Dream a New Dream

The population of the United States is always growing, and as it grows so does the percentage of minorities. Today the Hispanic minority is much larger than the black minority. Today African Americans make up 12.6% of the American population while Hispanics are at 16.3%. These numbers only represent the legal populations so in reality the number of Hispanics is much larger due to illegal immigrants. With such an increase in minorities is it the United States responsibility to educate the young immigrants so they can more easily become legal and educated citizens. There are those who say yes, and so do I. I am tired of hearing people say kick out the aliens, tighten the borders, and increase deportation laws. We are nation that was founded on immigration and I believe that it should remain that way. I understand limiting the number of immigrants each year because we don’t want to become to overpopulated and have increased unemployment rates. However many of these illegal immigrants have been able to find jobs (jobs that most educated Americans do not want to do anyway). So why should we kick them and their children out when they need to be able to make a living and they are willing to do these undesirable jobs. I think the US has the responsibility to try and educate the minors of these hard working families. Because our future lies with the youth and the better their education the brighter their future will be.

The DREAM Act an acronym for Development, Relief, and Education of Alien Minors, was a bill that was introduced in 2009 to help educate young alien minors. The bill was blocked from congress in 2010 and may be put back on the table in the coming year. The whole point of the DREAM Act is to give undocumented immigrants a chance for in-state tuition, join the military, and give back to the US through their education and become citizens. In order to be eligible for DREAM you have to have entered the US under the age of 16, lived there for 5 consecutive years, have received a high school education or GED, have good moral character, and be between the ages of 12-35. Of course an undocumented Immigrant would still have to apply to become a citizen this education program would make it easier. I think this is one of the best possible solutions that I have heard proposed in response to the illegal immigrant problem. I think this for a few reasons. 1) It gives the young a better chance to become a full US citizen, and 2) It is educating the youth so that they can have a brighter future (that’s the reason they came to the US in the first place). I hope this bill can make it to congress because it seems like a reasonable solution though there may be some issues with it that I cannot see at this time, but it definitely worth looking into as a possible solution.




"Issue Of The Week XIX: Are You In Favor Of Passage Of The DREAM Act | Race Relations |ethnicity |USARiseUp." Race Relations |ethnicity |USARiseUp |. Web. 04 May 2011. http://usariseup.com/national-collegiate-dialogue/issue-week-xix-are-you-favor-passage-dream-act

Harvard IAT Test II

I took the Harvard IAT Race Test a second time to see if after the course my score was different at all. However it seemed that I had the exact same result as the first time. Does this surprise me at all? No it doesn't because it would probably take a life time in order to change my subconscious thought and even then it would be unlikely for me to get a different result because these "reactions" are programmed into our brain at a young age depending on the things we see and experience.

You have completed the African American - European American IAT.

Your Result

Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for European American compared to African American.
Thank you for your participation. Just below is a breakdown of the scores generated by others. Most respondents find it easier to associate African American with Bad and European American with Good compared to the reverse.



Many of the questions that you answered on the previous page have been addressed in research over the last 10 years. For example, the order that you performed the response pairing is influential, but procedural corrections largely eliminate that influence (see FAQ #1). Each visitor to the site completes the task in a randomized order. If you would like to learn more about the IAT, please visit the FAQs and background information section.

You are welcome to try additional demonstration tasks, and we encourage you to register (easy) for the research site where you will gain access to studies about more than 100 topics about social groups, personality, pop culture, and more.

If you would like to take the Harvard IAT Race Test follow this link https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.html and click on Race IAT

Eurocentrism

As I was saying before in my last post, I believe that it was the destruction of the University of Sonkore that ultimately lead to the racial issues in society today. If the Moroccans had not destroyed the library or just had not invaded at all, the scholars of the time would have been able to flourish and many Africans would have become better educated. If this had been the case there would have been a much better chance that the Africans would not have been treated so poorly by the Europeans because they would have held some form of higher education. However this is not the case and Sonkore was destroyed leaving behind a path of Eurocentrism.

Eurocentrism is the act of viewing the world from a European point of view and with an implied belief either consciously or subconsciously. One example of how Eurocentrism effected the African American population, how one person will judge another person based on social and ethnic qualities of the European race. We see it rear its ugly head today especially after the 9/11 attacks when we now think of all Arabs as terrorist that could never have a correct European style democracy. We see it in our history books when people expected that African Americans could never do well in school or business and the superiority of the white society of the time tried to make sure that that statement remained true. In a way Eurocentrism is a main cause of racism in our world. If you notice though Caucasian could be considered a “race” it is never a white person that is discriminated against because of their ethnicity. That is because most of society including non-Caucasian people holds everyone to “white” standards of living. Most people have been conditioned to filter everything they see through a Eurocentric filter so everything and everyone must be held up to white standards because they believe that that is the only goal that should be reached not that could be reached

I am not saying that white supremacy is correct. Only that Eurocentrism is real and people have these unconscious standards that they try to hold themselves and others up to when they should be trying to have their own standard of living.



Woodson, Carter Godwin. The Miseducation of the Negro. Las Vegas, NV: IAP, 2010. Print.

