Extra Credit

I really enjoyed going to the literature reading event, i had a lot of fun and i learned a lot about ways to write and draw in the attention of your readers with word usage etc. I really connected to one of the readings by a guy who had written something about the fluidity of gender. I can relate to this very much and it is something I've dealt with in my past when i went to a youth group. My group was a LGBTQ group for the youth. At the starting of these groups it was customary to state your name age,where you are from, and your "preferred gender pronoun"(male, female, they, etc) It was very common for men to prefer to be reffered to as her or she and the same was common for females to desire to be reffered to as he and him. This instilled the idea that gender was fluid in my mind at a young age and is something i will always remember. I enjoyed all of the readings and the variety that they had.

Chinese Girl In Ghetto

Ying Ma seems to be interested in issues about the economy, president Obama, and immigration most. From my perspective she posts mainly about things that are related to immigration and she thinks there shouldn't be illegal immigrants in the USA. I think her point of view on immigration and laws, especially things that obama backs, are a little ridiculous and i believe it goes against the "american dream" to deny rights to anyone who wants to create a life for them self in the USA. I personally believe her post about the big difference between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants is an invalid argument and that it makes her look biased and uneducated. As a legal immigrant i believe that anyone who is an illegal immigrant should be granted equal rights, to those i have, after coming to the USA.  Reading what she reposts and seeing her comments on posts just upsets me because for a seemingly "Educated" person her mindset is scary. Omi and Winant would say that her paradigm of the way she views the immigration of people to the USA and her view on the economy is based on a racial project where she seems to place her expectations and stereotypes onto people without taking into consideration the meaning of her words and thoughts and the effect they may have on society. I personally believe that she has done her best to assimilate into american culture and that she has forgotten her upbringing. The "core" of her upbringing.

1 paragraph on untouchable

In the novel Untouchable, we see a world where everything in society is divided based on a caste system.  Society followed a strict ideology that decided what class you would fall into from birth and for the rest of your life. Over the course of the novel, there is internal strife seen in Bakha, a young Hindu male, as he progresses through his day as a lower classman. His desire to be like the “sahibs”, the white men, and the constant reminders that he is of the lower class in society dares him to question his fate and why he has to live such a horrible life. Based on Bahka's behavior we can insinuate that he uses the desire to live as a sahib, as a form of escape or sanctuary to help him escape the idea of having to live his entire life as an untouchable. The main character of the novel Bakha has lived his life as an untouchable, the lowest of ranks in the Hindu Caste system. Bakha’s false consciousness is apparent in the novel when he is confronted by an upper class male in town because he accidentally touched him.  He is immediately  confused and conflicted because he has broken a taboo in society by touching an upper classman and he begins to question why he was born in this caste and why he has to suffer when he has done nothing wrong. Bakha unconsciously chooses to be colonized by the sahibs to escape his fate as an untouchable.

Cluster Connections

So far i find that all my classes are very connected, even to the point of connections being made with what was taught in one class on a certain day and what is taught in another class on the same day. Everything learned in english seems to flow into anthropology and ends up in sociology. The ideas of race being a social construct is a prime example that appears in every class and something that keeps appearing in every day life situations. The way i see things have been changed slightly due to this. One major change is the way i interpret what media claims and my animes. I watch a lot of anime, japanese cartoons, and the way i view them has changed drastically since i started taking these classes. I have been able to see racial construction happen and how it affects a society short and long term in anime alone so far. It was scary at first because you normally watch anime and take things at face value but after finishing one of my favorite shows i was able to pick up so many things about racial construction and the way society works once the idea of race is in place. Shin Sekai Yori is the name of the anime and it is about humans, the superior race, and how they interact with queerats, the most intelligent life form in their world under the humans. As i watched the show i didn't pick up on most of this until an episode where a queerat claimed he was human. This was what triggered my train of thought that led to it being related to class. Technically they were all the same species. The only difference was that the humans claimed that the queerats were unintelligent creatures and places a lot of labels on them. Over many years the queerats became a whole new "race" below the humans.  I found this connection to be the most fascinating to my classes and one that has even made me more excited to be in this cluster.

