Cali Racism

The governator of California talked about how upset he was about the recent acts of racism that occurred on the campuses in Davis. Some of these acts included a noose that was discovered in the library less than two weeks after the Compton-cookout party that mocked Black History Month where students urged people to dress as ghetto stereotypes and promised there would be chicken, watermelon and malt liquor and a Jewish student earlier this week that found a swastika carved into her dorm room door. What’s the cause for all this? Why do things like this happen? and more importantly what can we do to stop these things from happening?

Mi querido pais, Chile <3

This morning there was a tragic event in Chile, an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.8 hit my family’s homeland early this morning. This catastrophe is devastating for the Chilean people, and there is only more disaster to come for this is a tsunami expected to hit Hawaii within 24 hrs. It is frightening to realize the strength and ferocity of Mother Nature’s power. This is yet another time where the world needs to come together, as we have done and are still doing for Haiti. We need to be ready for any help that may be needed of the various countries that were affected. Although Chile was the one directly hit, the earthquake was so powerful that shakes were felt and damage occurred in other countries such as Argentina and Brazil. I would hope that this time of need would bring people together, for we have a common desire of helping those who need us. I know my friend did not mean anything negative by it, but she said something that really disturbed me. She basically said that she hopes that they receive as much help as Haiti has had from us here in the United States, but that there are not as many Chileans here as there are Haitians, so she didn’t think they would have as much support. We are all God’s people before we are Black, White, Brown, Hispanic, Asian, African, Native American it doesn’t matter. We need to come together to help our fellow human beings in a time where they are fighting to survive. I just pray that in such a time as this, race ceases to be an issue.

Ignorant Comment

So my brother is a hispanic male and his fiance is white, raised in a small town in Florida. While going on a trip down to Miami to visit our parents, she brings up the conversation dealing with baby names. My brother and I have a pretty hispanic last name, “Gonzalez,” so my brother jokingly tells her that they should name their kid something like, “Pedro” or “Juan.” His fiance answers, “Don’t you think having a hispanic last name is enough? Why would I give my child a hispanic sounding name as well?” Although she probably did not mean it as a personal attack, I found her comment extremely frustrating and ignorant. Why would having a hispanic last name be so repulsive as she made it seem? Is it not good enough? It is the mentality that affects whether or not hispanics get jobs and move up in social status. It is very disappointing that someone would say this. It kind of reminds me of Barack Obama being pushed to change his name for his campaign. I think one should be proud of where they came from and in a lot of cases, your name can reflect that.

How can we expect to treat other humans like humans when we treat animals this way

Seaworld has long been a popular attraction, and this past week alot of attention has been put on the practice of keeping Orca’s in captivity, Orca’s are widely recognized as being one of the smartest animals on the planet, yet we treat them as pets. It has been thought that they are almost like humans in their nature, very social beings, yet, it the same thing happened to a human now, in that we capture them and put them in a cell that is the relative size of a bathtub to them for the rest of their lives, and tell them to do tricks, we would call that slavery. Yet since they are not “humans” we or at least some of us see this as being ok.
It we cannot even be nice to an intelligent, social being, how on earth do we ever expect to be accepting and nice to others. The other interesting thing I find about this story is the reasoning behind the arguments of killing and preserving the whale. It has been argued that this whale suffered from anxiety an a multitude of supposed psychological problems, when he had been identified as being involved in death three times, it was interesting that he has not been “punished” like a human either. Many times in our own legal justice system, people with known psychological problems how have harmed or killed only once are immediatly doomed to either prison or death. In short we hold different practices between humans and animals, but we are not that different. I for one see this to be a similar problem with race as well, whatever differences, however small they can be, can lead us to discriminate and hold different people and animals to a higher standard

minorities in the pool

Someone told me to watch South Park because “it’s hilarious.” The episode I watched was about there being too many minorities in the pool. One of the characters was so excited to go into the lazy river as it is his favorite ride. When he gets there, however, and sees that there are very few white people in the lazy river, he doesn’t want to go in. He then proceeds to do the calculations of the percentage of minorities to whites in the park and discovers there is 60% minorities and 40% “normal people.” He got all worked up saying that the Myans were right in predicting the end of the world in 2012, they just got the date wrong. Even after there was a freak flood and this character believes he is the only white person left in the world, he still continues to refer to the other people as minorities. Another character points out that if they out number white people then they would no longer be minorities. The paranoid racist character did not enjoy this and insisted that minorities would always be minorities and classified them as subhuman. While I had to laugh at how ridiculous the plot line was, the fact that some people find this more funny than offensive is a testament to how the media continues to perpetuate racism in our society.

Pulling the “race card”

I remember when I was in school, students would always say to the teacher “it’s because I’m black.” Why does everything always get assumed that whatever action is racist?

I’m an education major and if one of my students were to say that to me, I would probably have to tell them to never say that to me again because it offends me to no end. It’s something I really can not stand and to me makes the person look very ignorant. Just because someone is  black they feel that everything is happening to them because of the color of their skin or because they are associated with the race.  White people can’t say “oh it’s because I’m white” when they’re insulted by something. It doesn’t work the same way.

Just my opinion. One of my friends was telling me about one of her classmates saying that to her teacher recently over something as silly as moving seats and being pointed out in class for being disruptive.

Racial Profiling is a problem

I find this story to be very rididculous

I couldn’t believe this when I read it. There is this African American professor by the name of Gates Louis who teach at Harvard and he went on a trip and when he returned home he had difficulty getting in into his house. While he attempted to open his house door and failed, he asked his taxi driver to give him some assistance and the taxi driver was too an African American. A neighbor who happened to see the two men trying to barge through the front door called 911 and reported a break in. The police quickly arrived in front of Gates’ house. They questioned him and he told them that he reside in the house, but that didn’t stop the police from arresting Gates. Having been arrested in front of his own house, Gates got furious and publicly insisted that his arrest was clearly an instance of racial profiling, but as usual the police report said that Gates only got arrested because he was being physical with the authorities. This is clearly one of their pathetic excuse for arresting him. They know damn well that the only reason they arrested him was because he is back and that is just ridiculous.

Race and Red Lobster

While visiting a Red Lobster last weekend I was waiting for a table when one of the seaters came up to let the hostess know a table was free. Instead of telling the hostess, the seater looked in the book which contains the names of people waiting for a table and I saw her mouth my name. But instead of calling it out she looked around the room to see if there was someone who fit the name. In the waiting area there were only a few white couples and I was seated by the bar with  my friend(we’re both black). When she didn’t she anyone that fit the name that was in the book she skipped my name and called someone else but the hostess stopped her and called my name out. I was very surprised by this because she used a racist method to seat people. A name doesn’t determine how someone looks nor does it determine race. At first I thought that I was being a little sensitive but even my friend noticed and said something to me.