Reflection

I originally took this course because I wanted to learn more about African culture. I am a Caucasian female who grew up in a dominantly white school and neighborhood. I must admit I was hoping the course would be more about the continent of Africa and its culture and history. Because through all of my years of learning it is the only area that I have not studied in depth apart from the book “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe. I actually read this book in middle school and thought it was interesting that I was brought back to it in college. It is an interesting story of an African boy who becomes tribal leader right before the intervention of the white man. As the title suggests the ways of life that they knew began to fall apart as white culture began to take its hold on the indigenous people. I view the book as the first example of a trend that seems to have continued throughout history. Where the ideas and traditions of one culture are forced upon another completely different culture and their traditions are lost. This hold true all over the world and in most cases it is the culture of the white European that influences the other cultures.

I am almost sad to say the only African history that I learned about was the University of Sankore in Timbuktu, and how their vast library was destroyed by Moraccan invaders in 1591. It was the destruction of the library that leads future invaders to believe that the people of Timbuktu had no education and were merely barbarians and good for nothing more than being slaves. So that’s what happened men, women, and children were taken from Africa and turned into slaves. There were however African scholars that made large contributions to the library at Sankore, but are also remembered in today’s history books. One such scholar was Ahmad Baba al Massufi, he wrote over 40 books in his lifetime almost everyone had a different theme. After the invasion he was taken prisoner then exiled to Morocco and lost the 1,600 books in his library. It is understandable to think that invaders would destroy such a wealth of knowledge in those times. It was a way of erasing the culture that had been there before them so they could leavve their permanent mark and that’s exactly what they did. I feel like the destruction of this library and the loss of such great African scholars was only the first domino in a long line of them that leads to today’s racial issues America. By destroying the library the Moraccans eliminated the fact that there ever was any scholarly culture in Africa and thus returning it to a more primordial state. It pushed the African culture back many years because of this loss of knowledge, so when more European invaders came they were taken advantage of. So throughout history the Africans were always compared to unfair European standards and thus forced to remain at the bottom of the ladder.

University of Sankore, Timbuktu

Ahmed Baba al Massufi

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Knopf, 1992. Print.

Aldridge, Delores P., and E. Lincoln. James. Africana Studies. Pullman, WA: Washington State UP, 2007. Print.

Caricatures Today and yesterday

It was Ethic Notions that inspired my multimedia project. I have always been interested in art and these concepts that these cartoons conceptualized. I found them just as interesting as they were disturbing. So I made an automatic powerpoint presentation about the Black caricatures and how we are making new caricatures today but targeting different people.

Response to the film "Ethic Notions"

I have very rarely ever seen cartoons like the ones shown in these videos. It surprised me especially the Looney Toon characters taking part in the rude display of racism. These videos open up a whole new level of racism that runs below the surface of what most people believe to be the “old day” racism. It is understandable that during those times cartoons would be made to be insulting towards blacks but to have such stereotypes as different as Mammy and Pickaninny it is hard to believe that the human mind could work on such a level. The Mammy represented as a strong women (though unattractive) I did not find to be as offensive as the Pickaninny because the Mammy though she was still a slave or servant was a strong individual that had perhaps a small positive representation of the African American. However I find the Pickaninny to be a very harsh representation. To put any child in a position of danger is horrible in its own way regardless of race. It made the children seem like they were ignorant and stupid, and the psychological fact that the reason for the Pickaninny was to slowly kill off the African American makes the cartoon even more morbid than it already was. Though what I do find interesting is that today many of the caricatures are considered collectables because of their artist value. But what about their overall social value of that time. Back in the day they were in the black mind an insult and in the white mind just one more way try and establish dominance over another ethnicity.

Eyes On The Prize

So after watching this film i have not really found any of my views to be different about the past and present forms of racism and segregation. I feel that Martin Luther King Jr. tried his best to try and end segregation and did a very good job of overcoming the inertia that had white Americans stuck in a deep rut. I have had history classes where we have talked about Dr. King and we discussed some of the main events, but we never tried to penetrate the gut of the matter. We were not shown the extent of the violence that this video shows and I knew it was bad but i had no idea how much of a war zone it really was. It is images such as these that sometimes make me question if humans are inherently evil, inherently good, or just inherently fearful?

It also surprised me that there was more violence towards African Americans in the North than the south during the marches. They said that in the south only 75-100 people would protest the marches while in the north even women and children would come out of their homes to protest and join the riots. However I think I can understand how this was an outcome. The North at the time was more industrialized so there were more cities and people lived closer together while in the South their economy was built on farming and there are less people per square mile. So it was easier in the North for people to riot against the marchers in a larger number.

Another thing I found interesting that doesn't have a direct link to the film, but to the situation in general; it is the conditioning of people from when they are young to when they are older. In those times white children were told to hate African people and treat them badly so they grew up with this mentality that they are better than dark skinned people. But in the same way African children were probably told to hate the white people because they suppressed them. And because children are impressionable they keep this mentality as they grow older and these older children are the ones starting these riots in the video. Earlier this week i watched part of film called A Class Divided that talks about this conditioning to hate people different than themselves. A teacher came up with the idea to take a class and tell them that blue eyed people are better than brown eyed and gave special privileges to blue eyed kids. Then she switched it the next day and gave special privleges to the brown eyed kids and it was interesting to see the result of how it affected these kids and it helped them to understand how the African Americans felt during those times. here is the link to the film if anyone would like to watch it. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02s42cq66&continuous=1