This article dealt with the strides of Brown vs. Board along with a number of cases that are related to segregation and discrimination. The article focused on a number of very different aspects of different cases as well as the formation of segregation and the ideas of it correlates with the idea that minority groups cannot get to a higher class level because of segregation being imposed on them. One specific quote from the piece that I am extremely fond of is this…
"The refusal of white Americans to accept responsibility for the relative educational, economic, social, and political disadvantage of blacks is legally and intellectually justified by ignoring the continuing vitality of the Institution of Segregation and their own role in its maintenance. White Americans deny responsibility for the position of blacks by denying that they have created a system of oppression that will continue to exist and operate to their benefit until they have destroyed it."
The power of segregation cannot be eradicated until everyone works towards destroying it. No matter the amount of money that spent in diverse schools of diversity programs will not cause the institution of segregation to collapse, it still is prevalent in modern times. It’s important to remember that the ruling that schools were “separate but not equal” was found only 50 or so years ago, it’s still a relatively new idea. These programs designed to integrate society on an equal level (class, race, and even gender) there needs to be a teaching of codes of power and ideas of how to succeed in today’s white majority upper class world. The amounts are good paying political jobs are held by high class whites, because they dominate the field and there isn’t an exact integration other groups of people and genders cannot plant a foot into these work environments. Many GED programs are directed towards minorities, but this country seems to point out that “we need ditch diggers” and it just happens the country directs it towards lower class minorities. There isn’t anything wrong with people working lower wage manual labor jobs, the country does depend on it and there’s no way to dispute it, however it isn’t right to direct it to a specific group of people.
I have also included some links that might be of interest to some people. The first two are bits from a video documentary entitled “a Class Divided” which deals with the powers of segregation, inequality, and racism. For those who are interested in racial role reversals and the unbelievable power of segregation these two videos are very interesting and I hope some of you will watch them.
Click Here to View: A Class Divided - Part I
Click Here to View: A Class Divided – Part II
A second piece I have included is a brief description of the findings from the doctors who preformed an experiment for Brown vs. Board involving groups of young children of different races and dolls of different races. The finds were unbelievable and helped fuel a verdict that was found “separate but not equal” in the courts.
Click Here to View: Doll Experiment
As a follow up to that article here is an excerpt from Wikipedia.com that shows that those findings in the Doll experiment are still prevalent in today’s society, showing that there still are issues of inequalities that need to be addressed…
Excerpt from Wikipedia.com...
“In 2006 filmmaker Kiri Davis recreated the doll study and documented it in a film entitled A Girl like Me. Despite the many changes in some parts of society, she found the same results as did the Drs. Clark in their study of the late 1930s and early 1940s.”
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Talking Points V - Kahne and Westheimer
In The Service of What? The Politics of Service Learning By Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer discusses the issues that differ between helping those in need and having a face to face interaction with those people. It also touches on whether or not these projects and services are used for political agendas. Finally it also discusses the types of people who are engaging in these types of services. I found the article to be pretty interesting. When the article discussed the part about students who were putting together care packages for the homeless without any interaction with them versus those who worked in a soup kitchen or in an actually homeless shelter. Those who did not make an actual interaction lost touch, in a sense of what they were actually doing. It’s not to say that they weren’t doing any good, but it makes it somewhat clear that they didn’t get a perspective from the people they were helping. Having that personal interaction in service learning causes the student to understand perspectives of those who are not from their social, economic, or political background. There is so much that can be learned from people through interactions and service learning projects.
Another interesting aspect was the concern higher class parents had for their children who would be doing service learning projects in lower class communities. From the exploitations of the media and word of mouth, parents began to fear for their children, feeding the assumptions they had heard about the neighborhood to their children. Their children who learned that it wasn’t true had an important interaction not only with the younger children they would work with, but understood what’s real from what’s fabricated, an assumption versus a truth. This helps younger students to grasp how the country works but also teaches them not to make the same assumptions that their parents make about a certain area that is not known to them.
Service learning, regardless of having a political agenda or not, is essential for young minds and the community. There is an interaction and a mutual respect for where we all live, it’s giving back to a school that you had graduated from, it’s cleaning a park you had played in when you were a child, it’s taking care of the homeless who might have, at one time, lived next door to you but soon lost their house due to foreclosures. America, to me, has been and should always be about community. It is our civic duty to be a part of that, maybe it was because I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone knew each other and we all looked out for each other; but that’s a part of being not only American but also being creatures of social interaction. It is rewarding for everyone to be a part of service learning, there’s personal growth and understanding on both sides of the spectrum.
Another interesting aspect was the concern higher class parents had for their children who would be doing service learning projects in lower class communities. From the exploitations of the media and word of mouth, parents began to fear for their children, feeding the assumptions they had heard about the neighborhood to their children. Their children who learned that it wasn’t true had an important interaction not only with the younger children they would work with, but understood what’s real from what’s fabricated, an assumption versus a truth. This helps younger students to grasp how the country works but also teaches them not to make the same assumptions that their parents make about a certain area that is not known to them.
Service learning, regardless of having a political agenda or not, is essential for young minds and the community. There is an interaction and a mutual respect for where we all live, it’s giving back to a school that you had graduated from, it’s cleaning a park you had played in when you were a child, it’s taking care of the homeless who might have, at one time, lived next door to you but soon lost their house due to foreclosures. America, to me, has been and should always be about community. It is our civic duty to be a part of that, maybe it was because I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone knew each other and we all looked out for each other; but that’s a part of being not only American but also being creatures of social interaction. It is rewarding for everyone to be a part of service learning, there’s personal growth and understanding on both sides of the spectrum.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Talking Points IV - Christensen
Linda Christensen’s “Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us” talks about the importance of questioning the cartoons, movies, books, etc. that we have read and watched while we were children which puts us as a culture into specific categories through sexist, racist, and classist stereotypes. This article also touches on how depictions of specific things we see have caused us all to submit and not rebel.