Muslim Hate Crimes

From looking at the chart you can gather that there was a sharp rise in anti- islamic hate crimes in the united states after 9/11/2001. Before that date the amount of hate crimes in the united states against islamic americans was an incredibly low amount in comparison to after. I imagine that this is because of the "terrorist" attack on that date. It is said that it was an attack on america by "islamic terrorists". I believe that the country was confused, scared and didnt know how to react to something like this after being told "who" did it. The trend in the graph is that the anti-muslim hate crimes in america grew immensely after 9/11/2001. It spiked, grew to an incredibly high number, on that date specifically and although it decreased after in the following years it never returned to the low amount that it was before the date. I think this is important to everyone and shouldn't be something that we look past. By simply looking at this chart and summarizing the date displayed you can see how society will respond to a whole group of people based on the actions of few or based on what we are told by those who we consider to be the truth speakers/protectors of our society.  In other words at any given time if we are told by the media to hate a group of people because they did something horribly wrong we will naturally follow the media and what they tell us. I wish there was a back story to the blog or a specific area that this was posted about because i believe the number to be much higher than what is displayed on the chart.

Response to Nicos Blog

  I am writing this to respond to Ms. Colomer's blog ( NicosWorld ) on the book "Slave and Citizen" by Frank Tennenbaum. She makes a few very interesting points in her blog about Tennebaum.  She writes "I found myself questioning whether or not he had an actual stand on slavery or was just leading us to a point where we make our own decision." in the first paragraph of her blog.(Colomer) In my opinion this means that she didn't think Tennenbaum had an actual stand on slavery. I agree with her statement because after reading more of Tennenbaums' "Slave and Citizen" i realize that his tone doesn't truly show if he favors or wants to get rid of slavery. I believe that Tennenbaum writes about slavery in a very general way and this is often shown in the passage as he switches between positive and negative results of slavery.

  Ms. Colomer shows that she believes this because of her saying that Tennenbaum "tends to contradict himself" in her blog.(Colomer) I have gotten many different feelings from reading “Slave and Citizen” but I still cannot tell If Frank Tennenbaum  wanted abolition of slavery of if he favored it.  His opinions and statements were very general although there was a lot of citation to back up his work. She writes “Reading over parts of the book like this brought me to question what is Tannenbaum really trying to say? What is his point out of the so many he makes?” as the ending sentence to the paragraph.(Colomer) I agree with the author of NicosWorld blogs because I myself can’t see which side he is on if any.

Blog numero dos ( 2 )

I've struggled through most Frank Tennenbaums "Slave and Citizen" for the past 3 weeks. I realized after getting to page 3 in the online version of it that i had no interest in the book. I finally got myself a copy of the book itself and that has helped me greatly in getting to read it. I find many points made in the reading interesting and i can understand and see how it all played out and led to our present time. I am from South America and its very interesting reading about the history of the other countries and the details behind the forced "migration" of the "negros" to the Americas. Honestly i cannot tell what tone is used in "Slave and Citizen". Towards the end of the book his tone changes and this is something i wouldn't have realized without someone else pointing that out to me. He seems to become very sexual in his writing in his closing of the book. In my opinion the major claim is the difference in how slavery was viewed and treated in the northern and southern hemisphere. I agree with Tennenbaums statements that in the southern hemisphere "negro slaves" has liberties unknown to those that were in the northern hemisphere. He shows several examples of this and being someone from South America i can relate to this all slightly. In Guyana, the country in which i was born, there is still great tension between the people because of skin color, race, and simply areas where you were born and raised. Tennenbaum claims that the majority of the southern hemisphere was the "negro". I agree with tennenbaum in this claim based on the time period it was said about.

