at the foot of the bed. Thunder claps, and I hear some more desperate squeals. So, of course, I get out of bed, and find the two hamsters huddling together in the corner of the cage, scared out of their wits. What did I do? I took them out of their cage, and cuddled them until they both fell asleep in my lap.
So now you've heard both stories. Which one affected you more? The second one? How come?
If you're at a loss for words, I'll tell you why. Because it actually happened. No matter how good of a writer I am, something that actually happened will always sound more realistic and touching if it's something I can write from memory. The reader knowing that it actually happened makes it that much better.
When you watch a science-fiction movie, you're looking for flaws. Imperfections. Implausibilities (it's a real word-- look it up!). You've been raised (hopefully) to take nothing at face value, and question everything you see and hear. So knowing that what you are seeing was really a bunch of press-board on a sound stage in Century City takes away the impact of the movie. The same goes for written literature. Knowing that a book was written by some British woman sitting in a coffee shop pounding away on MS Word removes some of the emotional energy from the reader. Because it didn't actually happen, and no one is trying to convince you of anything otherwise. When a book/movie/photograph/whathaveyou is something real-- it actually happened-- you stop looking for the inconsistencies and simply believe. Therefore, when something stupendous happens, like, say, a main character dies, you feel sadder if it's non-fiction, because someone, somewhere, actually died. And that was eight commas in one sentence. Boo-ya!
The question for this evening was why is it important that the book we're reading, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is non-fiction. Each and every event in this book really happened, exactly as it is written. There's no room for debate about details. It happened that way. The fact that it wasn't cleaned up or heavily edited drives that point home. Nothing was passed through a filter.
I'm out of time again. Thank you for reading "The Words of Magic". Please collect your personal belongings and exit to your left.
Please take a moment to locate the exit nearest your seat, keeping in mind the nearest exit may be behind you, and take note of your emotions as you read the following two quibs. (Quib: noun a short vignette intended to convey a fact or lesson)
A hypothetical situation: A made up man named Henson V. Benson is hatching chickens for his science class. While Mr. Benson is getting ice cream out of the refridgerator, the chickens escape, and he has to run all over his appartment to find them. He hears a peeping coming out of the sink, but he can't see anything, so he hits the switch for the light above the sink. Except he hits the wrong switch, and activates the garbage disposal. Chicken smoothie, anyone?
Pretty sad, huh? OK, here's another one. This one really happened to me, though.
I was in fourth grade, and we had "class hamsters". There were two of them, Susie and Buckster. Each weekend, one student would have the responsibility of taking the two hamsters home and taking care of them. I was so excited, as any fourth-grader would be, when my turn came around. That weekend, a big storm blew through. I
used to
still love big storms, and this one was a monster. So I'm laying in bed, 9:30-ish, and I hear this completely helpless squealing coming from the cage laying at the foot of the bed. Thunder claps, and I hear some more desperate squeals. So, of course, I get out of bed, and find the two hamsters huddling together in the corner of the cage, scared out of their wits. What did I do? I took them out of their cage, and cuddled them until they both fell asleep in my lap.
So now you've heard both stories. Which one affected you more? The second one? How come?
If you're at a loss for words, I'll tell you why. Because it actually happened. No matter how good of a writer I am, something that actually happened will always sound more realistic and touching if it's something I can write from memory. The reader knowing that it actually happened makes it that much better.
When you watch a science-fiction movie, you're looking for flaws. Imperfections. Implausibilities (it's a real word-- look it up!). You've been raised (hopefully) to take nothing at face value, and question everything you see and hear. So knowing that what you are seeing was really a bunch of press-board on a sound stage in Century City takes away the impact of the movie. The same goes for written literature. Knowing that a book was written by some British woman sitting in a coffee shop pounding away on MS Word removes some of the emotional energy from the reader. Because it didn't actually happen, and no one is trying to convince you of anything otherwise. When a book/movie/photograph/whathaveyou is something real-- it actually happened-- you stop looking for the inconsistencies and simply believe. Therefore, when something stupendous happens, like, say, a main character dies, you feel sadder if it's non-fiction, because someone, somewhere, actually died. And that was eight commas in one sentence. Boo-ya!
The question for this evening was why is it important that the book we're reading, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is non-fiction. Each and every event in this book really happened, exactly as it is written. There's no room for debate about details. It happened that way. The fact that it wasn't cleaned up or heavily edited drives that point home. Nothing was passed through a filter.
I'm out of time again. Thank you for reading "The Words of Magic". Please collect your personal belongings and exit to your left.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Gobama!