Throughout our childhoods we have all watched Disney movies, Looney Tunes, etc. and if some hadn’t been as “fortunate” to have a television there were always books like Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, etc. All of these books had, what has become to all of us in an older age, stereotypes. For example African Americans were servants, Native Americans were savage, Hispanics were usually in mariachi bands with sombreros, white men were intelligent, brave, and flawless etc. Women played two roles, those who were the heroines were curvy, busty, buck some, and beautiful. Then the women who were larger were usually portrayed as ugly or “homely” acting as a servant to the heroine or either played the villain, the hideous, which character. People of higher classes had all the riches and were the heroes, middle class people played servants or bumbling dopes, and lower class people were portrayed as the drunken idiot who would stumble around the neighborhood with a big red nose. These are all examples of how since we were all children we learned to act and dress according to our class, gender, and race.
Because of these factors companies have made a cash crop out of this. From specific marketing targets from advertisements, billboards, to actual sales these early roles that were taught to us tend be more money in the wallets of corporations. For example, women learn at an early age that being beautiful is the most important factor in attracting a mate (which is also taught to women that this is the most important thing in the world for women to do…) they must be the most gorgeous creature in the world, so they go to Macy’s, Nordstrom’s, Seporhia, etc. and buy expensive clothes and make up to make them “stand out” more than everyone else so they become the most attractive women to any man whose looking. This mentality is preying on the insecurities for an entire gender of the world. But these cartoons are essential to this entire marketing culture.
These cartoons and movies are degrading and inappropriate for students who are not of white, upper class, male status. These stereotypes are put onto people of different classes, races, and sex which are then in turn accepted by not only the outside world but also as a self-realization and acceptance. I completely loved this article and I am very excited about the fact that a number of students have such a high power of observation about these stereotypes and secret codes that they would speak out about this and even inform the communities they live in about them. These stereotypes dictate how these students will see themselves when they become adults, which in a way, is very brain washing. These students have even lashed out towards different movie and cartoon companies about how they are disgusted and hurt by these depictions of races, classes, and genders. The only problem is that these students still have a realization that it is important to have not only and good relationship with a significant other (this applies mostly to women) and that it’s important to have the most money. These types of ideas become very unrealistic, since it is impossible for everyone to become that successful, which can become draining on an emotional level for people who are either struggling with income throughout their lives or if some people have a good amount of income and can survive but want more and more. There needs to be an understanding that you have to be happy with what you have because some things in life are, in fact, unrealistic.
Finally here’s a video I found on Youtube.com that has a bunch of clips of early cartoons which are all of unbelievable insulting racist depictions, I would say “enjoy” but there really is no way to enjoy these clips, remember, these cartoons were once okay and acceptable to show, which, to me is extremely depressing…
Throughout our childhoods we have all watched Disney movies, Looney Tunes, etc. and if some hadn’t been as “fortunate” to have a television there were always books like Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, etc. All of these books had, what has become to all of us in an older age, stereotypes. For example African Americans were servants, Native Americans were savage, Hispanics were usually in mariachi bands with sombreros, white men were intelligent, brave, and flawless etc. Women played two roles, those who were the heroines were curvy, busty, buck some, and beautiful. Then the women who were larger were usually portrayed as ugly or “homely” acting as a servant to the heroine or either played the villain, the hideous, which character. People of higher classes had all the riches and were the heroes, middle class people played servants or bumbling dopes, and lower class people were portrayed as the drunken idiot who would stumble around the neighborhood with a big red nose. These are all examples of how since we were all children we learned to act and dress according to our class, gender, and race.
Because of these factors companies have made a cash crop out of this. From specific marketing targets from advertisements, billboards, to actual sales these early roles that were taught to us tend be more money in the wallets of corporations. For example, women learn at an early age that being beautiful is the most important factor in attracting a mate (which is also taught to women that this is the most important thing in the world for women to do…) they must be the most gorgeous creature in the world, so they go to Macy’s, Nordstrom’s, Seporhia, etc. and buy expensive clothes and make up to make them “stand out” more than everyone else so they become the most attractive women to any man whose looking. This mentality is preying on the insecurities for an entire gender of the world. But these cartoons are essential to this entire marketing culture.
These cartoons and movies are degrading and inappropriate for students who are not of white, upper class, male status. These stereotypes are put onto people of different classes, races, and sex which are then in turn accepted by not only the outside world but also as a self-realization and acceptance. I completely loved this article and I am very excited about the fact that a number of students have such a high power of observation about these stereotypes and secret codes that they would speak out about this and even inform the communities they live in about them. These stereotypes dictate how these students will see themselves when they become adults, which in a way, is very brain washing. These students have even lashed out towards different movie and cartoon companies about how they are disgusted and hurt by these depictions of races, classes, and genders. The only problem is that these students still have a realization that it is important to have not only and good relationship with a significant other (this applies mostly to women) and that it’s important to have the most money. These types of ideas become very unrealistic, since it is impossible for everyone to become that successful, which can become draining on an emotional level for people who are either struggling with income throughout their lives or if some people have a good amount of income and can survive but want more and more. There needs to be an understanding that you have to be happy with what you have because some things in life are, in fact, unrealistic.
Finally here’s a video I found on Youtube.com that has a bunch of clips of early cartoons which are all of unbelievable insulting racist depictions, I would say “enjoy” but there really is no way to enjoy these clips, remember, these cartoons were once okay and acceptable to show, which, to me is extremely depressing…
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