Entry Six

This week, I just want to say how touched I was by all of the culture boxes that were presented in class on Wednesday. It was really beautiful to see a few intimate aspects of each life. I think it went along well with this week's work in Human Behavior talking about spirituality. Even though I do not consider myself to be religious, what I drew from that was the interconnectedness of each human being. I am excited to see everyone else's presentations next week! Similarly, the presentation by Ms. Mathis on Monday helped me to connect with how damaging a culture and environment of racism can be.

More later..

Entry 5

So here's something I haven't spent much time in my life thinking about or considering: Racism against Asians. Perhaps I am hopelessly out of touch, but in the past I have been much more concerned about racism against African Americans and Hispanics because I suppose those issues are brought up the most. However, recently in studying the history of racism in the United States and that of undocumented laborers, I've realized that as a nation we seem to have a very deep-seeded nationalist fear of anyone who doesn't fit into our homogenized box. With a history like ours, I'm really curious as to where the whole "Melting Pot" and immigration friendly idea came from.

The statue of liberty inscription reads:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

We obviously don't mean that. Our hostility to non-native groups is historically documented. The California legislature required Chinese and Latin Americans mining for gold there to pay a special tax not required of Whites called the "Foreign Miners Tax," in the 1850's, and also in California a group of Whites murdered 19 Chinese immigrants in a vicious hate crime in the 1870's. Racism against the Chinese was again institutionalized in the Chinese Exclusion Act passed by congress in 1882 which prohibited the Chinese from immigrating for ten years. The Chinese Exclusion Act was only finally repealed in 1943.

Because I have been thinking about racism towards Asians recently, I was especially touched by the essay in our Diversity and Social Justice Readings by a Korean American girl, Olivia Chung, titled "Finding My Eye-dentity" in which she explains that the way that American society defines beauty excludes people of color. She writes about pressure from her mother and friends for a cosmetic surgery to add a crease to the eyelid to make her more beautiful. As a white female, I am pretty familiar with our society's strict definition of beauty, but I never thought about how the availability of beauty products for White women is a great example of white privilege. In her essay, Ms. Chung describes her experience reading Seventeen magazine's eye-make-up tutorial and realizing that the instructions were only available for people with an eyelid crease. A quick google search using the keywords "white privilege and beauty products" will return a gazillion articles and blog posts on this problem.

I also wanted to include this video, which is a great example of how racism/nativism is NOT dead. During the Super Bowl this year, Pete Hoekstra (R), who is running for a Michigan senate seat against incumbent Debbie Stabenow (D), ran an incredibly offensive political smear ad featuring an Asian-American girl riding her bicycle through a rice paddy and speaking in broken English on how Stabenow's policies are ruining the American economy and sending all the jobs and money to China. It is pretty ridiculous, and should make everyone uncomfortable. It is shocking to me that somehow a group of adults decided together that this would be a good idea in some way. Here's the video link :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrbdXUWryXk&feature=related

It is really sad and strange that there is all this nativism that can be exploited by political candidates. It really is fear-mongering and desperately needs to be publicly recognized as such, so that this particular kind of politics loses it's power.

Entry Four.

So I have FINALLY caught up with the class on our "a People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn readings. May I just comment that this book is not like a normal history book? It absolutely drew me in with it's candid descriptions of life as it was known by "the people." Last semester, I took US History II and our class focused primarily on the labor movement. Because of that, many of the names and events described this assigned section of Zinn's book I was already pretty familiar with.

I loved the quote about socialism by Eugene Debs during his imprisonment after attempting to assassinate Frick, the manager of the Carnegie steel company in Homestead. He articulated a thought and position I have long held but have not been able to express. On page 281 of Zinn's book it reads: "The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization."

Does anyone agree with me? I often feel pretty lonely in my revolutionary leanings. I don't condone attempted assassination, but I'm 100% on board with bringing the reign of gold to an end. Is the almighty dollar really the most gratifying pursuit? Is living in complete luxury more desirable then a sense of fulfillment at having done right by the world and humanity?

I hope not. I really believe that if every person reflected on what it is that would truly bring them peace, money would have nothing to do with it.

Thoughts?

Critical Race Theory

This week, I've been thinking a lot about the Critical Race Theory article. The ideas that were discussed in that article helped to solidify my understanding of race and oppression. While I had heard of Critical Race Theory before, I really wasn't familiar with it as sort of a perspective or paradigm from which to view social problems concerning race. The discussion of the multicultural or cultural sensitivity model of teaching about race or ethnic differences and it's inadequacy in addressing social justice problems of race on a large scale was something I had really never considered.In contrast, Critical Race Theory approaches the problem of institutionalized racism directly. One of the most interesting principles of critical race theory to me was Differential Racialization: "Dominant social discourses and people in power can racialize groups of people in different ways at different times, depending on historic, social, or economic need." The article goes on to give an example of differential racialization using Asian American groups, but personally I thought it relates really well to the way Mexican Americans and undocumented workers are treated. A couple of semesters ago I studied the history of immigrant labor in the US and learned that the political rhetoric condemning immigrant laborers of color occurs in a very predictable cycle: Economy grows-> Cheap, undocumented labor is exploited and even encouraged by business and political interests->Economy stagnates->Undocumented workers become the scapegoat of joblessness and a struggling economy.

It just goes to show that race is definitely still a prominent, ugly issue.