Wahoo! Obama won!
OK, enough of that. Let’s get down to some analytical stuff.
I watched the election results on CNN. No particular reason why, apart from the fact that when I turned the TV on, it was already tuned to CNN, and I was too lazy to change the channel.
In general, I thought CNN did a fairly good job being neutral. They weren’t overtly conservative nor were they overtly liberal. They did always list the republicans before the democrats, but may have just been coincidence.
They had a new toy, too. Twice durning the coverage they had a “holographic host”, someone on the other side of the country that was being “projected” on the set. Now, I know enough about video and broadcast to know that they weren’t actually holograms, nor were they actually being projected. The news anchor was just talking to an empty space on stage, and the person was being added in after the fact. Gratuitous use of “holographic interference” was used as well (ie, they were slightly blue, slightly transparent, flickered a lot, and had a strange glowey halo around them). Nonetheless, it was a very interesting effect, and means that news casters no longer have to be standing on the CNN set in their studio. Also, CNN had a nifty little CGI model of the white house that they used in the same manor. I’m not sure what the benefit of the 3D model is, but it was cool eye candy.
Back to the election. The “mug shot” of McCain that they used wasn’t the most becoming, compared to the equivalent shot of Obama. They also seemed to digitally lighten Obama’s skin tone in the picture, making him seem more white. I’m not sure what the purpose of that was, or if it was simply an artifact of the giant display they were using, but it drew my attention.
Something interesting that I thought about during the race:
I watched the election with Elmo, from Elmo’s World, and I cheered when the Democrats took control of the senate. Elmo didn’t look to happy about it, and when I asked, she pointed out that it’s good to have a president from one party and a congressional majority from the other. Interesting. In the movie “Meet The Robinsons”, the Robinsons all cheer when Lewis fails at his invention. They say that the only way to improve something is to keep running into conflicts, because conflicts allow for improvement. You don’t learn anything from succeeding all the time. By the same token, I agree with Elmo in that the US can only be drastically improved when the improvement comes about through a discussion from TWO parties.
Oops, I went over my word limit again. Flackle.
OK, enough of that. Let’s get down to some analytical stuff.
I watched the election results on CNN. No particular reason why, apart from the fact that when I turned the TV on, it was already tuned to CNN, and I was too lazy to change the channel.
In general, I thought CNN did a fairly good job being neutral. They weren’t overtly conservative nor were they overtly liberal. They did always list the republicans before the democrats, but may have just been coincidence.
They had a new toy, too. Twice durning the coverage they had a “holographic host”, someone on the other side of the country that was being “projected” on the set. Now, I know enough about video and broadcast to know that they weren’t actually holograms, nor were they actually being projected. The news anchor was just talking to an empty space on stage, and the person was being added in after the fact. Gratuitous use of “holographic interference” was used as well (ie, they were slightly blue, slightly transparent, flickered a lot, and had a strange glowey halo around them). Nonetheless, it was a very interesting effect, and means that news casters no longer have to be standing on the CNN set in their studio. Also, CNN had a nifty little CGI model of the white house that they used in the same manor. I’m not sure what the benefit of the 3D model is, but it was cool eye candy.
Back to the election. The “mug shot” of McCain that they used wasn’t the most becoming, compared to the equivalent shot of Obama. They also seemed to digitally lighten Obama’s skin tone in the picture, making him seem more white. I’m not sure what the purpose of that was, or if it was simply an artifact of the giant display they were using, but it drew my attention.
Something interesting that I thought about during the race:
I watched the election with Elmo, from Elmo’s World, and I cheered when the Democrats took control of the senate. Elmo didn’t look to happy about it, and when I asked, she pointed out that it’s good to have a president from one party and a congressional majority from the other. Interesting. In the movie “Meet The Robinsons”, the Robinsons all cheer when Lewis fails at his invention. They say that the only way to improve something is to keep running into conflicts, because conflicts allow for improvement. You don’t learn anything from succeeding all the time. By the same token, I agree with Elmo in that the US can only be drastically improved when the improvement comes about through a discussion from TWO parties.
Oops, I went over my word limit again. Flackle.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Dermis Chroma Quandary
So my assignment tonight is to write about an encounter I’ve witnessed that had to do with race. First, I need to say that I really really really liked this article, despite the fact that it was kinda long. So, an encounter...?
I have an idea, but it’s actually two different events, totally unrelated. First one follows. The names have been changed, BTW.
