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.