Summary Of Slave And Citizen

In discussions of slavery, one controversial issue has been the differences in slavery in Brazil and America. On one hand Frank Tennenbaum claims that negros in Brazil were allowed to climb the social ladder and had liberties that American slaves never did. He shows this in slave and citizen by saying " even under the empire the negro and the mulatto ... had an acceptance unthinkable in the american scene" . Tennenbaums arguement that slavery was very different in Brazil is supported by quotes from other authors in his work. i agree with Tennenbaums statements on differences in slavery between America and Brazil. Tennenmaums also states that the majority of southern America was negros. I believe that this played a major role in allowing slaves in Brazil to climb the social ladder and get jobs unthinkable to slaves in America.

Classmates Twitters

I favorited Paul's tweet saying " ... fact of american life bering different without the negro" because it is very similar to a post i made myself. Without the american negro we would not have advanced as much as a society. "If it wasn't for the history of the slave trade we would never have a foundation of social and economical power." which was written by Leticia was also a favorite of mine because it also states the point that Paul raised saying that without slavery and the "negros" we would not have been able grow as much economically and socially.

English 101 Bloggy

 I'm not normally the type to read a book about slavery but since it is required for class I'm slowly getting through "Slave and Citizen". I've learned a lot about slavery and I've refreshed my memory on a lot about it from reading this book. Frank Tennenbaum's views about slavery and how it affected our world is something that i have to agree and disagree with. He has a very old fashioned way of thinking and makes the it seem like this was all an adventure rather than something horrific. Tennenbaum states " ... an adventure on a grand scale, involving diverse peoples, varying cultures, millions of human beings" at the beginning of his book. As a picky reader he has already caught my attention with just his usage of words to perk curiosity in a read.

 The way slavery was looked at in South America and North America were also different. He cites other works to prove his points which shows that he isn't a man who is speaking blindly but one giving his opinion on a matter and supporting it. "Negros" in South America had liberties that those in North America did not. Interracial marriage was allowed and some women of color of higher social status had slaves of their own. Tennenbaum shows statistically that the majority people in the South Americas were "negros". This made them the "dominant" race. In comparison to North America who's majority was Caucasian South America was most populated by "negros".

 Tennenbaum makes a point that without the slave trade many countries wouldn't have grown as fast economically. I agree with this point but i also disagree. The slave trade allowed for many countries to make money easily by simply selling off human life of another country. I believe that the slave trade allowed for quick expansion into the Americas and that it was the foundation that transformed it into a place where opportunities for life were everywhere. Many countries were able to profit considerably by taking part in trafficking slaves and being consumers to these slave vendors. I disagree with this because in my opinion there were several other ways to hasten growth economically without the sacrifice of a fellow human being. I also believe that the slave trade was horrible because in general people looked down on "negros" in that time period. Slave trafficking did not start because of its profits. It started because of how people viewed each other. They had specific class and race systems and chose who were on the bottom. This idea that "negros" were below everyone else is what allowed for so many to go along with it without hesitation or any major actions to stop it.

Diagnostic

  The struggle for an American Negro to be recognized as an American without those who take his skin color into consideration has been a long and hard battle over the years. “The history of the American negro is the history of his strife” was a part of the passage that stood out most to me as it states what the passage is about. It describes the American Negro struggle to be seen as one being and not someone who was part of two different worlds.  I believe this is a significant point because it states that American Negros want not to become one or another of these two but to become one whole of the combined two.  In my opinion I think it is very important for a human being to be able to feel as if they are simply looked upon as another human being without this idea that they don’t belong because of differences culturally or in race/ethnicity.

   

  Skin color left a brand on American Negros. They were seen as Americans of a lower tier.  Being seen as if they were not worthy of opportunities only added to the struggle of wanting to be an American who is respected and thought of as an American without the paradigm that having a dark skin tone changed his or hers loyalty to the country. They wanted not to change America, or to change themselves so that they became something that they were not. The struggle was to be someone who was seen as African American, someone who was both but one.  “This longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self “was the quote that I felt summarized most of the passage.