So I’m in Underwater Basket Weaving 101, and I’m sitting between Gary, a tall, gangly WASP-ish guy, and Lawrence, a stocky African-American. Gary is wearing stone-washed Calvin Klein jeans and a golf shirt with the collar “popped”. Lawrence is wearing torn-up jeans with some sort of design on the left butt-pocket, and a brown tee shirt with something written on the front-- I don’t remember what, though. Gary is sitting on my left, and Lawrence is on my right.
Lawrence is listening to rap on his iPod, through headphones, although everyone at the table can hear it.
“Lawrence, dude, turn that down. No one wants to listen to your trash,” Gary says, reaching across me and yanking one of Lawrence’s earbuds out.
“Whatchya doin’, bro? My ‘buds are broken, they sound like that no matter how loud I have it set to. And it’s not trash, y’know what I’m sayin’, Aladdin?” Lawrence asks me.
“Umm... I don’t really care for..." I say, getting cut off.
“Lawrence, you’re only living up to your stereotype. Stop acting black, and turn that $%#@ down.” Gary gets up and walks to a different table to learn how to weave patterns.
OK, second story.
So I’m in down-town LA with my mom. We’re walking from our hotel to dinner, about a five mile walk. We come to an intersection that we have to cross, and there’s a man standing by the crosswalk, swaying back and forth. It’s not obvious what color he is, because he’s covered with all grime and filth imaginable. He has about a dozen shopping bags sitting at his feet, and he is wearing three or four different coats and jackets.
My mom sees him, and immediately turns around, so she’s not facing him.
“Aladdin! We’ve got to find a different way to get there. Don’t look, but there’s a homeless man at the light, and he looks dangerous.”
“Mom, he’s just an old man. Why would he hurt us? It’s not like we have anything valuable on us, we’re just tourists.”
The man begins to pick up his bags, one by one, look through them briefly, then move them about ten feet down the sidewalk.
“Common, mom, he’s not going to do anything.”
We end up crossing at a different intersection just to avoid the man, but as we pass him on the other side of the street, it becomes apparent that he was moving his bags so we could pass by him and his stuff without getting too close to him. I felt really bad, since he had spent maybe ten or fifteen minutes moving his bags, and now he had to move them all back, but when your mom is paying for dinner, you do what she says.
Sorry, y’all, this is turning out to be a long post. I guess what I’ve realized, after reading this article, is that discrimination is blind. It doesn’t matter who the person is, so long as they fit into some sort of pre-concieved notion of what they are. Racism is a glutton of a word, but it’s also a very specific word. Racism implies discrimination against someone or a group of people because they’re black. What about Asians? What about people who are Muslim, or look like they haven’t had a bath in two weeks? What about people who are the exact same race as me, but have somehow ended up at the sewer of the social system? We discriminate blindly, and this isn’t something that people like to face. But no matter what we call it, racism, stereotyping, etc., it’s all the same, and needs to be addressed.
The end. Hammer Time!
I have an idea, but it’s actually two different events, totally unrelated. First one follows. The names have been changed, BTW.
So I’m in Underwater Basket Weaving 101, and I’m sitting between Gary, a tall, gangly WASP-ish guy, and Lawrence, a stocky African-American. Gary is wearing stone-washed Calvin Klein jeans and a golf shirt with the collar “popped”. Lawrence is wearing torn-up jeans with some sort of design on the left butt-pocket, and a brown tee shirt with something written on the front-- I don’t remember what, though. Gary is sitting on my left, and Lawrence is on my right.
Lawrence is listening to rap on his iPod, through headphones, although everyone at the table can hear it.
“Lawrence, dude, turn that down. No one wants to listen to your trash,” Gary says, reaching across me and yanking one of Lawrence’s earbuds out.
“Whatchya doin’, bro? My ‘buds are broken, they sound like that no matter how loud I have it set to. And it’s not trash, y’know what I’m sayin’, Aladdin?” Lawrence asks me.
“Umm... I don’t really care for..." I say, getting cut off.
“Lawrence, you’re only living up to your stereotype. Stop acting black, and turn that $%#@ down.” Gary gets up and walks to a different table to learn how to weave patterns.
OK, second story.
So I’m in down-town LA with my mom. We’re walking from our hotel to dinner, about a five mile walk. We come to an intersection that we have to cross, and there’s a man standing by the crosswalk, swaying back and forth. It’s not obvious what color he is, because he’s covered with all grime and filth imaginable. He has about a dozen shopping bags sitting at his feet, and he is wearing three or four different coats and jackets.
My mom sees him, and immediately turns around, so she’s not facing him.
