After reading these two excerpts, I'm starting to feel like maybe I'm living a more sheltered life then i think! Okay, so i don't party, dont smoke, dont drink, but geez, I dont go to the movies or watch television either? I mean really does my life revolve around school so much that i dont do simple things like go the the movies once in a while? Out of both essays, I could relate to neither of them! I had no idea what Silverman or Whitney Black was talking about because I haven't seen I, Robot nor have I watched Star Wars, seen the movies, or spent time looking at anything Star Wars related (:().
But there were points that I could relate to in Silverman's excerpt. One was the fact that clumsy elements tend to jump out at me in movies. Especially dialogue that feels staged, or the over exaggeration of action. I can remember watching Tyler Perry's, A Family that Preys, and when actress Sanaa Lathan was slapped, she like fleeewww OVER the counter. All I could think was how corny and unrealistic was that, ain't nobody getting slapped that hard to where they are flying over a counter! I had to turn.
I could also agree with Silverman when he said that "[lately] frigid female professionals are having problems connecting with men [in many roles]. What does this stereotype tell us? That women who are successful in the workplace lead miserable personal lives?" I say yes, I could remember watching Soul Food and the most successful sister, Terry, could not keep a man. First, as the only sister in college, her boyfriend left her and married and had children by her younger sister. Then as a wealthy lawyer, the only one with a career in the family, her husband cheated and slept with her baby cousin! TEAR!
So, I mean, does this mean that to keep a man, I have to be a dropout with babies out of marriage??? So unfair. I think it has something to do with the male ego. The men have to be controlling everything, bringing home the "bacon" all the time, not the women. So that's why I believe that because we sometimes live out lives based on what we see on television and in movies (p.343)[which is a point i agree with as well because i do, especially with Love and Basketball], Hollywood, especially the men in Hollywood is probably hoping that by having all the successful women portrayed as being insufficient with men, women would dumb themselves down and stop being so successful in the real world.
In my opinion LOVE DONT PAY THE BILLS, so im NOT falling for it.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
I, Robot Goes to Star Wars
Sunday, February 7, 2010
No "w'z" Allowed
After reading the first few paragraphs of Sports Taboo, I thought oh no, another Black Bart essay! How confusing! But after reading more and more of the essay, I was able to find one point I think Malcolm Gladwell made very clear, and that was "black" people are more physically fit for sports than "white" people are. Hopefully that is one idea we were suppose to take from that.
I could also relate to censoring myself. I especially like when she said, "this country does not have a history of showing tolerance toward any racial minority whose members are easy to pick out of a crowd." I don't know why I like this quote so much, I guess it is because she put America on "blast" yet in a classy way. She even gave proof of this by giving us an example of Japanese Americans and Pearl Harbor, which I feel was a very clever way of proving her point and making it a fact, and not just her opinion. But her piece also made me feel guilty for how much I stereotyped all Arabic looking people after 9/11. I remember not wanting to get on subways, or buses, or planes, if I saw an Arabic person was getting on, in fear that it might blow up, and I truly regret it. 
But the piece that really kept my attention was the essay entitled Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, by Beverly Daniel Tatum. In this essay, Ms. Tatum, in my opinion, very vividly explains the stages which lead to the segregation that is seen throughout many middle schools and high schools, no matter where one might happen to look. First, she says, that we began to learn the meaning of racial identity. Becoming more involved with the world outside, and interacting with the world around us, as we approach teenage years, African American children began to absorb the belief and values of the dominant white culture. That's including the idea that its better to be white. Then, she says, we have an encounter, which is our first hand experience of discrimination and/or racism, and this is when I realized that maybe Ms. Tatum really had a valid point with her ideology.
I remember the very first time I came face to face with discrimination at the age of 7. I was in Macy’s, and I can’t remember exactly what I was doing, but I remember that I bumped into a Caucasian boy around my age by accident. Really, it was by accident, but he ran to his mom, who was close by and told her, that I pushed him, as if on purpose. And I remember her saying “don’t stoop to her level; people like her don’t have any home training!”
I didn’t quite understand what that meant at the time, so I didn’t you know run back to my mom about what the women had said, but I remember feeling low, and worthless. But after knowing what I do now, and having this essay bring the memory back, I now see the reason for my feeling of worthlessness. And although not quite the same story, of the white friend who couldn’t relate to her black friend’s story, I remember that I did not want to be around anybody who looked like the boy or his mother who gave me that “low” feeling, so I stayed around people who looked like me. So could this really be true. Are we setting ourselves back to the days of segregation by willingly segregating ourselves because we don’t want to have to face our reality? I can agree with Ms. Tatum on that, but how can we cope, yet at the same time not hurt ourselves by steering clear of the separation that “they” want all along?
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
@M3R!CAN PI3
After reading chapter four, I feel that instead of dwelling on the immortal issues of racism and skin color differentiation, stereotypes and discrimination, we should come to terms with it for it’s going to always be here. As long as these hate groups are living, and they are instilling in their children these same ideologies, they are going to be here for as long as we are living and many generations after we have passed on.
As Silverman said, “we want to be – and are explicitly trained to be – democratic in the ways we view others, by the way they act toward us, not the way they look. ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover,’ we say, but we are always judging books by their covers, and people by their appearance.” All Asian looking individuals are smart. All African American males, especially the tall ones, are great basketball athletes, and every Mexican person lives in a crowded house while the men work many hours on a construction job, so forth and so on.
I feel it is we, the minorities, ourselves hindering our own success in America, and in the world for that matter, because we keep dwelling on the issues. Yes, it’s here, alive and well, we all know that, but don’t make it an excuse for our failure. My most hated line when something doesn’t go as planned, “it’s the man keeping me down.” I mean who is the man, and why does this one man seem to have control over so many peoples lives? [Sounds like a whole bunch of bull crap to me, for lack of a better word]. We are the man or the woman, controlling our lives, and we need to understand that. We determine how much we succeed or how hard we fall in life, not the system, or anyone else.
We all have access to the same opportunities in this world, we just have to go out and look harder for them, and not sit back expecting for them to simply drop into our laps. I feel anything that’s easy to get is not worth having. We must learn to stand strong, even in the face of defeat, and the first step in doing so is getting over the burdens of racism, stereotypes, discrimination, etc, which is blocking our view of our piece of the American pie. Once it’s in our view, and we keep our eye on the prize, there would be nothing that could hold us back.