“Aladdin! We’ve got to find a different way to get there. Don’t look, but there’s a homeless man at the light, and he looks dangerous.”
“Mom, he’s just an old man. Why would he hurt us? It’s not like we have anything valuable on us, we’re just tourists.”
The man begins to pick up his bags, one by one, look through them briefly, then move them about ten feet down the sidewalk.
“Common, mom, he’s not going to do anything.”
We end up crossing at a different intersection just to avoid the man, but as we pass him on the other side of the street, it becomes apparent that he was moving his bags so we could pass by him and his stuff without getting too close to him. I felt really bad, since he had spent maybe ten or fifteen minutes moving his bags, and now he had to move them all back, but when your mom is paying for dinner, you do what she says.
Sorry, y’all, this is turning out to be a long post. I guess what I’ve realized, after reading this article, is that discrimination is blind. It doesn’t matter who the person is, so long as they fit into some sort of pre-concieved notion of what they are. Racism is a glutton of a word, but it’s also a very specific word. Racism implies discrimination against someone or a group of people because they’re black. What about Asians? What about people who are Muslim, or look like they haven’t had a bath in two weeks? What about people who are the exact same race as me, but have somehow ended up at the sewer of the social system? We discriminate blindly, and this isn’t something that people like to face. But no matter what we call it, racism, stereotyping, etc., it’s all the same, and needs to be addressed.
The end. Hammer Time!
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Like Putty In My Hands!
I went out and bought some clay last night from Michaels. It’s green clay. I wasn’t really sure what to make it into, so I just played with it to get some inspiration. I ended up making it into a little blob-man with big eyebrows. I set him out on the porch, and went to bed. This morning, I got up, and realized that I really didn’t like his eyebrows. They need to be much smaller. Oh, and I think I’m going to give him some sort of hat. But when I went out to the porch to pick him up, I found that he’d become rock solid. Oh well, no hat for Mr. Blobman.
You are a lump of clay. I don’t mean that you’re unshapely; I mean that your mind acts like clay. Stick with me, and I’ll explain my metaphor.
When you are really young, you are very impressionable. As a kid, hopefully, you had a fair bit of interaction with the outside world, and the way you think today is shaped by your interactions when you were much younger. Now, that’s not to say that you’re totally rock solid (in your mind, once again, I’m not describing your physique), but you are probably a bit less impressionable than you were when you were five.
The question that I’m trying to answer here is... what? Oh, yeah, it’s about the socialization process, and whether or not I agree with it. Well, what I just described to you above is part of the socialization process. The process is when the society you live in—say, Carmel¬—instills in you certain beliefs—say, houses or buildings made out of brick mean that the inhabitants are higher class than people who live or work in wood or metal buildings.
This process is a big factor in our prejudices against certain people or groups. I was raised in California, so I probably have more of a prejudice against Mexicans than someone who was raised in Indiana, who probably has more of a prejudice against African-Americans. I remember quite distinctly certain events of discrimination from my childhood, such as the teacher kicking the Chinese girl out of the class more often, much better than I remember something that happened a year or so ago.
That raises the question that I’ll leave you with as I go to eat a waffle: When you have kids, or nieces or nephews, and they’re still in their goey clay form, what are you going to shape them into?
Waffle Time!
You are a lump of clay. I don’t mean that you’re unshapely; I mean that your mind acts like clay. Stick with me, and I’ll explain my metaphor.
When you are really young, you are very impressionable. As a kid, hopefully, you had a fair bit of interaction with the outside world, and the way you think today is shaped by your interactions when you were much younger. Now, that’s not to say that you’re totally rock solid (in your mind, once again, I’m not describing your physique), but you are probably a bit less impressionable than you were when you were five.
The question that I’m trying to answer here is... what? Oh, yeah, it’s about the socialization process, and whether or not I agree with it. Well, what I just described to you above is part of the socialization process. The process is when the society you live in—say, Carmel¬—instills in you certain beliefs—say, houses or buildings made out of brick mean that the inhabitants are higher class than people who live or work in wood or metal buildings.
This process is a big factor in our prejudices against certain people or groups. I was raised in California, so I probably have more of a prejudice against Mexicans than someone who was raised in Indiana, who probably has more of a prejudice against African-Americans. I remember quite distinctly certain events of discrimination from my childhood, such as the teacher kicking the Chinese girl out of the class more often, much better than I remember something that happened a year or so ago.
That raises the question that I’ll leave you with as I go to eat a waffle: When you have kids, or nieces or nephews, and they’re still in their goey clay form, what are you going to shape them into?
Waffle Time!
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